I might be late here. However, I find it clear that good is what leads to the greatest happiness for the self, and evil is what leads to the greatest suffering for the self. This may seem to be a naive argument or a common sense view (at least in my own view). The true problem or question is what leads to happiness and what leads to suffering, what kind of change may lead to happiness and what kind of change may lead to suffering.

I would also want to comment on the idea that change is dependent on consciousness. While that idea is probable, I don't see evidence which justifies that idea as certain truth. I see it as equally likely for change to be dependent on consciousness or consciousness to be dependent on change. I do agree that in the absence of consciousness, the meaning of change is reduced, as ontologically everything has the same value of existence. However there are 2 possibilities of change, either change happens as the changing of labels which affects consciousness, or the motion of consciousness is change itself, in which case there will truly be no change, not even a change of labels, in the absence of consciousness.

Finally, it is absolutely true that good and bad, morality, and the whole of ethics is dependent on consciousness, it is purely a phenomenon of consciousness. Without consciousness, good and bad may "exist", but they are mere labels which are in relation to consciousness and without consciousness to relate to, these labels have no meaning and might as well do not exist.

And that both essence and substance of the Christian message, I'm pretty sure. — tim wood

That you are correct. Great job on your thinking good Sir. I hope we will meet each other again in other discussions.

Honestly I like your idea. Many mystics have reached the level of eventually simply recognizing that it's useless to do whatever people are doing with God. Eventually we will like the chirping birds, they do not chirp because there is reason or even meaning. So we will not speak of God because there is meaning there, we just do.

Anyway I am glad we can reach some sort of agreement. That's something rare in any philosophical discourse.

For what about what? I take the substance of your remarks to be your ideas of your ideas about something that is also your idea. Zero contact with anything Godly there. — tim wood

Then perhaps it is impossible or at least useless to talk about God at all. After all it will just be ideas about ideas which are also just ideas. Why don't you give your own propositions and clarify your thoughts to all of us? In the meantime I'll take a shower.

I speak differently to different people, so I will match my perspective with your level now.

The point is - or maybe you're making it - what makes you think it's evil? — tim wood

Here I use the definition of "Evil is that which causes suffering." For God nothing causes suffering so in God's eyes evil is not real.

What need does God have for enablers? — tim wood

What does enabler mean?

God wants? God is deficient in His or Her perfection such that he/she wants? That's beyond nonsensical. — tim wood

It is an expression which I use to respond the original poster. Of course God does not need or want anything because God is supreme and complete. In God everything is fulfilled. What we experience is simply the fulfilling of what is already fulfilled in God.

The original thinkers were onto something when they decreed God ineffable and incomprehensible — tim wood

True, I have seen the true nature of God and I acknowledge that there is no word that can accurately describe it. Even if you use a description of infinite length it is still impossible to explain or describe God. God is ineffable and incomprehensible. As such take care to understand that when I say "God wants" it is always some sort of metaphor or analogy. We understand only by analogy or by what God is not.

I explained God's understanding of evil in my argument. And I appreciate your input, because many people who are simply not aware of the other perspective will think that God thinks the way we think. It's important to understand that God has knowledge of everything, so if God allows evil, it's probably for a good reason.

Greetings @scientia de summis,
Initial Catholic Perspective
As a theist myself, the problem of evil has always been fascinating. Now at this point of time I do not wish to create a response to the responses, but I will only respond to your original question. As a Catholic, I will first explain the Catholic standpoint on evil, and then I will present my own standpoint as a synthesis of many viewpoints. The Catholic standpoint rests upon the idea that God allows evil because God can create a greater good from the evil. As evil is a loss of good, it means that you gain greater good than what you lost, therefore a moral profit. Let me quote the Catechism of the Catholic Church to illuminate the official Church standpoint here.

But why did God not prevent the first man from sinning? St. Leo the Great responds, "Christ's inexpressible grace gave us blessings better than those the demon's envy had taken away."307 And St. Thomas Aquinas wrote, "There is nothing to prevent human nature's being raised up to something greater, even after sin; God permits evil in order to draw forth some greater good. Thus St. Paul says, 'Where sin increased, grace abounded all the more'; and the Exsultet sings, 'O happy fault,. . . which gained for us so great a Redeemer!

Pay attention to that statement of, "God permits evil in order to draw forth some greater good." From this single statement we can infer the psyche of God in viewing evil. In God's eyes, evil is not something absolute or immutable, it can be used to create something much better, albeit that evil is forever evil. There are many examples of this in action, either in the Catholic context or in the secular context. I will use only one example from each to illustrate my point.

