With one correction "There is that which is not of God." The Creation is not God. What God created was good. Evil is not a creature of God. God did not create evil. Evil does not exist. If all mankind suddenly turned to God, evil would "vanish" instantly.
as LONG as one holds onto the guiding principle that everything we say is wrong
Oh, I agree wholeheartedly.
Do you have a comment on "Knowing (or seeing) isn't causing"?
I am not sure where this comes from. It's a sweeping generalization. Please elaborate.
What God created was good. Evil is not a creature of God. God did not create evil. Evil does not exist. If all mankind suddenly turned to God, evil would "vanish" instantly.
My urge is to say,"Amen Alleluia" and go to bed. But ...
YES, what God created is good. But (I venture to suggest) nothing can be as perfectly good as God. God IS, all the rest isn't unless He keeps it ticking over. And (again, I'm spekkerlatin' here) in the moral sphere such imperfection is the possibility of moral evil - which is actualized when our first parents violate the proper relationship with their Creator and the source of their breath. Biologically they die later on, but they start dying right then, when they hear the voice of the Lord and they HIDE from that the hearing of which would fill the redeemed with joy. Spiritual, moral, physical death, in one handy package!
So this is scarcely a disagreement with what you said.
But then, as I contemplate a coming dentist appointment, I remember that, I don't care what you say, beyond a certain point pain is an evil, even if, like the pain of the rabies injections which kept me from becoming truly a Mad Dawg, it is an evil in the service of a good. No shots in the behind in Heaven (I trust.) And are you suggesting that if, either per impossibile or by an amazing act of God's grace, all humanity turned to God, I wouldn't have needed that chubby but cute nurse to pierce my gluteus maximus 5 times(!) to my not inconsiderable (embarrassment and) discomfort?
The "knowing isn't causing" line is the stock defense against saying that since God sees what I'm going to do, He somehow caused it. That's all. On it's face it's unarguable. But faces aren't everything.