A spirit cannot exercise her malevolence on inanimate matter but has abundant opportunity to be cruel if there are intelligent creatures capable of suffering, harm and premature death. A decision between two hypotheses each of which is equally confirmed by the same evidence e can be made if there is some further evidence e' that disconfirms one of the hypotheses but confirms the other. It certainly seems to be. Consider one example from thousands. Both are genetically inherited diseases.
Bipolar disorder is caused by a dominant gene on the X chromosome.
Typically, the person with this gene does not have this disease from birth but develops it later in life, usually during adulthood. Suppose there is a person Alice with this gene who is living a happy and morally good life up until age 33, when there is a relatively rapid onset of the disease. Alice acquires a chronic. This is a natural evil. Swinburne claims that despite appearances natural evils are justified since they are logically necessary means to outweighing goods.