LACK EVIL - If evil is just a missing good, a lack? A lack is nothing but real in its effects.
SUBSTANTIAL EVIL - Or is evil a force, a presence?
Lack or substantial? Does it make any difference?
We will use the terms lack evil and substantial evil where appropriate.
GOD
The Christian and Islamic doctrine is that God is good and all things come from him. If substantial evil exists then God made it or it always existed. Either way, you cannot depend on God and God is not God. He is just a powerful being and we have the right to ignore him if we choose for he is not that special. So the religious claim that there would be nothing without God and God is love would be refuted if substantial evil had to have been created by him or existed without him.
CALLOUS
Saying evil is a mere absence is nonsense and too extreme and is harmful. Why? For if you are depressed or suffering you really do encounter evil as in force. You are as good as told you are delusional or deliberately fooling yourself.
RELIGION REJECTS SUBSTANTIAL EVIL
Those who say that evil is good that is not good enough are not exactly the same as people who say there is no evil and that it is just an illusion.
Some mystical religions such as Christian Science treat and think of evil as a complete fiction. They argue that suffering is not real and you only imagine it is.
But it is obvious that both of them dismiss the experience of evil as real as an illusion. If you say evil is not real but an illusion then the problem is your perception not evil. You are saying that if there is evil or anything close to it, it is your own way of seeing things that is to blame. If evil is not real then it is real in your head. It harms as much as the delusion that a demon follows you around does. It is as good as real.
If evil is not real and you as good as make it real to you, then you must have a bad side if you go to all that effort.
Just now let us remind ourselves that those who say that evil is but a lack of good, or good in the wrong place, are in fact saying evil is an illusion in a different way. They are as bad as those who admit it outright. What is happening is that believers end up (usually subtly) attacking people in the name of keeping up the logic: "Evil is not substance so there is no need to ask if God made evil. There is nothing there to make. All that happens is that good is abused. God is pure love and we need to believe that." It backfires for it demonises people in the name of faith in God and to make God respectable.
SUBSTANTIAL EVIL
If evil is substantial, nobody wants to experience it as such. Evil being a power, or seeming to be, makes it sound stronger than you. The horror would be too much. It is like seeing it corrupts you perhaps through making you feel it is so crafty that you are better being its friend than its enemy. Experience is deeper and more personal than just thinking that you don't want something. It changes you inside.
Does lack evil help? Religion says that all comes from God and all is good and evil is just good in the wrong place and time and says it is evil and an insult to God to say evil is real in any real sense of the word. But even if it were not the evil experience is real. That part of evil is substantial. It is substantial evil....
So does it really make any difference? No. You get something not that you necessarily think is real but experience as real.
You would otherwise expect the experience to be worse if evil is a power than it would be if it is a lack of good. The latter is weaker.
Some say that as a placebo, you will avoid understanding evil to be substantial evil. So you will opt for lack evil. Even if that cannot be done, a placebo might still be attempted. It is possible to wrongly think you are getting a placebo effect.
Real placebo or not, it will do nothing to avoid the evil experience. It only ensures that it will be worse when it comes. Your self-deception is not fair on you. You cannot avoid influencing others, especially in something so foundational, so what about them? And even if evil is not real that does not mean it cannot make you experience it as if it is. Your own psychological scheme is self-defeating and foolish.
Another reason the placebo will be sought, is that once you experience evil no matter what evil is supposed to be metaphysically, you will take it as a power and that means it may need to be fought with another evil. It is like how if malevolence were a real infection, you could see yourself culling people and animals you see as carriers.
If evil is what happens because we have free will, then here we have evil being given the power to force itself on you experience fashion. It need not have this power so God gave it the power. God is evil if he exists. Even if he does not exist it is evil to worship him.
Morality is vague if there is that much forcing going on for it is meant to be about being free to do evil, free to abandon evil and free to do good.