I would add two more remarks: 1. This does not lower the chance of His existence, but of His being good. 2. Lowering the probability of His existence, even if there is such a thing, does not mean that He does not exist. The probability could drop from 99.98 to 99.27 percent.

The simple answer, as I understand it, is: it is reasonable to assume that the great suffering has some purpose, and that achieving it is worth the suffering. Since God, by definition, possesses superhuman intelligence, the fact that the system is not understandable to human intelligence poses no difficulty at all.

Yaakov, they gave him that answer in the video, and he refuted it by arguing that this makes sense when you’re talking about human beings, but there is no reason that over hundreds of millions of years of creatures existing on the planet there should be so much suffering also for wild animals.

Curious — on the face of it, do you think Alex won?

David,
I have never seen Alex “lose.”
I can think of two reasons:
1) He wasn’t arguing with Michi.
2) He is honest, and very smart. He does not dismiss well-known philosophical arguments, unlike unfortunately every atheist I’ve met in Israel. In his approach there is a lot of “deference” toward believers. He’s not a “religious fanatic.” In general this is important in any confrontation: not to commit yourself to a broad worldview of any particular “side,” but to discuss the arguments honestly, each argument on its own merits.

Atheists in Israel have a lot to learn. At least one can judge them favorably and say that they haven’t had worthy opponents for a long time to sharpen them.

Michi,
Just a comment.
I haven’t seen the debate in the link. But I know that he usually brings this argument against the Christian image of God, and he once said explicitly that it strengthens the theory of the “evil God” (with which he has other philosophical problems).
This isn’t really an argument against just any God.