Do you think that torturing a baby is ever justified?

Perhaps you are fighting a battle that should not have been created. Regardless of the technical definition of torture, it is pretty clear that there are substantial moral issues surrounding the concept of making a baby sicken and die to punish the parent or parents. We would not tolerate a secular authority that made such a judgment, yet many people seem to accept a story in which God is described as doing such a thing. I spent some time searching Christian response to this story, and frankly I found many of them expressed quite appalling sentiments.You could probably easily have gotten the debate you wanted without the theatrics. But of course you specialize in that kind of BS. At least this time your OP is not a blatant non sequitur.

Or maybe there was a King David who became remorseful after doing away with his friend and taking his wife, after he discovered that his advisor, and who knows who else were aware of what he had done.Perhaps the point of the story is the contrition and great lengths the King went to in order to regain God's favor. Maybe David and everyone else did attribute the baby's death to God even though such deaths were not uncommon.If so, what can be learned from the story? Isn't the story, like many of the Old Testament stories about David and his relationship to God? We see that David does not blame God despite his belief and eventually we might understand that David's contrition was real.

Perhaps an interesting discussion would be of interest if you attempted to demonstrate this to be the case. I'd certainly find it of more use than your typical discussion flow in which you torture the language of the Old Testament beyond recognition.