Alex, Harv:

In a curious way you are both kind of right. Think: how can you BOTH be right?

Ever heard of "probability amplitudes"? Or "quantum electrodynamics"?

Ever heard of a photon being "in two places at once"? How about Schrodinger's cat? Is it alive or dead?

The Universe does not split in two (as Everett suggested) for every quantum micro-event. But evidence is that nature seems to operate not just with "least action", but maximum freedom.

Entropy is a tendency for spreading more basic freedom around when higher freedoms are not being constructed (eg. by gravity and complexification).

God's plan is "freedom". The only way all the bad things become part of that plan in the manner Harv describes, is "when the wave function of mankind, so to speak" collapses.

But this can happen any time. It's up to us. The bad things only become part of the plan at the moment the evil content in them is vaporised.

It is not God's plan that children die and suffer; except that it is His plan that mankind EXIST; and have freedom and responsibility.

"Children die and suffer" may be a misleading concept; like "cat alive and dead". It's not the whole story. The thing is, in a way ,humans are "alive and dead", caught in a never-never zone. But God has allowed us to experience that strange zone, it seems, that we might return to Him. That we might "collapse the wave function" of evasion-type-uncertainty and return to freedom-type-uncertainty (i.e. the "uncertainty" of having free creative choice and creating the universe with Him).

God does not punish; if you deny a train is coming along the track even though you can see it, are you going to complain when you stupidly walk on the track and get run over?

At some stage you have to have a situation where you have constants, as a basis for free creation by individuals; it's up to them to play the game by the rules.

If you were Schrodinger's cat; would you like to have the opportunity of going from "dead/alive superposition" to fully alive?

Evil involves "contradiction"- that is a bad kind of superposition. The good kind of superposition is "freedom", having a superposition of choices.

Mankind finds himself in a bizarre never-never world due to contradiction. The possibility is there, to collapse that un-natural wave function and obtain the freedom scenario.