I’ll also assume that Kim is defining “Experience” as the common dictionary does, namely “the observing, encountering, or undergoing of things generally as they occur in the course of time: to learn from experience”

Those being assumed, The primary purpose of life can only be to gain a mortal body.

For the infant that dies one second before child birth, we could argue that said infant has not truly experienced anything of mortal life.

Saying that life’s purpose is to gain experience is also saying that those with little or no experience have no purpose. If they have no purpose, their lives have no value.

I recall the birth of my three children. I remember holding each of them moments after they were born. I remember the distinct feeling I had that their lives were of immeasurable importance and purpose, even with the lack of experience they had at the time.

Life may have additional benefits, but the purpose is to aquire a mortal body. Nothing more.

You could argue that certain individual lives have more purpose to them than others (i.e. Jesus Christ), but you cannot argue that for all life. It just doesn’t fit.

…some people die before ever getting a chance to prepare to meet God or to begin their trial.

Isn’t that ignoring the life we had before coming to earth and the life that continues afterward? Joseph Smith seems to show us that we go through growth and progress in both of those states as well as in this mortal one. So it makes sense to me that some of us might have less need of earth time than others.

Sam, of all those you listed, I only see getting a body as being universal. Too many people die too young to or are born without the ability to gain knowledge, prepare to meet God, or to be tested.

Of course, God, who already knows all things from the beginning, doesn’t need to watch our trials in order to discover the outcomes. But because He is perfectly just, he does need to give us the true opportunity we need to pass through the trial each of us needs.