Stragler writes:
Rather than create good and evil why not narrow the scale so that the only possibilities are indifference and escalating degrees of good? You still get freewill but you don't get evil. The worst someone can be is indifferent.
iano writes:
I wouldn't call a will that is denied half the available options a free one.
It is only half the available options because God has apparently chosen to calibrate the scale such that evil exists. Presumably he could have created a scale which includes far worse than evil (lets call it evil++) but he chose to limit our freedom to just evil. I am simply suggesting that he should have calibrated his scale so as to make evil unnecessary for freewill.
We can only conclude that rather than just testing whether we will choose to be good or not God actually wants us to be able to be evil. It isn't logically necessary for freewill. So why does evil exist?
iano writes:
The old argument goes that you can't make someone love you. They have to be able to choose to love you. Or not.
This isn't affected by removing evil so that the worst humans could be capable of is indifference.