I confess I haven't read every comment on this post. I have read the first 5 pages, and the last 3 as well as some in between just to see which direction things were going.
I am a believing theist. I believe God is love.
It is true that an all powerful God could stop suffering. One solution would be to kill everything – quickly and completely painlessly. Applying the same logic we could say that all suffering could have been prevented by not bringing into being any beings capable of suffering in the first place.
I wonder if Cofty is so certain that if he was all-powerful that he would have a way to bring into existence creatures with absolute free-will that were not capable of causing or experiencing suffering. For those who think there is a trivial answer to that, I suggest that there is not, and furthermore I do not think that you and I are capable of fully fathoming it.
For those who have domestic animals that show a reasonable degree of awareness and can (to a lesser degree than humans) reason on certain situations (I might trim that back to “mentally react” for those who wish to take issue with the word “reason” in this context, but animal lovers who have had smart animals will understand what I mean) have you ever experienced having to put them through distress in order to do what you believe to be the best thing for them? Have you seen an animal having needles stuck in it by a vet, experiencing extreme discomfort, and clearly not understanding why (if you are present) you are allowing him/her to go through this, but at the same time you are sometimes aware of a sense of trust even in these extreme situations. It depends on the animal. I have certainly experienced this.
The point is that you know something the animal does not know. In fact you know something that the animal is probably not capable of knowing. But let's run with the idea that the animal was capable of asking a simple question - “is my owner cruel?” How would the animal answer? Again I say it depends on the animal and the relationship that you have with it. You might indeed be an uncaring owner in other ways and the animal might have no reason to think you were anything but cruel. However if you were a loving owner in all other ways and yet the animal experienced these “out of character” periods with no way of knowing the reason, then what should it conclude?
It is my firm belief that we are like that animal. Now, if you allow for the possibility that there might be a God, then you may draw your own conclusions as to whether he is a cruel owner or not.
But that is not my primary point.
My primary point is that our perception of negative things that we may go through as humans is neither proof that there is no God, nor is it proof of what his character MUST be if he were to exist.
In the pet analogy your pet would ALWAYS be right to conclude that you were a cruel owner whenever you allow “bad things” to be inflicted on it. The conclusion would be flawed based upon limited information. And so it is with us and God.