(I'm not sure if this is in the right place, so hopefully a mod can move it if it would be better somewhere else!) I'm studying philosophy of religion at school, and I'm finding it really interesting. But we were talking about the start of Genesis, and had the predictable debate "If God is omniscient and omnipotent why didn't He stop Adam and Eve sinning, and keep the world perfect". I don't see that omniscience and omnipotence can go entirely hand in hand (because then God is limited by what He knows - if He always knew that Adam and Eve would take the fruit, He could do nothing to stop it, and is therefore not omnipotent). But...I think this is a reasonable explanation, for someone who has only recently opened up to the Christian faith, and studied philosophy for less than two months... God created a perfect world. He created sky and sea, and night and day, and animals and plants. And then He created humans, but He made them in His image. God knew that humans would be like God on earth, and would hav dominion over the world He had created. He knew this, because it was meant to be. But God cannot stand sin. He cannot understand it, and He cannot even begin to comprehend it - because His nature is so very different to it. He could not see that Adam and Eve would take the fruit. He could not prevent it from happening because He did not know that it would happen. From then on, the world was imperfect, because Satan had been allowed into the perfect world, and had spoiled it. Humans, because of the choice that God had given them, had ruined their future, and God's plans. Now God cannot recreate the perfect world He made to start with, because of us, and because of Satan. He still cannot understand evil, and so He cannot prevent all bad things from happening. He can, and does, give us the tools to drive evil away, and He influences events so that they happen as they should happen according to how God knows the world will be, but He still cannot always get it right, because Satan has a chance to make things go wrong. I know this is rather rambling, but I'd like to see what other people think. Challenge my argument, if you want - I'm sure it's not foolproof.
Like you said, you just started. These matters are actually heavenly, we can seek them out intellectually, but ultimately have to look for God for guidance. That does not mean the answers God gives are unreasonable -- far from it. It simply means that the ways of people on the earth and God in Heaven are as far apart as the Heavens are the earth.
I wouldn't call it like comparing a grasshopper talking to a man... though people are called 'like skyscrapers', and we well know God's consciousness is far beyond our own. But these things are matters He has spoken to us about and can reveal to us.
It would perhaps more be like a primitive villager in South America having nuclear physics explained to them.
Where would one begin? First one would have to learn the language, then explain something of the history of science, and so on. Then math, then higher math.
Complicated enough for you?
Consider this...
Jesus pointed out not to worry about shelter or food and explained how God provides that even for the sparrow. What about the ant? What about the beaver? And so on. There is a lot of life on the planet God is aware of and has influence in their lives. That is consciousness.
But my point here isn't that this matter is so complicated about good and evil and the Garden of Evil. You are looking for a complicated answer. There are many matters in creation which are very complicated full of sublime complications, and tracing them down to their simplest components fills brilliant minds with lifetime of exploration.
Many completely understand they are peering into the divine. Others sense it but exclude the concept of the divine.
In reality, the whole Garden of Eden story is simple. God put Adam and Eve in the Garden with the Destroyer, the Devil. He put in there further a tree of somesort and gave them a single rule. "Do not eat".
I like to jokingly compare this to giving someone a box with a big red button and telling them "whatever you do, do not press that button". You know they are going to. Especially if you put in there a supersmart confidence man whose inclination is to get you to press that button.
Yet this is not explained. One reason is because the secrets of the Kingdom of Heaven have been purposefully hidden: 'to shut their ears... lest they hear and believe, and turn and be healed'. Jesus quoted that for the reason He spoke in 'dark sayings and parables".
Put another way: God is smarter then you or me.
What is astonishing is how many people don't ask the question you are asking. They should.
Children of light tend to be more naive and trusting and simply do not wish to peer into these matters. I have found it necessary in order to help people "hear and believe, so they turn and are healed".
God 'subjected creation to futility'.
God created the Devil.
How do we reconcile such things? Many do not. Do you want to know why anyone doesn't believe in God, really? Because of evil in the world. It is very simple. They may say one thing or another, but it is really evil which is disinformation, which hides God's hand. Evil which says the lie, "God does not exist".
See, we are saved by faith. How could we be rewarded for faith if faith is easy? So, faith was not made easy. Why faith? So no one can boast, for no one deserves to boast. God made all.
It would be a shallow lie to boast.
This also is part of the grand irony of creation. All of people's deeds are worthless. All that is worth anything is their faith.
These things are where matters get mind boggling.
But, consider this: creation - all of it - is as a book. A person writes a book with heroes and villains, adversity and adversaries, the writer is not evil for giving the heroes and heroines their trials and tribulations. The writer is not evil for writing in villains.
The same thing you see with children playing with toys. Even as children we show our true nature as kittens play 'hunt mice'. We play God over toys.
Our whole world is full of such fictions: movies, television, books. This is always before us, yet people do not understand so often still why evil exists -- or why it has existed. For evil will not always exist.
Now, obviously, there is much more to it. After all, the evil in the world is very bad. But that evil will not always exist and is a small price to pay for the span of eternity we face before us. Further, it has to be noted we are as children in the face of these evils. As great and horrible as it often may seem to us, as impossible to comprehend, we should try to know that. God has minute control over pain and death, over mental experiences. Outwardly, it always looks horrible or seems so. But, in reality a pinprick can feel like a knife wound and a bullet might not even be felt.
For children their experiences with pain are extreme. At times. And I mean on little things. But, parents know better.
These matters are where it can get really hard to believe. But, that is the trick to escaping them. Believing through the pain, believing through the horror.