"God created evil." Isaiah 45:7

The verse in Isaiah was pointed out where it says that "God created evil." But just to answer the issue I should add that when it comes to things beyond my understanding I defer to Kant about the things in themselves. That would be everything beyond the possibility of experience.
However, I am not saying 100% like Kant, because I think the limit that Kant places on Reason can be pushed back. This is the way I understood Hegel based on my reading of McTaggart on his Logic.

[This issue came up in http://alexanderpruss.blogspot.com/ who is a philosopher who I think is from the Analytic school. So I just added my comment there and thought also to post it here.]

I want to add that Steven Dutch was asked this and he answered that a lot of people have thought about this problem called the problem of evil.
Steven Dutch:

"How Can a Good God Permit Evil in the World?

An iceberg is a floating mountain of ice with most of its mass hidden below the surface. This question is more like a floating mountain of Styrofoam, with a tiny portion deep and hidden, and the vast majority on the surface and mostly made of air.

Lots of good, even great, books have been written on the deep and hidden aspects of this question. (One respondent asked me for references on this subject. The Library of Congress category for philosophy and theology is call letter B. The technical term for the question of good and evil is theodicy. I just searched it on Google and got 393,000 hits. Happy reading.) But if you are reading those books, you don't ask this question the way it is so often casually asked. Most people, when they ask this question, really mean something like:How could a good God disturb my comfort by confronting me with the existence of evil?How could a good God permit my sense of security to be violated by allowing evil to happen to others?Understanding this issue is really difficult. How could a good God create a world in which I have to think?

Dr Kelley Ross also treats this issue where he goes along with Schopenhauer. 

Some areas where critique on the Christian point of view makes sense.

There are some areas where critique on the Christian point of view makes sense. You never see anywhere that Jesus claims to be God. [He refers to the coming of the "son of man." [no capital letters in Greek.] Not the "son of God."] You never see him nullify the commandments. However there is a point about him even if some people get things wrong.  Some err on the side of over-doing. Others err on the side of under-doing.  It is hard to hold a middle point of view.
But even those that err on the side of under-doing accept his basic points. For some reason, he was able to embed in the human psyche the idea that the perfect person is the good and kind person. So when people ask, "How can Jesus be okay when such and such of his followers act not nicely?" they are implicitly accepting what he said.




He was to borrow a phrase from Allan Bloom a "civilization founding person."

[Critique on Jesus almost always means critique on Paul.]

On the critical side I want to say that אהיה אשר אהיה "I will be that which I will be" the name of God, is not the same as "I am". So even if the phrase of Jesus "I am" is hard to understand, still it is not the same as the name of God. ["I am before Abraham" in the Ancient Greek.]

The positive side is easy to see based on the idea of Rav Nahman about the importance of belief in a "true saint". [That is a theme in the book of Rav Nahman, the LeM.]

w63 A major

Girsa" [saying the words and going on]

The way of learning of "Girsa" [saying the words and going on] is very different from what people experience in school. The reason is that in school there is an emphasis on tests.

There is aspects of tests that are good. They show to oneself what he or she is good at and thus spend effort in that direction.

On the other hand the emphasis on tests does not take into account the idea that some things are important to learn whether one is good at them or not.

So when I say that people ought to learn Physics and Mathematics in this way of "Girsa" [just say the words from the beginning to the end of the book], I am not saying that everyone will become geniuses because of this. 

But I still think after doing this with any text of Physics four times, from beginning to end, the effect will be such that even people that imagine that they are not talented will discover that they are a lot more talented than they thought.

[I am going here with the idea that the Ten Commandments are contained in the Ten Statements of Creation [See the commentary of the Gra on Pirkei Avot V.]. So the Law of Moses in contained in a hidden way in the Work of Creation. In some way, you can see this in the Gemara itself. "R. Yohanan ben Zacai knew the Work of Creation and the Divine Chariot." You can see this theme a lot in Rav Nahman of Breslov' s LeM.]
טבעו בארץ ששעריה "The gates of Torah are sunken into the Earth". That is towards the end of volume I of the LeM. But there are plenty of hints to this all throughout the LeM--if one is willing to see them.


