If I were an omnipotent merciful kind of a God, there would be no need for carnivorous behavior. All living things at all level would either be plantlike absorbing nutrients from soil, water, light or whatever might be in their environment and all the mobile life would get all nourishment required from the plant-like entities. I think less red-in-tooth-and-claw is a good thing. This alternative is a savage sort of thing for even non-sentient lifeforms to endure. Eating each other, usually alive, is nasty business on the receiving end. Any current originator of the universe, whatever it may be, seems rather callous at best if one wants to attribute the term ‘merciful’ to it. It’s more like a bad joke than a statement of fact IMO regarding a difference even I, a mortal human, could figure out. Nor do I think it fair for it to be this way in cases of of a single transgression by a couple of individuals, making it bad for all living things everywhere to endure thereafter.
And explosions. I’d do away with those too. Suns exploding, tectonic plates ripping apart… No, no, no, no, no! I’d find a way for similar processes to occur but less violently. Perhaps a sort of slow change-over from state to state. And then, an efficient but pleasant delivery system to do the work that nova suns, gravity, radioactivity and similar forces do to enable a vibrant universe.
It would be nice if all I would have to do is to say the Word and ‘my will be done.’ But really, why wouldn’t the omnipotent, already knowing everything, not be required to figure out the math and physics and biology and such and apply it to accommodate these differences? If you’re going to take a day off on the weekend, working a few days to put it in place would only be fair, wouldn’t it? I ask you, how difficult could it be to change a few laws of nature?
Or, would anyone else like to play God today?