Theodicy

"Theodicy" is a branch of theology that attempts to answer the question of suffering in a universe created by an all-good, all-powerful God. There's a somewhat famous quote "Is he willing to prevent evil, but not able? then is he impotent. Is he able, but not willing? then is he malevolent. Is he both able and willing? whence then is evil?"

I recently read an article that I felt answers this question quite nicely. The run of the logic will follow as such.

1. Natural laws are fixed & unchanging. Both science and the biblical text (Jeremiah 31:35-36) state this. For further evidence, note that the beliefs of scientists that have made the largest contributions to their fields ascribe to a picture of the universe as one with fixed natural laws.
2. Why not create a world in which "natural evil" such as earthquakes, hurricanes, or tsunamis didn't occur? To remove any of these "natural evils" would always ultimately preclude our very own existence. Just a few examples (many more can be found within the article)
- The root cause of earthquakes are tectonic movements ontop of a liquid core. Removing the liquid core removes our magnetosphere, which removes our protection from radiation bombardment, which precludes us from ever existing.
- Remove radiation then. Unfortunately, to remove radiation from the universe removes the mechanism that heats stars, which again, precludes us from ever existing.
- Remove hurricanes. Hurricanes exist due to uneven heating around the globe, which is due to the tilt of our planet on it's axis. To "correct" this tilt to a perfect 90 degrees would result in constant cooling at the poles, which would ultimately accumulate ice at the poles until the oceans were gone, again, precluding our existence.

So the question must be asked, which would be worse? Natural evils, or none of us ever existing to be able to ask this question?

3. Ok, so why not intervene to prevent bad things from happening? Couldn't God dissipate a hurricane? Or stop an earthquake from rumbling? This violates #1 above, and creates an unstable environment in which we cannot properly observe, measure, or understand our own environment. Science would no longer exist without fixed, natural laws remaining constant.
4. Why not create a "perfect" universe then? To do so would require the removal of evil, obviously. Removing evil removes free will, as one no longer has a choice to make. All beings would then basically be programmed computers. What's wrong with this? Biblical texts give an answer all throughout: love. If I program a computer to prompt out "I love you!", does it really? Of course not.
5. Conclusion: it appears that this universe was created for the purpose of free will (which in itself is a flaw, as evil must be present for free will to work).

Virtually every process that makes human beings unique require the operation of thermodynamic laws. However, these laws also result in almost all natural evil. So, it is unclear how the laws of physics could be substantially different from what they are and yet still produce a universe in which sentient creatures would be allowed to make moral choices.