In the beginning, God created the world. He created the earth, air, stars, trees and animals. He created the Heaven above, the Angels, and every spiritual being. God looked at these things and said that they were good. However, if all that God created was good, from where does un-good or evil originate from? Were we exposed to evil when the original sin occurred? St. Augustine was one of the most respected thinkers in Christianity. In Book VII the Confessions, Augustine reflects on the existence of evil and the problem it faces. For evil to exist, the Creator, God, must have granted it, its existence. This contradicts the Christian view that God is purely good. For a long time, Augustine thought evil must not exists or that God is not entirely good.

Original sin.
Always asked questions
God had to create evil

Evil, Augustine entire religious life was based on evil, and how God could create it if he is good. Evil is a major theme in the Confessions, and the City of God. When Augustine was young, he could not wrap his mind around believing in an all good God that also created evil. However, God gave people free will. We can make our own choices. Our choices may be perceived as evil but it is just the lack of goodness in our decisions. The problem with evil and God is the challenge of how an all-powerful and all-loving God can allow his creation to suffer, without helping then and putting an end to their suffering. This challenge is an often quoted reason for being unable to believe in God for it is argued, either God does not exist or, if he does then he is not a God worthy of out worship.

Souls are the reason we do bad things not the body. The Soul is emotional
God gave us the option to do bad things

One question preoccupied Augustine from the time he was a student in Carthage: why does evil exist in the world? He returned to this question again and again he continued to analyze and was motivated by personal experience. First he lost his mistress, then his mother, and finally his son. To believe in God, he had to find an answer to why, if God is all-powerful and also purely good, he still allows suffering to exist. Augustine finally believes that he evil exists because we have free will. God enables humans to freely choose their actions and deeds, and evil inevitably results from these choices. Augustine gave a more theological explanation later in his life: we cannot understand the mind of God, and what appears evil to us may not be evil at all. In other words, we cannot judge God’s judgment. The roots of both of these answers stemmed from two philosophies, Manicheanism and Neoplatonism, which shaped Augustine’s ideas.
Everyone is taught from a young age that man is on top of the food chain. We are the dominate species on Earth. Most people say this is because of evolution. Those who adapt survive. However, before evolution was proven or even the theory existed. People had to understand why they were the dominate species. So, people believe that we are the dominate species because we were created from God’s image. Saint Augustine writes “Thus God made man in his own image, by creating for him a soul of such a kind that because of it he surpasses all living creatures on earth, in the sea, and in the sky, in virtue of reason and intelligence” (CIV, 503). Augustine believed that God could not create evil. He believed in the original sin because we were created with free will. God may have not created evil but we still have the opportunity to do what we want, either good or bad. God created man hoping that we would choose to be good. God is like a loving parent. He wants us to be the best that we can be, and not everyone lives up to that. Not many people appreciate how fortunate we are to be at the top of the food chain. Our lives would be very different if God put us at the bottom of the food chain.