God's Love and the animals?

I'm watching an animal documentary again, and the beauty and ferocity of Nature are awesome as always. But I'm also asking myself how a supposedly perfect, loving God could have created situations where a lot of animals are senselessly suffering. Example: a baby seal loses sights of his parents, doesn't find back to them, gets rejected by the others and then slowly and painfully dies of thirst and hunger because it's not yet ready to survive alone. And that's just one example. Zillions more could be found.

Since such animals live and die far away from humans and since they haven't done anything 'wrong', why do they have to suffer? They're innocent in a sense, or is there an animal Original Sin as well? Why would God create this beings only so they could more or less rapidly die a painful death again?

Or are they just puppets/robots who can't really experience pain? Or does God use them to teach us a lesson?

How do Christians see this?

Just one Universe?

Assuming that God exists, that 'he' is omnipotent and that he has created this universe with all the necessary parameters for us to exist in the way we do, why couldn't he have created several more universes before or along ours? Although maybe with totally different parameters resulting in very different forms of intelligence?

Or couldn't he do that and our universe is the only viable one?

Necessity of a Creator?

Christians claim that an external creator has created the Universe because somebody had to create it. But God on the other hand didn't, according to them, need to be created. 'He' just was or came into existence on his own.

But if it's possible for a God to exist without a prior cause why would it be impossible for a universe to exist without cause? Why couldn't the Universe just have created itself (via the Big Bang for example)?

And why couldn't God be the Universe and vice-versa (pantheism)?

A Creator without Creation?

Could a Creator exist without Creation?

Did God HAVE to create something in order to create himself? Did he HAVE to create something to give his own existence meaning? What good would it be if God was alone and there was only Nothing (since nothing got created)?

God's omnipresence.

What does omnipresence in the Christian sense mean?

Please explain in the comments. Thank you.

About God & Time

The Christian concept is that God exists out of time, right? So wouldn't this mean that when we die we're also out of time? And if we're out of time then what does Eternity mean, both in Heaven and in Hell?How could you be condemned to Hell for all eternity if Time doesn't exist? Or is Time being created again especially for those in Hell? So that their suffering becomes greater?

Was Jesus a puppet?

After having read the Bible and if the interpretation of the fundies is correct then Jesus was nothing but a puppet. A supernatural puppet, created and sent by God to fulfill a mission that couldn't fail. The outcome was fixed from the start: He HAD to be nailed to the cross as a blood sacrifice to atone Mankind's sins. Which also means that the people had to act the way they did so this goal was to be achieved. Since apparently this blood sacrifice was the only way. So much for freewill: Judas HAD to betray Jesus in order to help Jesus to fulfill his mission.

And after having served his purpose, the puppet would be called back and 'be whole again'. And since it was only an artificially created puppet in the first place, the concepts of 'pain', 'suffering' and 'sacrifice' become obsolete. Because what do these concepts mean to a robot or golem? Or a supernatural being? A supernatural, omnipotent being only has to feel 'pain' if it wants to. And if it WANTS to feel it, where's the sacrifice?

But if the puppet wasn't omnipotent and omniscient at the time and therefore the pain felt real to him, then the puppetmaster was abusing his puppet. Assuming the puppet was a sensitive being.

All things considered, the puppet simply was the remedy for a problem that wouldn't even have existed if God hadn't created it (or the conditions for it). The whole thing is a charade. A cosmic soap opera. With a somewhat crappy screenwriter though. But people love comforting, even though illogical, stories. Especially when they're scared.