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No. It is, in itself, evil. Even if never acted upon.
Why?
I am rapidly losing faith in humanity here.
This is very much like saying "the desire to genocide armenians is not evil, only acting on that desire is evil." Or "the desire to torture dogs is not evil, only actually torturing dogs is."
No. The desire to commit evil acts is evil. Pedophilia is evil, even if never acted upon. And everyone is right to be wary of anyone who claims to be, or appears to be a pedophile, because that is evil.
That said, it is laudatory to resist temptations and to refrain from evil, even if you desire to do evil. And the Lord will reward those who are faithful and commit no evil though they have the desire.
Taking for granted that the desire to commit an evil act is also in itself evil - a controversial opinion, certainly, but one we can just entertain for the moment - this doesn't imply that pedophilia is evil, since pedophilia is a preference, not a desire. It's very possible for someone to enjoy the idea of themselves raping children without having any actual desire to act on it by raping children. It'd be easy to claim that this is splitting hairs, but it'd also be wrong to claim as such, since preference doesn't imply anything about a willingness to act, whereas desire does, and this is a very meaningful, very consequential difference in terms of how that person behaves. You can, of course, just posit that this preference is something that's intrinsically evil, which is perfectly cromulent.
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It's probably time to define what the criteria for evil is, or what even evil means to you. Honestly sounds like the argument needs to depend on what is evil, not if pedophilia is evil. If you can define evil in a clear and explicit manner, then whether pedophilia is evil can be matched against that definition/criteria.
I haven't seen anyone actually say pedophilia is good, so it's obvious nobody here is in favor of it. If you can get people to agree on the definition of evil, then whether or not pedophilia is evil should be self-evident. Otherwise, I think the argument is moot since it seems to me people are using different criteria for evil throughout the conversation.
This is a starting point for a definition, but it's tautological and weak without defining evil itself.
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