Well....no....that's my whole point. You have to have made an 'a priori' moral judgement that the universe is a rather cruel sort of place, before you can bring any God to trial on a charge of incompetency or downright neglect. It's no different to the sense in which a real life law has to exist first before one can charge anyone with violating it. So in fact you have the cart before the horse.

Respectfully, I disagree. No a priori moral judgments about the universe are required. As I said, if nobody was making the argument that the universe was created by a benevolent, loving God in the first place, there would be no need to describe the universe as a "cruel" sort of place. In fact, would say that you are the one putting the cart before the horse in this instance.

The universe is neither cruel nor kind. It just is. It only seems to be cruel when viewed through the lens of a belief in a god that purports to be benevolent, loving and kind. Having said that, though, I admit that we as humans have certainly evolved to find certain acts reprehensible and cruel in ourselves and, by extension, in the natural world.

However, none of this really matters. You claim that I am somehow attempting to "bring ... God to trial on a charge of incompetency or downright neglect," and that is simply missing the point of my entire argument. I am not trying to accuse god of anything, rather I am trying to show that the very existence of god (at least the notion of god that creationists espouse) is inconsistent with the evidence of the creation he is supposed to have created. I am trying to point out the fallacy involved in believing in a god who is all-loving, all-knowing and all-powerful who created a world which is filled with misery, suffering, anguish and torture at every level of existence.

I am not making an a priori judgment that the universe is cruel -- I am merely observing that the natural world involves a lot of suffering and noting that this is inconsistent with the concept of god espoused by those who claim he created it in the first place.