Suffering is of course one of the root problems of theology. A fundamental principal of ethics is that if one has the ability and opportunity to intervene to stop an evil, one is morally obliged to do so.
No one claims the Abrahamic god lacks either the ability or the opportunity, yet suffering goes on and on and on. The cases where insect larvae eat their victim from the inside out are a good example.
It doesn't do to say we earn what happens to us -- too much suffering is just bad luck, such as earthquakes.
This was one of the appeals during the Enlightenment of the Deist god who created the world and then went away. Of course with the advent of evolutionary theory, the reason for the suffering (survival of the fittest) became apparent as nothing more than natural, so Deism lost its appeal.
The Christian theory of course paints God as a monster who allows all the suffering and so on for his personal glory.
No one claims the Abrahamic god lacks either the ability or the opportunity, yet suffering goes on and on and on. The cases where insect larvae eat their victim from the inside out are a good example.
It doesn't do to say we earn what happens to us -- too much suffering is just bad luck, such as earthquakes.
This was one of the appeals during the Enlightenment of the Deist god who created the world and then went away. Of course with the advent of evolutionary theory, the reason for the suffering (survival of the fittest) became apparent as nothing more than natural, so Deism lost its appeal.
The Christian theory of course paints God as a monster who allows all the suffering and so on for his personal glory.
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