In the Catholic context, Jesus Christ as the God-Man died on the cross and suffered infinite suffering in the process. However, the result of that infinite suffering is in truth infinite goodness which always rivals or is greater than the infinite suffering. This is due to the reproduction of goodness which I will explain later on. The infinite goodness is the glorification of the God-Man for all eternity by the purer God of God the Father in the Trinity and also by the Holy Spirit. However, of course He also receives glorification from humans, particularly Christians (excluding Mormons, Jehovah Witnesses, and other cults). All of that exceeds the suffering Jesus experiences.

From a secular standpoint, one may actually ask what is the benefit of World War 2? Now we do not know if WWII is a "final great war", but so far the lessons we learned in WWII has allowed us quite some global peace albeit not a local peace. It has caused a greater awareness in the law of war, the Geneva convention, war crimes, the maddening destruction of nuclear bombs, the UN, and many other good things. All of this good which came out of a terrible sacrifice that is WWII outweight the bads of WWII itself, as the horrors of WWII are temporary while the benefits will be experienced for a much longer time and be enjoyed by more people. There is an argument of how logically you need evil to produce good, but I will get to that in the later sections.

Personal Argumentation
There are numerous arguments to resolve the problem of evil, showing that from a higher perspective evil is not problematic if not serving a great purpose in goodness itself without itself being intrinsically good. At the final high perspective, we will reach the understanding that all things are good and have value and nothing has complete or absolute values of evil. Let us begin.

1. God is Love and the Existence of Free Will
In short, we have free will. Free will is however, not the kind of free will where "The total laws of reality does not determine your actions." Instead it leads to such statement, "We have a separate will from God, we are capable of having a will that is against God." However, such will is inevitably always determined fatalistically by the deterministic forces of reality and also of randomness. Though in the theist perspective, there could be truly no randomness in the physical level and only in the level of God, where we cannot foresee or see into the mind of God, lest we go insane.

God wants people to love Her, but God also wants them to love Her purely and freely. This is not just because God wants people to love Her like that but it is also for our own benefit. Pure love is ecstatic and it liberates from all evil. Pure love is also free, in the sense that, "It is not done by the external coercion of God, or the coerced union of the human will with God's will." Pure love must be free as it is love which is born out of the total laws of reality, that is complete meaningful love. That is there is a clear beautiful pattern out of which love is born.

However, to allow for that, God must allow humans to have a separate will from Herself and be able to let the total forces of reality guide them to ways that God might not want morally. As such God allows us to have free will which allows moral evil, greater than natural evil, to enter into the world. This is however a rather rudimentary concept. Also the reason why I only address moral evil with this argument is because in the total absence of moral evil, that is with the perfect understanding of reality, then natural evil can never be a problem. It is seen only as a challenge. Let us consider the deductive form below:
PA. If X is not morally evil and if natural evil happens, they will not see natural evil as an absolute evil.
PB. X is not morally evil and natural evil happens.
C. X will not see natural evil as an absolute evil.
However, such argumentation require the justification that the lack of moral evil, or the perfect understanding of evil necessitates the acceptance of all evil as relatively good. This leads me to the next point of Moral Relativity and the Goodness of it All.

2. Moral Relativity and the Goodness of it All
Even in God's standpoint morality is relative. Masturbation is declared sinful by the Catholic Church as by principle it is against love. However, masturbation, as long as it is done in concordance with the principle of love, is not an offense against God. Now moral relativity means that the principle of morality, that is love, applies to every moral being, but that the manifestation is relative and can "contradict" between different levels of being. A lower being may be prohibited from masturbation as he will do it in egoism and selfishness. While me, capable of accessing heaven, will masturbate as a form of loving bond with God.

The idea that there is no real absolute evil arises from the idea that in truth, whether something is evil or good most of the time depends on our own perspective of that object. As such I call this distinction subjective moral objects and objective moral objects, from now on shortened to SMO and OMO. We live in a mixture of both OMO and SMO. OMO are those objects which are just objectively good or evil, such as physical injury. Murder itself is not an OMO because there are people who thinks that murder is good and as such commits murder. However, physical injuries are only OMOs at the low level, as a being progresses through moral development, physical injury will become impossible as the body becomes impassible.

As such it is certain that pretty much all of morality in this universe is based on SMO. What we believe about goodness determines our experience of that goodness. If we believe school to be evil, then we will experience school to be evil. Likewise, if we believe God as the absolute terrorist, that is what we will experience, unless someone comes to us and changes our perspective to understand deeper. The fact that there are people who have experienced immense joy from God and others who experience the deepest of hatred and rejections either towards or from God is strong evidence of this. In fact, I may even make a research on that in the future, so thanks for the inspiration.

Therefore, since evil and happiness can both be inputs to the moral function, and we get to determine the output of that moral function. The input can be anything but the output will always be happiness. As evil in itself as an experience has such value and meaning in itself. The most important thing in all values is meaning, that is patterns, archetypes, relationships, and unions. As evil serves all of that, it does have meaning and thus for the very least from a standpoint of meaning it is good. Though again if we say that evil is about suffering then yes evil is evil, but that suffering can become something good.

