I think an important exercise to have with anyone prior to entering into a conversation such as this would be -
If you believe in the Biblical creation account as having taken place in the literal sense and do not believe in evolution, what evidence (if any) would you accept that would change your mind?
If the answer is "none" I would recommend you exit the conversation with some pleasantry and be about your business. You are dealing with an individual who is closed minded.
What is evolution? In this context it is only a slow change to an organism to adapt to its environment. Evolution is not life from lifelessness. That is abiogenesis. Amino acids form a single, one-celled life form. Abiogenesis. That one-celled life form turns into a complex lifeform over millions of years - macroevolution.
Just because evolution is real doesn't preclude a creator. The evidence of evolution exists in DNA.
The "Problem of Evil" is no problem at all. What is "evil"? That depends on your cultural upbringing. However, it is generally accepted as a lack of empathy and being self-centered. So, if there is an all-powerful, benevolent creator, why is there evil? The thought process on this is either A) The creator is not all-powerful, B) the creator is not benevolent, or C) there is no creator. Even atheists are coming around to the fact that this philosophy given to us by Epicurus is flawed thinking.
I like the way philosopher Alan Watts puts it -
The next problem where they differ so sharply is, Why have things gone wrong? Why is there evil; why is there pain; why is there tragedy? In the Christian tradition you have to attribute evil to something besides God. God is defined as good, and He originally created the scheme of things without any evil in it. But there was a mysterious accident, in which one of the angels, called Lucifer, did not do what he was told. And there was the Fall of Man. Man disobeyed, he went against the law of God, and from that point on evil was introduced into the scheme of things and things began to go wrong, that is to say, against the will of the will of the perfectly good creator.
The Hindu thinks in a different way. He feels that the creator or the actor is the author of both – good and evil for the reasons, as I explained it to you, you have to have the evil for there to be a story. In any case, it is not as if the creator had made evil and made someone else its victim. It isn’t like saying “God creates the evil as well as the good, and poor little us are his puppets and he inflicts evil upon us.” The Hindu says, “Nobody experiences pain except the Godhead.” You are not some separate little puppet who is being kicked around by omnipotence. You are omnipotence in disguise. So there is no victim of this, no helpless, defenseless, poor little thing. Even the baby with syphilis is the dreaming Godhead.