[I am not saying to stop learning in depth or doing review. But for some reason this kind of fast learning was mentioned by Rav Nahman in is Conversations number 76 as being the main way of learning. He almost seems to de-emphasize learning in depth on purpose. he says to have every day a session in learning with "slight iyun" [lit.,  a small amount of in depth learning.] To me that seems to imply that in fact learning fast was his preferred method for everyone.

[I think you have to say that Torah hidden in the work of Creation is more powerful to help a person come to good character traits than open Torah. In the LeM of Rav Nahman he brings an idea that telling open Torah to a wicked person causes them to become more evil. So the tzadik [saint] has to tell them Torah in a hidden way. There the idea is a about the "secular conversation" of a tzadik, but to me it seems the same principle applies here. The hidden Torah inside of the Work of Creation is what causes people to become better people.]
You can see in Rav Nahman's LeM also that there is not a proportional relationship between learning Torah and good character. So this idea of learning the Hidden Torah in the Work of Creation makes more sense to spend time and energy on.

w62 E Flat Major

It is usually understood that when there is an argument among Rishonim [mediaeval authorities] it does not make sense to say one or the other was right. You might do like the Beit Yoseph that you go by three only. That is the Rif, Rambam and Rosh. When two of these three agree to anything, that is the law. Still that does not make the other wrong. And when you can not find a consensus among these three, then you go by the majority of Rishonim.

So in the case where many of the Rishonim that hold Physics is a part of learning Torah, how would you decide that? Some hold yes, and some hold not. Since the Rambam is clear, and the Rosh and Rif do not openly discuss this, it seems clear the law is like the Rambam--especially after many rishonim go with the Rambam in this point.
[You might add the fact that both the Rif and Rosh say that "outside books" in Sanhedrin are not what people often think are "outside books". They are not books of Math and Physics. "Outside" means giving explanations not from the sages of the Mishna or Gemara or Midrash.]


There is an aspect here of experience also. It does not to me seem that learning Torah alone with these two added things Physics and Metaphysics [as the Rambam phrases it in the Guide] really leads to human perfection.  

Learning Torah and the Wisdom of God as it is contained in the work of Creation

You see in the Nefesh HaChaim of Rav Haim of Voloshin the importance of learning Torah.
I agree with this. The only thing is that I add the learning the Wisdom of God as it is contained in the work of Creation as being also a part of God's Law.

You see this in Rishonim [authorities from the Middle Ages. That is everyone that wrote either commentary or law from Rav Hai Geon until Rav Yoseph Karo. Not inclusive] based on Saadia Gaon. I mean Saadia Gaon opened this understanding that many later Rishonim accepted. Among them the Obligations of the Hearts, Maimonides/Rambam, Benjamin the author of Maalat HaMidot and others.
In later Musar books you a distinct backing away from this. The Ramban [Nahmanides] would be one that disagreed and stated the tradition that would refer to Aristotle as "may his name be blotted out". That opinion of the Ramban got to be accepted but is not the opinion of the above mentioned Rishonim that went with the approach of Saadia Gaon.

I feel that Maimonides was right in this subject that the Wisdom of God as contained in Creation is on a higher level than the laws about human interactions --which is also Torah but still seems to be on a lesser level.

You see this in the story brought in the Guide about the King. Outside the palace of the King are the people that learn Talmud. Inside the palace are the Physicists. [This analogy certainly shocked people. You can see why there were a few attempts to exclude the Rambam/Maimonides from acceptance.]

And I might add that if personal experience means anything, I would have to side with the Rambam/Maimonides in this issue.

But not to learn layman's Physics books. Do it right, or do not do it at all.
Doing it right means, you do not need to be a genius. Just like learning regular Torah does not depend on how smart one is. It is a mitzvah in itself. [The way to go about it is the path of learning of Rav Nahman of saying the words until you finish the book. But also review.]