I have more to say, but God directs me to write sufficiently here. I will respond once anyone mentions me or responds to me.

I understand now, thank you.

Thank you for your explanation. It seems I still have much to learn in regards to these subjects.

Yes, that is indeed what I am asking.

I have a question, how would we classify a belief, or any belief at all to be true?

It would seem that if what is true is directly connected with what is real, then we can not say that truth is based on what we believe. Of course truth is always about what is real, then there is a link between what is real and what is true. For what is real (what actually is the case) is what is true, it is the definition of truth. Then the problem here is about whether we can acquire what is true or not. For all we have is our conscious experience and our rationality to classify and evaluate such experiences. Then our beliefs may only approximate truth, or may the belief be truth itself? If a belief is in full alignment with reality, can we say that our belief is the truth? Yet of course it implies the prior belief that our belief can be in full alignment with reality. In the end all we have is our conscious experience and the truth that we indeed experience regardless of the contents of that experience. Truth is acquired through conscious experience, which is our sole gateway to reality, but the truth is already there within reality itself.

But of course you could only know there was such a consensus via your own conscious experience... — Banno

This is true.

Take care lest you find yourself permanently up the garden path of phenomenology. — Banno

What's wrong with phenomenology?

Then, as so often happens, you have stoped talking about what is true, restricting yourself to what you believe. — Banno

What do you mean by this? Which part which I spoke of that is no longer related to the truth, rather a restriction to my own belief?

The correspondence theory is usually that a statement will be true if it corresponds to the facts. — Banno

This is true but we only acquire the facts through conscious experience and the rigorous interpretation of these conscious experiences. As such I stand that the correspondence consists in experience which is the supply of facts.

If what is true is what we consciously experience, then wouldn't our hallucinations be true? — Banno

I understand your point, so while all truths originate from conscious experience, we can not say that not all experience is true or is the case. Though we may be mistaken in our interpretation of the experience, it is a truth that we do experience whatever it is, even if it is a hallucination. In respond to the case of hallucination, then perhaps a consensus of conscious experience is what constitutes as truth. After all I did not specify whether the conscious experience is individual experience or the totality of experience.

it's not my experience that decides the truth of "I had eggs for breakfast". It's whether I indeed did have eggs. — Banno

This is true, our experience does not determine the truth, but it informs us in regards to the truth. The truth is determined realistically by reality itself, but epistemically (our knowledge of the truth) truth is determined by our experience of it.

The problem with correspondence theory is that it doesn't tell us what that correspondence consists in. — Banno

It seems that the correspondence can simply consist in correspondence with conscious experience. This is the simplest view of the matter, in my opinion. If we define truth as any proposition concordant with objective reality, and that we only access this "reality" through conscious experience, then it is logical to say that that the correspondence consists in conscious experience.

Nothing, then, is added by "It is true that...". Truth is redundant. — Banno

If we consider the statement, "I had eggs for breakfast," it merely states that I indeed had eggs for breakfast. The statement of "It is true that I had eggs for breakfast simply describes that the statement of "I had eggs for breakfast" is concordant with our conscious experience of objective reality. Without an emphasis on the correspondence, how are we to know if the statement "I had eggs for breakfast" actually does happen. If I in actuality had rice for breakfast, then I say, "I had eggs for breakfast", what then do you think is happening there in absence of truth?

Perhaps truth is over rated. — Banno

What would be the substitute for truth then in general dialogue and discussion? Is it facts or just direct reality?

I am new here and I may have minimal knowledge but I will deliver what I know. The question of whether truth is objective or subjective may depend on the theory of truth. Let us take two particular theories of truth, correspondence and coherence theory. If we take the correspondence theory of truth, then truth is by definition objective, as it is what is in concordance with the objective world. If we take coherence theory or coherentism, that truth is simply what is concordant or what coheres with a set of beliefs or propositions, then truth is subjective. As it is not based upon the objective world rather the personal beliefs of people. Though the set of propositions by which a truth coheres at least includes the beliefs of all people, it would still be a collective subjective belief, thus making truth subjective.

I personally believe in the correspondence theory of truth, as we have the undeniable facts of conscious experience to supply our truths. My objections to the coherence theory of truth is that truth becomes rather circular. Let us assume there is a proposition X, according to coherence the standard of truth would be for X to cohere with some set of beliefs Y. However how do we prove the truth of that set of belief Y? Then it seems it just comes in a circle. Correspondence would instead ground a particular belief as self evident truth which does not require any further justification as it is completely obvious. Furthermore coherence theory seems to ignore that we have conscious experience and we can at least form some objective correspondent truth from our conscious experience.

The bottom line is, whether truth is objective or subjective depends on your theory of truth and your definition of truth. Though I personally believe that all truth should be objective.