Disclaimer: I am posting this here as a matter of scholarly interest. The ideas contained within do not represent my actually opions, they are merely thoughts.

One of the biggest problems that Christian philosophers have faced over the years is, "the problem of evil". "The problem of evil" is the question that if God is all powerful and all good then why does evil exist in the world? There have been a few explanation for this over the years but non so widely held and spread as that of St. Augustine. Augustine claims that evil exists because we as humans choose to do evil. But why would God allow us this choice? Augustine claims that God gives us freewill, that is the will to choose between good and evil. God does this not because he wants us to do evil things but because a "good" act is not "good" if it is forced. We must freely choose to do good inorder for our action to be good. Augustine claims that inorder for us to be able to choose good we must lso be presented with the option of evil...

So it would seem from St. Augustine's that God is in fact all good but...

From the story of Adam and Eve several interesting points arise. Firstly that God punished Amad and Eve for eating from The Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. From here we can ask some questions about the "goodness" of God. Firstly we must assume that because Adam and Eve were punished they had done some evil. However, if before bitting into the apple they could not distingusion between good and evil how could they know they were commiting sin? Did God in fact give us the choice of freewill and deny us the choice of knowledge over what was good and evil? if so why? But further more an choice made out of ignorance is not a good choice and is not entirely freewill.

Therefore God actually restricted our knowledge about choices we were to make... and therefore tried to interfer with our freewill.

Think about it? Do you really have freewill? Take this example: You choose to hit a poolball... but what decides which way it goes? how far it goes? Physics/reality/God? You are not in control of reality but merely a pupet who cannot see his strings. It is like trapping a person in a cage and saying... "you are free". the person can do whatever they like in the cage, but are they free?