Common sense seems to say that factual unmerited suffering invalidates a loving God. For instance, how can there be a good, loving, caring, personal God that watches over us and has a plan for our lives – and at the same time there are four year olds in cancer wards? In my opinion, tragic, unmerited suffering unrelated to social or environmental factors does logically contradict the existence a benevolent loving God. I’ll stick with my example of childhood cancer (there are countless others), and do a thought experiment:

I can easily imagine an earth identical to ours, without addition or subtraction of content or form, with the sole difference being that it is unlike our earth because it is free from THE COMPLETELY UNNECESARY HORROR of three year olds dying from cancer. God, if ‘He’ exists, can also imagine such a world too, and has the power to create it. From the thought experiment, one of the following is logically necessary (unless God is impotent): Either God (a) doesn’t exist, (b) is indifferent, (c) is insane, (d) is immoral, or (e) is stupid. ‘Benevolent’ or ‘good’ or ‘loving’ are not and cannot be logically possible attributes of God, because all God would have had to have done was do a slightly different job with the genetic code, or cure cancer altogether, and these children would not be suffering and dying. There are countless examples of terrible unnecesary suffering that make the same point. In any case, and this is my point using the example of tragic, unmerited suffering that I did: unless you want to make the intellectually dishonest argument (and that’s really what it is – or else intellectually blind argument) that ‘God gave us cancer so we might one day know the achievement as a race of curing cancer’ (or some equivalent, like blaming demons or the bogey man), then GOD ‘CANNOT’ BE BENEVOLENT OR GOOD. The justification for this conclusion is just what I said: simply that the factual state of human affairs in our human life contradict the possibility of there being a good, almighty, loving God with a plan for our lives. The majority of the species believe in such a being, but He can’t exist.

So the apologist says:
omnibenevolent – all-good, in other words Gods actions are motivated by the intention of doing good.

Sometimes it is necessary to experience temporary suffering for the overall good of a creature. Like when you go to the dentist it can be painful. However the temporary pain is necessary for the overall health of your teeth.
So why does God allows toothaches suffering in the first place. So that man can learn compassion. Man needs to experience suffering for the sympathy necessary to develop compassion.
Why does God want man to learn compassion? Because of caring for man, God wants man to be as God is, all good. Compassion is a necessary attribute of a man who is good. God is all powerful and could remove suffering from the world. However if suffering was removed then man could not learn compassion. Therefore the removal of suffering would be evil because then man could not learn compassion and would be missing a necessary element of becoming good.

I agree that this is the apologetic move. However a God who would torture children to death regularly with disease, accident and malnutrition in order to teach a lesson of compassion that could have been understood regardless, and that few will understand anyhow, strikes me as very far indeed from the supposed promise of “omnibenevolence”.

I think a lot of people treat God like a nice imaginary friend who follows them around and listens to them and is responsible for the occasional magic trick. It’s nice to believe in a God like that – where all the good things are because of God and all the bad stuff is because of something else and there’s a reward after we die. The belief in a loving, benevolent, good God with a plan for your life is widespread in North America (especially with the pentecostals and ‘Grace’ theology). I think it involves the same psychological mechanisms as someone who is in a romantic relationship with someone who is cheating on them: where all their friends can see how destructive the relationship is, but the person themself is blind and making excuses and completely in love with the cheater. All the bad stuff in the world can be explained away as not being God’s responsibility by the theist because God must be a good, benevolent, and loving as a first principle. But on the other hand, God gets the praise for anything good happening.

Theology can’t deal with theodicy in an intellectually honest manner if the theologian wants to maintain God is good, loving and benevolent. Theology contradicts the matters of fact on that point. Many people are intellectually blind when it comes to their picture of God. God is Love – sure – God ‘Loves’ to watch kids be born, suffer for three years, and die.