One of the ways that I like to think about this problem works as follows:
a. One
assumption being made is that
good and
evil are of completely different
material composition,
ethically speaking. This is not neccessarily the case.
1. Once you
create anything, you automatically bring into being its
diametrical opposite. Sort of a ying/yang situation. There can be no light without dark, no pleasure without pain, no yes without no, and very definitely there can be no good without evil.
2. That said,
God is responsible for the initial creation of evil only because it was a
byproduct of the creation of good. Try to imagine, for instance, a world without any evil whatsoever in it, only good. It would be like trying to imagine a world that only had one color. The
meaning of the word "good" would be greatly diminished in this case, since there would be nothing that this word could be described in
relation or
opposition to. So, it could be argued that the creation of evil makes the good that much
more good, and is and of itself a good action.
3. Evil, if you want to look at it another way, is really just the
abscence or
corruption of good. Nobody really "creates" it any more than people "create", say, darkness; people just
lessen the degree of good in the same way that they would
reduce light in a room. Evil, to put it yet another way, can only be defined in terms of the good; the good, on the other hand, existed first and does not need evil for definition.
Just some thoughts.