Great post! I'll be glad to take a stab at responding to the questions here in #13... first, let's go with the question implied in at the opening... "Why does God let children suffer?"
I think it's because God wanted to create the best possible world... that includes free choice... that means that some humans will choose to hurt others... do you have ideas about a better world? I'm very interested...
Hey Dan, the problem here is that Christians aren't Deists. They don't believe that God set everything in motion and is now just sitting back and watching the show, not interfering at all with the happenings of this world. Christians believe in a personal God that interacts with his creation, even today. He answers prayers, performs miracles, intercedes on our behalf, enacts His will, etc. He's very active in this world according to Christians.
Why does this matter? Well the problem with the free will defense is that it acts as if God has His hands tied behind His back. If He wants us to TRULY have free will, then he must allow us to make bad choices, and those bad choices can cause suffering. If God were to alleviate suffering, then he'd be interfering with our free will. The problem here is that God already is interfering every time He answers a prayer, rescues someone from danger, enacts His will in the world, etc. If God is already saving some people from suffering, but not others, it kind of throws the whole free will defense out the window. Because it no longer becomes a matter of respecting free will, but rather a matter of selective interference.
Also, no one has really commented about God's selective interference, namely why Christians in America believe God is actively helping them with all these small, trivial things in their life while ignoring cries for help from people truly in need. And to be honest, after reading some of these responses, I'm not sure what I'm more concerned about - God's apparent lack of compassion for those who are suffering, or the lack of compassion from Christian's on this forum for those who are suffering.
And once again, for all those people saying it's our fault people are suffering and not God's fault, I would just like to remind you that whether we help or not, God is still actively choosing not help those in need. I already explained in an earlier post how it is a foolish notion to excuse God's inaction just because of our own inaction.
And to answer your last question Dan, I have plenty of ideas for how this world could be a lot better. But just to humor you, most Christians believe after the second coming and the rapture there will be a new heaven and a new earth where we will all live and there will be no more sorrow and no more pain. Now, in this future utopia, will our free will be gone? If not, then apparently God does know of a way for us to have both free will and live in peace. And He's God for crying out loud. He's omniscient, omnipotent. It's not hard to imagine a being like that having the ability to create a better situation than the one we are in.