How does religion explain birth defects?

[Darwinian]

This may be a little off topic, but it fits with what some of you have been talking about. Have you ever though about what if you are wrong? What if there really is a God? If there is really a God, then one day you will stand before Him as He judges you. Do you like to be tortured? Do you like being in pain? Do you like agony? If God is real, and the Bible is correct, that is what you will face, and even worse things in Hell. It isn't something to joke about, it is eterarnal punishment apart from God. And yes, I have thought about what if God isn't real. If He doesn't exist, then I'm not really out anything, because then the point would be to live so that you are the happiest you can be, and the way I am living right now is the happiest I can be, so even if He isn't real I still haven't lost anything.

• But what if you are wrong and the Muslims are right?
  
• But what if both you and the Muslims are wrong and the Jews are right?
  
• Maybe you, the Muslims and the Jews are wrong and the Hindu's have got it nailed!
  
• What if you, the Muslims, the Jews and the Hindus are wrong but the Vikings got it right all those years ago?
  
• What if all the worlds religions both past and present got it wrong and the atheists are right?
  
• What if there really is a God but he despises people who blindly follow religion rather than try to work out how the Universe really works?
  

It seems to me that the only way to even come close to understanding life, the universe and everything is to look at the Cosmos around us and simply ask questions of it. And the best way to do that is to use science, logic and reason with a sense of awe, wonder and fascination and to never get so arrogant as to assume that we have absolute truth and knowledge and that the search for knowledge is over, because that way stagnation lies. And, if there really is an all caring and all loving God then it would seem utterly oxymoronic to imagine that he would cast me into the pits of hell for following a philosophy of wonder and curiosity and a quest for knowledge about his creation and a refusal to simply believe, what on the face of it, seems to be nonsensical ramblings from the worlds religions.

I think that most of us here will agree that if it does transpire that 'The Christians Were Right' then we have all been victims of the cruelest, most wicked and unfunny practical joke ever!