I don't consider it difficult mental gymnastics to, hypothetically holding the claim of an all powerful supernatural god to be true, to consider that such a being might withhold exercising its power to protect us from our environment (Which is hazardous to us in some conditions), to allow us the full experience of our free will.
If you're not free to fail, you aren't free at all.
We know why 'bad' weather happens. It's the question of 'why no divine intervention' that seems to vex people. It doesn't seem a difficult leap that such a being might value our free will on principle, so highly, that it must allow us to struggle against, and sometimes, fail to compete with our environment.
I don't understand why this is a difficult question (again, hypothetically assuming such a being is real). Do we want to be pets/slaves, or do we want to be free and assume the risks? Just because a god is all powerful and CAN intervene, doesn't mean it should, or that the choice of non-interference carries a moral burden for that god.
If I believed, and thought I had a choice, I would choose the full richness of free will, and all the risks it entails. I'm disappointed people are still spending so many cycles debating over such a seemingly obvious question. From the excerpt, it looks like the author sailed right past it.
To wander further afield, this sovereign/free will debate seems to have brought the definition of 'portmanteau' from the preface to Alice in Wonderland to mind:
... take the two words "fuming" and "furious." Make up your mind that you will say both words, but leave it unsettled which you will say first. Now open your mouth and speak. If your thoughts incline ever so little towards "fuming," you will say "fuming-furious"; if they turn, by even a hair's breadth, towards "furious," you will say "furious-fuming"; but if you have the rarest of gifts, a perfectly balanced mind, you will say "frumious" (Gardner The Annotated Alice 195).
= new reply since forum marked as read