In December 2004, a massive tsunami killed more than 250,000 people around the rim of the Indian Ocean. Over the following weeks, newspapers and magazines were full of letters and articles asking "Where was God?" One reporter wrote: "If God is God, he's not good. If God is good, he's not God. You can't have it both ways, especially after the Indian Ocean catastrophe." Despite the confident assertion of the columnist, the effort to demonstrate that evil disproves the existence of God "is now acknowledged on (almost) all sides to be completely bankrupt." Why?
... Just because you can't see or image a good reason why God might allow something to happen doesn't mean there can't be one. Against we see lurking within supposedly hard-nosed skepticism an enormous faith in one's own cognitive faculties. If our minds can't plumb the depths of the universe for good answers to suffering, well, then, there can't be any! This is blind faith of a high order.
... If you have a God great and transcendent enough to be mad at because he hasn't stopped evil and suffering in the world, then you have (at the same moment) a God great and transcendent enough to have good reasons for allowing it to continue that you can't know. Indeed, you can't have it both ways.
Excerpt from 'The Reason for God' Chapter 2 - How Could a Good God Allow Suffering?
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