He creates and we can't judge the byproducts of his creation.

• Why not? We are talking about a God that is not just all-loving but also all-powerful and all-knowing. He should have "known" this was coming and "powered" a different more "loving" universe into existence.

We lack perspective.

1. That response gets you no closer to an all-loving God than it gets you to an all-hating God. The same exact thing could be said to defend the existence of an all-hating God. Sure there's all this beauty and love in the world but " we lack the perspective" to see all that is there for a greater evil.

2. So there IS a greater good when a tsunami indiscriminately drowns hundreds of thousands of men women and children, it's just our poor tiny humans brains don't have the perspective to see how allowing all that immense suffering is for a greater loving good?...I see. If some of those children are not Christian it's just part of gods "greater loving plan" to make the universe in which they are never saved, and have an eternity of hell to look forward to after suffering an immensely painful death. A reasonable person is supposed to accept that this is just part of gods loving plan which we "lack the perspective" to see the greater good in? It's

Though it would give us the expectation of some sort of redemptive act such as exactly what we find in Christianity.

• I don't see how that follows.

False. Suffering hunger because a bully took your lunch and because a tsunami destroyed the port both point to an empty stomach.

• The premise is "immense natural suffering". Missing lunch is hardly immense or comparable to slowly dying by dehydration under a pile of rumble after an earthquake levels your house.

• How would you respond if they replied to that answer with " What "good" is achieved by an entire African village starving to death or drowning in a flash flood?

Only God knows.

• Oh so you don't have any demonstration those things are for a greater good.

• Again that response can be equally applied to an all-hating God. Why is there all this beauty and love in the world if God is all-hating...."only God knows"

Though such floods are exceptions rather than the rule.

• Even if that is rare, the point is they shouldn't even exist alongside an all-loving, all-powerful, and all-knowing god.

Piling on more pessimism?

• The argument being "pessimistic" doesn't make it wrong.

Still not working. You're only looking at dramatic suffering rather than what happens every day in normal human lives and interaction. Putting up with your annoying sister is redemptive suffering.

• I understand redemptive suffering, like an annoying sister is easy to defend, but the argument is specifically addressing a difficult type of suffering.

• The premise IS " Immense natural suffering", YES it is a very specific form of suffering. I already know the "evil came into this world" response to suffering brought about by "evil"..the " immense natural suffering" premise is designed to eliminate that red herring but still deliver the meat behind of the "problem of evil" in a more effective way.

What events cause a person to be distressed is a matter of their choices and emotional attachment.

• Hypothetically if I were to stab an infant in the arm with a red hot iron and that infant starts to cry and flinches it's arm away from the pain, its just that infants "choice" and " emotional attachment" to that arm?

As is what they consider hardship or unbearable pain.

• So when a whole family is buried alive when an earthquake levels their home and they slowly die by dehydration or bleeding out its their "choices and emotional attachment" that says that is "unbearable pain"?

Indeed they are good things because they indicate deeper problems and make us healthier.

• How is " immense natural suffering" any of that?

• Tsunami indiscriminately whiping out entire city's of men, women, and children is good and indicate "deeper problem and make us healthier"? I guess in a literal sense the plate tectonics that create a tsunami is a "deep" issue....budump.....ting.

Love isn't more subjective than complete human health

• We don't need a picture of complete human health to know that something's are 100% not healthy. But this isn't really about health it is about " immense natural suffering". We know quite a bit about pain and distress, that's why torture can be so effective. Things that cause human beings immense suffering is not some foggy concept.