Into the Wardrobe

I beleive it was Saint Augustine who said that nothing is inherently evil. Evil is only the perversion and misuse of something good, and Lewis believed this and mentioned it several times in his writing. The writing that comes to mind is his preface to the Screwtape Letters in which he says that if you took aways everything that was good from Satan there would be nothing left--because mind, will, emotions, existence itself, are in fact good.

So splitting the atom can bring good results but we use it for evil. We learn about germs and viruses and can cure disease but then we use these discoveries to make biological weapons. Pain is good in that it alerts us to something being wrong or threatening or health--it hurts when we get a piece of rusty of wire in our foot, but if we did not feel the pain, we would not know it is there, ignore it wound, and probably die. But then we "abuse" pain by torturing people and making pain into a tool of power.

That's why I don't think anything is inherently evil. God made a good word but the good things in it got perverted when evil entered.

would it be against the "inherent-ness" of the discussion to say that we/it may have begun as inherently good, but have become inherently evil (i.e. born into sin/misused), and through grace becomes inherently good again (what i mean is would inherent be the wrong word to use)?

For me evil has always been something conscious (or at the very least sub-conscious). This would imply that no discovery/invention is evil; instead that the discoverer/inventer/user of said item/idea is evil