Hi, Falvlun. I'm going to begin by just mentioning that I probably wouldn't even respond to this post had it been written by anyone but you. I can think of no topic that is more frustrating for me to debate than why God made the world the way He did instead of the way we think He should have done. It's just such an impossible question to resolve and the discussion almost always just goes around and around in circles until someone gets sick and tired of repeating himself (usually me) and his "opponents" declare themselves the winners. Since I know that I can expect better from you, I'll just explain the LDS perspective (since it's the only one I really know) for you to mull over in your mind.
First off, I think we could be better informed. Imagine if God set up a school for humans, personally teaching us right from wrong. Why should choices made from ignorance be preferred over those made from an educated position? So we all start out from a level playing field, with a basic knowledge of good and evil, and how various actions will effect others and our planet.
I'm really not quite sure how this "school for humans" would work, seeing as very few people would even recognize it as being established by God. What, for instance, would God have to do to convince people that it was, in fact, His school? When He sent His Only Begotten Son to do essentially that, He was ridiculed, tortured and murdered. When Joseph Smith said that the Father and the Son personally appeared to him and authorized the re-establishment of this school, he and those who believed he'd been divinely called to his position were persecuted, killed, and driven outside the borders of the United States. Let's say that God himself came down to start this "school for humans"... How would we know for sure that it was even God (particularly since almost everyone today who even believes in God, is convinced that He is invisible).
Natural disasters and diseases are unnecessary. They strike randomly and so are not equitable. Other forms of struggle or suffering that are more directly tied to human choices and actions would make more sense. So, instead of "Eve disobeyed God so now the world has tsunami's" we have "there's a forest fire because Jack didn't put out his cigarette correctly".
Well, Mormons don't believe that we have tsunamis because Eve disobeyed God, so you can toss that rationale out the window. We believe that God created our universe and established the laws by which it would operate. I don't know whether or not I'd agree with you that natural disasters and diseases are unnecessary. I would assume that, by extension, you'd probably say that accidental deaths are also unnecessary. I can't imagine that you're suggesting that we live forever. Sure, some people live long, full lives and die peacefully in their sleep, while others die in the prime of their lives by contracting some horrible disease whereby they are made to suffer for years before the end finally comes. Where, exactly, would you draw the line? Who dies? At what age? And by what means?
In general, children really should just be completely off limits to having horrific things happen to them by the actions of others (like they could still break their arm by falling from the monkey bars, but their alcoholic mother can't beat them).
This one gets at the real heart of Mormonism, and the only way I can explain our belief is to go way, way, way back in time. I'm not sure whether you know about this doctrine or not, but we believe that every single person who has ever lived or ever will live, has his or her beginnings with God himself. We believe in the pre-existence of man, of a time prior to our mortal lives, when we lived in spirit form (i.e. without a physical body) in God's presence. We believe that we actually made an informed decision to experience mortality. In other words, we chose to come here, even though we were told that the 70 or 80 or so years we might spend here might very well be extremely difficult. We chose to come here because we wanted to ultimately become like our Father in Heaven, and we knew that this mortal life was an essential prerequisite for that to eventually happen. Although many people today would balk at that suggestion, and say, "No way would I have willingly come down here and endured a life as horrible as mine has been," we would disagree. We'd say, "Well, you did. You weighed the pros and cons and you decided that it would ultimately be worth it. The idea of being given the promise to not only live again after death in a state of perfect happiness forever, but to be given the blessing of eternal progress and potential made the relatively short time we would spend in a less desirable state was worth it to us.
I've jumped ahead of where I wanted to be. You mentioned the alcoholic mother who beats her kids and said that this simply shouldn't be allowed to happen. Well, part of the Plan that was introduced to use during our pre-mortal existence involved the concept of agency or freedom of choice. This was a gift God offered us. As part of His Plan, we would be free to make moral choices. Some would make more good choices than bad, and others would just make one horrendous choice after another. Many of our choices would not only affect us, but the people around us. It would make absolutely no sense for God to give agency only to those individuals who would use it wisely and deny it to those who would use it to hurt other people. It had to be given to everyone or to no one. We who chose to come to earth believed that, regardless of the risks involved, agency was something we wanted. We realized that if we had no choice as to whether to be good and decent people or sick and depraved ones, we would never really learn anything. When you have no options, you don't learn and you don't progress. We figured the reward was worth the risk of being the object of someone else's poor choices.
Just spit-balling here for some ideas to maintain free-will but to ameliorate its effects on innocent bystanders:
You could have some sort of Minority Report thing going where, once a person decides to do something truly evil, God puts them in jail for a time being. Or he could make a holograph of the victim so the sociopath thinks he's doing his dastardly deed, but really, the victim has been whisked away to safety.
And if He did that, His Plan would be major messed up. For us Mormons, the whole thing gets down to the realization that we chose to come here, we can use both the bad and the good experiences we have to help us grow, and in the end, this "trial by fire" would refine us in a way that God stepping in to make sure that nothing "really bad" happens to "good people" ever would.
There could also be levels. Like say we all start out in Eden, but then when we do something wrong, we get sent down a level for a bit where things are a little worse, and based on our actions we either go down another level, or can make our way back up to Eden. People could also volunteer to go down levels in order to minister to those in need.
The interesting thing about this comment is that you have basically described God's Plan of Salvation -- with one important difference: You'd streamline the whole process so that it all happened during our mortality. God's plan is actually quite similar to yours. It just takes place over billions of years.
Anyway, these are just basic thoughts that took me about 5 minutes to compose. Imagine what an all powerful Being could think up.... if he had wanted to.
Interesting. Apparently you think He put no thought into it.
You know, if Mormonism is true, you might just end up having the opportunity to create the perfect universe as you see it. You'll just need to be patient. If it happens, it's not going to be for a very, very, very long time. And during that time, you may come to rethink some of your ideas.
