What this entire debate boils down to is free will and evil. My understanding of these is different from what I see here. In any case:
1) God exists
2) God is all good
3) God is all powerful
4) Evil exists
Now christians, how can a person believe all of those statements? If God exists as all powerful and good, how does evil exist? You can see the other possiblities, but it seems that all four cannot be true.
Some people might bicker about what true evil really is, and whether the evil we see here on earth is true pure evil or just its effects, but the solution I have thought of (tho i doubt i am the first) is this: God made angels, heaven, earth, everything on earth. Therefore if Satan (a fallen angel!) can become a demon, where did the evil come from? God?
A) What is good?
Q) What God wants.
Evil is the OPPOSITE of God's will. Evil on earth does not have the power of creation, only of desecration and the scorning of God's will for a perfect world. Evil seeks only to ruin and destroy.
I'm getting there, keep reading!
Since this is getting long...Adam and Eve had free will. They were created to worship and be friends with God. Without free will, worship is meaningless. With free will comes choice and with that the ability to do evil (disobey God). Adam and Eve were not evil before the fall, but they had the POTENTIAL for evil. With free will comes choice. When they stood in front of the tree they had a choice. It was their first and only in the garden - a choice between good and evil. God said no, Satan said yes and they chose evil. Superficially it seems that they had no way to decide morally. This is untrue. the snake said something like "Eating that crap will make you like God." When he tricked them it was not a conjuring of magic, but an appeal to the potential evil in them. The choice here should be not evaluated on whether they ate the apple, but WHY they ate the apple. Eating the fruit to be like God is motivation by GREED.
Adam and Eve succumbed not because God made them defected robots, but because God gave them the opportunity for evil and they CHOSE evil when they could have resisted. Adam and Eve were just like us in the concern that they had control of their greed, they were not controlled by it.
Sorry that was so long, but considering that entire libraries have been written on this through the ages...its not much.
I assume that the same scenario happened in heaven when Lucifer became a fallen angel. We can take hope from the angels that stayed pure - perfection is not impossible for God's creations.
------------------
-Phantom Mullet
™ Version 4.2