Salam, everyone. The question of whether God created good and evil is a question that has been on my mind for quite some time now. As a former Asharite, I find it difficult to imagine that God did not create these two forces. Recently, I have been doing some reading and I encountered a number of objections to the Asharite claim. The most disturbing objection to this notion follows this line of reasoning: if God created good and evil, ie He decided what is good and what is evil, then it would follow that God is acting arbitrarily. That would be tantamount to saying that God is acting without purpose, which would be blasphemous. Therefore, the only option left would be to realize that God only commands someone to do something because it is inherently good and that God only forbids certain things because they are inherently bad. This seems like a compelling argument, but I have a problem with it. To me it seems like this line of reasoning implies that good and evil are concepts that already exist and that the decree of God has nothing to do with it. This seems to rob God of His absolute authority and implies that good and evil coexist with God and at no point in time did they come into existence. Is this not problematic? It would be appreciated if someone could this explain this in some depth. ~Mithrandir.