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See, if God eliminated suffering, pain and evil...then he would effectively be eliminating free will. You can choose anything you want, with the full knowledge that if you cross the line, you will instantly cease to exist, or become a celestially controlled meat puppet. You'd have a theological gun pointed at your head....and become an effective hostage with immediate and irrevocable consequences to follow without any ambiguity. You could be eliminated for murder...or eating meat on Fridays, depending on the deeds that God decides to back up with finality as 'evil'.

Um, no thank you.

Also, if you're looking at this from a theological point of view, the spirit is eternal. That's a trillion, trillion, trillion years. To the trillionth power. In that context, what is 60 years of misery? Its a pin prick, much like getting the shot of novicane at the dentists feels like an eternity....its nothing but a moment of temporary pain to allow hours of otherwise excruciating work to occur for our benefit.

And finally....the balance. If there is a God, then morality is objective and set, as God determines what it is. The balance would be whatever god determined it was. And an eternity of punishment certainly seems more than adequate to 'balance the books' for the causation of a pin prick of pain.

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So if an all-powerful, all-caring God can't be expected to preserve us from all suffering, shouldn't they at the very least be expected to do something about all the unnecessary suffering in the world?

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But would God want to...would it be in fact, unnecessary? What would be gained from insuring that all sensations experienced by the human body were pleasant ones, that no suffering was ever experienced, that we existed in a blissful tapioca of fulfillment, happiness and warmth. If we limit any negative sensations to those we choose....then what of the grief of loss? Or accident? Or resentment? Where do you draw the line and to what purpose? The concept of 'unnecessary' suffering is itself, developed in the context of a very finite world, where we avoid suffering because it is unpleasant or excruciating. But does that mean it is 'unnecessary'?

Again, most concepts of God are accompanied by some belief in an eternal afterlife. Assuming this as part of our concepts of God (which would be reasonable, considering this along with sacrifice and laws are also near universal components of God across cultures), what would the context of such suffering be? A few years in a trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion? What would the purpose of such suffering be? What would the purpose of any sensation, including happiness, grief, sorrow or delight? Well, it depends on the afterlife.

Take Buddhism for example. Many sects would argue that life is inherently suffering. That the purpose of that suffering would be to motivate one to learn and grow to escape the cycle of death and rebirth. Thus, a child being eaten by worms is being taught a lesson....that life is painful. Or perhaps....to be a better person, as in a previous life they had commited some 'evil'. In a future life, this lesson could assist in freeing the essence of that child from the cycle of death and rebirth, free it from a concept of self and release it into a state of eternal oneness with the universe.

The point I'm trying to make is.....assuming an eternal context, we're looking at this nearly blind. As if we were opening a book to a random page, reading 3 to 4 words, and assuming that we know enough of the characters, story, style, language, and symbolism to critique the novel as literature. We don't know the before, or the after. We know the now. And we, as any organism, wants to avoid pain. Pain is bad. But does the animal reaction mean that it is 'unnecessary'. I simply don't have enough information to say yea or nay on that one. But if we were to assume an all powerful and all knowing God....I'd consider it quite likely that he/she/it has a far better grasp of the situation and a far better perspective of what is and is not necessary.

Growth, perhaps. The problem of having every need met without effort or consequence is that it tends to be pretty stagnant.