Mike, it's your conversation, so I don't want to wedge myself too deeply in it. But here's an observation: In any exchange, it's good if both sides agree on the meaning of the words (and this seems to me to be especially true in discussions of this type). It seems you and he may be conflating the meanings of "evil" and "sin".
Here's a fine example:
Joh 9:1 And passing by, He saw a man blind from birth.
Joh 9:2 And His disciples asked Him, saying, Teacher, who sinned, this one, or his parents, that he was born blind?
Joh 9:3 Jesus answered, Neither this one nor his parents sinned, but that the works of God might be revealed in him.
Joh 9:4 It behooves Me to work the works of Him who sent Me while it is day. Night comes when no one is able to work.
Joh 9:5 While I am in the world, I am the Light of the world.
To be born blind is an evil, but it is neither a sin nor (necessarily) the result of a sin. "...God created evil and is using it to bring about a good outcome."
Headaches, sickness, earthquakes, etc are "evils". They are not sins.
Evil is contrasted with Good. These are the "big things" contained in the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of Good and Evil. Sins (and all their relatives) are part of the experience of Evil, but experiencing Evil is not necessarily sin.
Did God influence Eve to eat of the fruit? He set the tree in the midst of the garden and made it beautiful to look at. If that is "influence", then God did "influence" Eve to eat. But I think of it more as God set the stage (both in the placing of the fruit and in the forming of Eve) and made the eating of the fruit the only possible outcome. What "influenced" her was her own lust and the enticement and lie of the devil to fulfill them.
Now, if God had not made the tree, nothing would have happened. If God had not formed Eve weak as He did, nothing would have happened. And if you carry that back to the "beginning", He made all things and without Him nothing was made. But just as he said, "Let the earth bring forth..." in Genesis 1, what comes out of His creation is also a part of His creation.
Instead of seeing myself as a puppet, I think of myself as more of a marionette. Some of the strings that operate me are very long. Some are very short. Some are outside of me, and some are inside. Some cause other agents to pull mine. And the great majority are not connected to me directly at all, but to other marionettes in the play. Of course, we're not marionettes. We have minds, emotions, and wills. We just don't have the deciding access to the "strings" that operate these things.
I'll stop there, lest my "figure of speech" replace the sound words of Scripture.