The problem of evil/suffering when it comes to children

[Redbeard The Pink]

Something horrible happened recently in my town.


A six-year-old boy was taken to the hospital at the behest of his father, who claimed that the boy fell in the shower. Once he was in the care of medical professionals, he did not survive long. To put it bluntly, his injuries and overall condition were not synonymous with someone who fell in the shower, but with someone who suffered a recent severe beating in a string of beatings that likely took place for a significant portion of this boy's short life.


Needless to say, the father and his woman (not the boy's mother, from what I understand) are being charged with a laundry list of things, including murder, but a child is dead after a short life of horrible suffering, and no amount of "justice" will reverse that.


Sadly, this story is not unique. Things like this happen every minute of every day. Children starve every minute of every day. Children die of both preventable and incurable diseases every minute of every day.


When religious people are trying to explain why suffering and evil are allowed to exist in a Universe created by a loving, all-knowing, and all-powerful god, they generally default to some combination of "it's all our fault" and "the Lord works in mysterious ways," claiming that hardship makes us stronger and brings us closer to god.


All of that breaks down when we come to the issue of innocent children who suffer and die. Those of you who serve a god who is omniscient, omnipresent, and omnipotent somehow have to grapple with the fact that your god was in the room with that boy and his father every single time he was hit, and he did nothing about it. He did not intervene himself, and he did not send anybody to save the child. The abuser realized the boy was dying and took him to the hospital in hopes of saving himself from a murder charge, and that little boy died of his wounds in front of your god, who was apparently all tuckered out from making sure Denver won the fucking Superbowl.  Sure, the justice system has the perpetrators now, but so fucking what?


That little boy will not become stronger because of what happened to him. He's dead. Honestly, I don't think anybody else will, either, and even if somebody was supposed to have a positive experience or learn a lesson from what happened, that still means that your god's perfect plan involves the suffering and death of countless children. If Superman saw what was happening to that child, what would he have done? Isn't Superman supposed to be good? What about Captain America? Would he have stood by and watched that child suffer and die? If these characters, who are supposed to be good, would have had no choice but to directly intervene when confronted with these things, what does that say about your god, who literally witnesses every bad thing that ever happens and does practically nothing about any of it? How can you call him good?


If saving children is less important to your god than pretending he doesn't exist to preserve free will, then let me ask you this: what if he isn't pretending? What if he actually doesn't exist?