Well, I had a funny idea streak on the bus to work today, and thought I may as well get it out of my cranium before I forget it or before I realize how influenced by drowsiness it is.

Real short version: God created the universe and us in order to bring free-will into existence that is not his own. Ergo the whole existence of evil thing.

1. Let's assume there is a God with the capital G. Maybe not a white-robed figure, or even a consciousness, but at the very least some sort of primal cause and existence. This is the ultimate embodiment of choice or free will, since as the prime cause, it has no precedent to influence it. I'll use personifying terms hereafter though, because it's easier.

2. We probably do not have free will. I'd argue that we are a bit closer than the rest of the things we can observe, like computers, plants, rocks, animals, etc---but it's probably not as big a gap as we think it is. We still have a dang strong influence by comprehendable cause/effect chains like basic physiology.

3. Let's say God is actually lonely, or is at least the creative sort. Can you build yourself? Can we even understand ourselves yet? Not really. We can say "This neuron touches that one." But do we know the workings of the system? Nowhere close, even with some real low-level chemical workings of our bodies.

So God takes a shot at creating a bit, and gets the god-equivalent of Aibos and Eliza-bots and what-have you, because you can't design what you can't understand, and understanding yourself creates a feedback loop of complexity. These spinoffs could be considered angels, if you want to be really religious and metaphorical about it--They're godlike but no cigar.

So God does something pretty smart, and decides that the best way to make a entity of free will is to let one happen. Take some dimensions, stir them up, heat, wait until the concept of time appears, then wait several billion years... (Or even do something more basic with other ingredients which we don't have any theories to describe.)

And here we are, in a world where systems are increasing both in complexity and function (evolution) but also in size (encapsulation--a system containing other systems). Going from a one-dimensional particle up to a Caenorhabditis Elegans up to a world stock market etc. Let us not forget the music of the spheres (Wednesday showing only.)

After an infinite amount of inside-the-universe time, you get a coherent entity (not chaos) with an infinite number of levels of cause and effect (indistinguishable from chaos) and you're pretty much done.

Maybe the two God-entities must be totally irrelevant to each other, preserving the free-choice property, or they interact, causing a larger system, or something else--I'll leave that to the people who get paid to think of unprovable possibilities all day