Like I said earlier, if God isn't omnibenevolent then the problem of evil/suffering doesn't apply. However, I was responding to what you said here:
You said there was no reason to think an omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent God wouldn't allow suffering. I explained why I disagree. If you don't believe that God is omnibenevolent then fair enough but I can only go off what you say here.
Although scriptures do not use the word omnibenevolent, God is omnibenevolent by definition:
Omnibenevolent (of a deity) possessing perfect or unlimited goodness.
what does omnibenevolent mean - Google Search
God is also Omniscient so that means that God knows
everything. Thus, it logically follows that God knows more than you or any other human regarding how to create and maintain the universe, since no human is all-knowing. Add to that the scriptures say God is All-Wise. Since no human is All-Wise that means God is wiser than any human.
When you add all this all up it becomes self-evident that any human who questions how things actually are and says they would/should be different if God was omnibenevolent is highly illogical. That of course means there is no such thing as “the problem of evil.” Suffering simply exists and we either accept it and do what we can to alleviate it, or we blame God, which does no good at all.
I know all this since I have suffered for most of my life and for a fair part of my life I blamed God for my suffering. It took years and a lot of analytical thinking to turn that ship around. Scriptures were only a small part of what helped me understand suffering because I fought those tooth and nail, until I finally realized they were right and I was wrong. I had to push my ego out of the way in order to get to where I am today, and I have to constantly be on guard lest I fall back into that trap.
This strikes me as handwaving away suffering that doesn't easily fit the idea of a divine plan. I can accept that some forms of suffering could be unavoidable or even beneficial (such as the marathon example I gave earlier) but it's not difficult to find examples where that isn't the case.
God wouldn't have to control everything people do in order to prevent the existence of natural disasters or congenital illnesses. If living things do have to die then there's no reason why their deaths should be painful.
It all fits the divine plan since it is part of the divine plan that humans will suffer. That means there is a
purpose for suffering even though humans cannot always understand it. The reason why some deaths are painful and others aren’t is just the luck of the draw, part and parcel of living in a material world, which is a mixed bag, containing both joy and suffering. It makes no sense for God to prevent the very suffering that He built into the system.
I believe that God prevents suffering on a case-by-case basis, but that is only at God’s discretion, not ours. We can pray for something such as when someone is sick and dying, but if it is not in the best interest of everyone involved to prevent that person from dying, God is not going to. I went through that fairly recently and I had to accept the outcome as God’s will.
I believe that God is omnibenevolent because I can make sense of that in my mind, but I question whether God is All-loving, as the scriptures say, because I cannot make sense of that in my mind. It is my right to question what does not make sense to be just as it is your right to question what does not make sense to you.
As a side-note, the necessity of suffering takes another hit if somebody believes in a heaven free of suffering. I don't know what your personal beliefs are but an existence without disease or pain is an extremely common motif in heaven concepts.
I do not know why that would involve another hit. It makes perfect logical sense that heaven would be free of suffering. If God is benevolent and just, why would suffering continue after we leave this world? Moreover, the reason there will be no more disease and pain in the heaven is because we will no longer have a physical body, we will have a spiritual body which is not subject to pain, decay, and death, decay. That teaching is in the Bible
1 Corinthians 15:40,44 New Living Translation
40 There are also bodies in the heavens and bodies on the earth. The glory of the heavenly bodies is different from the glory of the earthly bodies.
44 They are buried as natural human bodies, but they will be raised as spiritual bodies. For just as there are natural bodies, there are also spiritual bodies.
This is no different from what the Baha’i Faith teaches about the spiritual world (heaven).
“The answer to the third question is this, that in the other world the human reality doth not assume a physical form, rather doth it take on a heavenly form, made up of elements of that heavenly realm.” Selections From the Writings of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, p. 194
I strongly suspect that you would hold humans to a higher standard than you hold God to here. Unless your argument is that we should do nothing to prevent or alleviate suffering ourselves, why shouldn't we expect an omnipotent, omniscient being to step in?
I hold God to no standards because that is completely illogical to hold God to any standards, because that would be akin to saying that God is accountable to humans, when it is the other way around.
The very minute we ‘expect’ an omnipotent, omniscient being to step in we are putting expectations on God, which is highly illogical, since it is God who has expectations of humans, not the other way around.
Humans should do all they can so to prevent or alleviate suffering, but there is no reason why God should be
expected to do so, since God is not accountable to humans for anything He chooses to do. That said, I believe God does prevent and alleviate
some human suffering, although there is no way we can every know
if or when God does so, since humans cannot know the actions of God. We can only have faith and believe.
If the reason is that God just doesn't want to, that God plays favourites or that God sees suffering as a good thing, then describing God as omnibenevolent makes no sense to me. Since you've said that you don't view God as omnibenevolent and that you believe he plays favourites, I'm not sure why you took issue with my initial post?
God does not necessarily see suffering as a ‘good thing.’ But apparently it was necessary so that is why God built suffering into the creation. Why some people suffer more than other people is partly because of free will and choices people make, but much of human suffering is not by choice; it is because of choices other people make that cause us to suffer, and also because things happen to us that are beyond our control, such as diseases and natural disasters. I believe that God is responsible for those things because those are our fate.
God can be omnibenevolent and also bestow favor on certain people and withhold it from other people. Since God is All-Powerful, All-Knowing and All-Wise, God knows what He is doing and why, and thus it is God’s choice upon whom He bestows favor. Whenever we start questioning God's choices we are acting as if we know more than God, which is logically impossible.
“God witnesseth that there is no God but Him, the Gracious, the Best-Beloved. All grace and bounty are His. To whomsoever He will He giveth whatsoever is His wish. He, verily, is the All-Powerful, the Almighty, the Help in Peril, the Self-Subsisting.” Gleanings, p. 73
“Say: O people! Let not this life and its deceits deceive you, for the world and all that is therein is held firmly in the grasp of His Will. He bestoweth His favor on whom He willeth, and from whom He willeth He taketh it away. He doth whatsoever He chooseth.” Gleanings, p. 209
“Say: He ordaineth as He pleaseth, by virtue of His sovereignty, and doeth whatsoever He willeth at His own behest. He shall not be asked of the things it pleaseth Him to ordain. He, in truth, is the Unrestrained, the All-Powerful, the All-Wise.” Gleanings, p, 284
You don't believe in that God either so where is our argument coming from?
As noted above, I do believe in an omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent God. I just don’t believe that God would do what you expect Him to do.