It's a pretty fascinating study in how you can get good people to believe, endorse and argue for sadistic and irrational things.

"God is perfect. Merciful, loving, just, etc. He loves you more than anything. And He will burn you. Forever. Because He has to. No, He can't use His power to change the circumstances. That would be outside of God's consistent character. Anyway, people choose to go to hell, God doesn't send them there. God loves us enough to preserve our free will to choose Him, or reject Him. All you have to do is accept His free gift of salvation. Remember, He loves you and He wants you to escape the torture chamber He created."

he created the universe exactly that way knowing exactly how it would turn out.

To be fair, there is a theological strain called open theism that posits God only knows the range of possibilities in the future, rather than some exactly determined course.

More broadly, there is a "softening" of hell in Christianity that makes it more of a metaphorical creation of people intent on rebeling against God than some kind of literal, God-created torture chamber. The interpretation is up in the air.