So life is a painful tragedy because of our sin or our imperfection. And why are we imperfect? The Christian answer which attempts to preserve God's dignity is no longer tenable, is it? The world was perfect and we spoiled it by a free choice or because we were tempted by the devil who himself made a free choice to corrupt God's Creation.

The real answer supersedes those myths. We know now that we evolved over a long period, that the same geological processes operated on earlier and later species, with varying evolutionary pressures calling for different adaptations in different environments that gave rise to different species.

The world was therefore not perfect before the emergence of behaviourally modern humanity. The world was imperfect, which is to say amoral, unjust, indifferent, inhuman, and absurd. We struggled to survive in that world just like the insects, the dinosaurs, the reptiles, and the other mammals. We're imperfect because we were produced by an imperfect (not ideal) solar system and planet, not by a wise father figure in the sky.

In any case, if pain teaches us humility, and if we learn to improve ourselves when we suffer, why did Jesus have to save us from a life of pain? Isn't it good that we suffered throughout the ancient and medieval periods? Isn't that suffering what motivated humanity to progress in the modern period, by ditching theocracy for a more enlightened, secular outlook?

There are these tensions I detect in your comments and articles.

For another example, you say you don't oppose progress, but just the distancing of our ourselves from God. But that's what modern progress is. It rests on what Nietzsche called the death of God, the newfound aesthetic weakness of that old literary metaphor or mytheme.

God suffered for us, Christianity says. Did God learn anything from that suffering? Have you read Jack Miles's two books on the Old and New Testaments? He answers that question well.