Sorry about two answers. This is the second one. My eyes initially glazed over because of wall of text. So at later time I decided to give it a second read and I'm glad that I did because you provide so many good examples of God's malevolence. Nothing that I haven't heard before but it's nice to see so many in one place and misinterpreted so confidently.

> Some virtues like mercy and grace can only be exercised when not deserved. Forgiveness can only be exercised after a wrong. This did not force God's hand in creation in any way -- he was completely free to possess a virtue and yet leave it unexpressed forever

Damn... That's next level evil. It's like getting a dog and keeping it inside so you can express your mercy by occasionally not beating it up when it pisses on the floors. Even though you could skip that. You could skip having a dog, or give it access to the garden, or even just not beat it to show your mercy every time. And all that just because ... you want to.

> yes we can choose to prefer our wisdom to God.

I'm very glad we did over last two millennia so now we don't need to sit and wait for his mercy in more and more cases.

> We don't want to answer to God. We don't want to live life his way. We have ideas and plans and standards of living that we think are better than his.

> A penalty must fit the crime. Justice requires the penalty to be proportional to the crime.

What are you getting at? What crimes an infant with a brain that barely starts to develop (and will never develop further) already committed against God so that death is a fitting punishment? What ideas, plans and standards of living did the baby already have so that it deserves to die?

> God is infinite in worth. Our obligation to him is infinite

Wait, so God created sentient beings in a way that thay are worth nothing compared to him so that he can torture them freely for any offence and it makes every act of torture an act of mercy because they deserve infinite punishment for any infraction? And he did this because he wanted to? That's peak evil.

> Angels seem to be accountable to God purely as individuals.
> With us humans however, God had a different rule: that one could represent a group as a surety.

Oh. There it is. So the babies themselves didn't offend God in any exceptional way, however God decided they still deserve fo die for the offences of others.

Punishing individuals for something someone else did is universally recognized as evil. Humanity outgrew group punishment. Why perfect God haven't?

> Adam's responsibility was to heed the only prohibition God stated at the time with the consequence for disobedience being a fallen world and an infinite penalty hereafter.

And you don't see any problem with the fact that he was created by God to behave exactly like that? If I intentionally design a system that can fail then when the system fails is the failure my fault or system's fault? Setting up someone to fail in a way that deserves infinite punishment is another peak evil.

> If Adam and Eve had never eaten of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, then they would have never known evil, including suffering.

But that couldn't happen because the God made them specifically in this way that they were capable of making this offence and given their infinite lifespan they were sure to make this offence eventually. God designed it in the exact way so that it happens. Again it's like getting a dog and keeping it in a house so that it eventually pisses on the floor so you can then beat it senseless as a punishment. How can you be so blind to plain evilness of everything you describe?

> You and I have committed offenses, each with infinite weight, and we each owe and infinite penalty to God. We could spend forever in hell and still never pay it off.

How convenient that Jesus spared himself the experience of rotting in hell forever. Was he really fully human as you postulate if he was spared this experience because he could, unlike us, pay infinite price in finite time? Instead of true human experience he spent a blink of an eye here and went back to status quo of his infinite blissful existence. Doesn't sound very ... benevolent. It reminds me of rich people doing kind of hobo-tourism for some time, when they don't use their wealth for a week or two and live like a poor person then come back to their mansion happy about themselves fondly thinking about their experience and lives of others they touch through their excursion.

> One illustration for this is if a child earned a spanking but the father covered the child's skin with his own hand before spanking his own hand

A child never earns a spanking. It's evil to beat a child. And doing it through your hand is just mental. It shows disturbed, conflicted mind in which evil and good fight constantly and I'd say evil is winning.

> So when an actual Christian parent mourns the loss of an infant child, one help is to consider that God himself in Jesus also died.

Yeah but he didn't stay dead. And permanence of death is kinda big thing about it. So did he really taste death if he can come again whenever he pleases?

> Ignorance of the law or its consequences does not fly in court

But it was a bit more nuanced wasn't it? They were explicitly mislead about the consequences by the lawgiver. Adam and Eve were told they are going to die not that they are going to be expelled to toil and spawn billions of people like them who are all gonna suffer and die and the potentially rot in hell for all eternity. How is setting up a law and lying about consequences of violating it not evil?

> And another help is the hope of reunion with the lost infant in the hereafter

That's no help at all. Their baby was robbed the experience of life on Earth. How exactly that reunion should look like? Is it still infant with undeveloped mind? Is it adult that somehow grew without experiencing life? Without having a childhood or any interaction with its parents? It doesn't make any sense. What's the best case scenario for heavenly reunion with dead infant?

> Life in heaven for one who died as an infant would put into perspective any imagined life they could have lived on earth -- to think otherwise is to suppose life on earth to be worth more than time with God and thus idolatry.

Isn't God everywhere all the time? How is life on Earth worth less than any life in heaven if life on Earth is spent with God as well? Arent both infinitely valuable?

And if life on Earth is so much less valuable why don't we just murder all infants so they can spend more time with God? Wouldn't it be a superbly moral act according to this logic? Selfless even because the murderer would destin themselves to eternity in hell so that the infants could spend more time with God.

> We tend to imagine the good that a dead infant lost out on. But we don't know what their mortal future really would have been like.

Yeah. It could have been tortured by the world that God intentionally created so maybe it's mercy that it dies. Why then once we finally manage to treat previously mortal illness and extend lives we often see that those saved lives arent particularly bad? No worse than others really. It would be quite a coincidence if all children dying before invention of for example insulin would have terrible lives if they were spared, but somehow the children after invention of insulin that were saved by it seem to be leading perfectly average lives. Coincidence or truly wicked design.

> because men naturally are God's enemies

If I were to believe in God I would tend to agree. I just have the complete opposite opinion on who's more evil in this conflict for the reasons you so clearly displayed in your comment and many more.

Your response to a problem I posed looks like throwing stuff at the wall to see if anything sticks. None did of course and I can't blame you because no one (supposedly) can know true mind of God. Thanks for giving it your best shot.