Wobbly (#208):

Perhaps because I believe in a wise and caring God, I find this argument increasingly unpersuasive (increasingly since it is put forward ad nauseum).

One who denies the existence of God on the basis that there is occasional pain and suffering in this universe is at least under some obligation to design a functional universe in which there is no such thing, and establish that it is better. Lions eat antelopes, bird eat worms, plants struggle against one another for available space and nutrients, and even stars and galaxies collide, perturb and consume one another. Those struggles are fundamental to this universe, and provide the mechanism that has led to the rather good state in which we currently find ourselves. What else could there have been?

Moreover, since you don’t know (or even accept the existence of) God, you cannot possibly know how “suffering” figures into His plan. If you were a Christian, for example, you would believe that God himself chose to suffer terribly, and thereby enobled himself. As the Virgin Mary said to Bernadette, “I do not promise you happiness in this life, but in the next,”

To deny God because you cannot immediately understand Him (or because He might be deemed “politically incorrect” in the Berkeley Faculty Club) is an available course of action, but not a particularly insightful one.