Subhanahu wa ta'ala

[robvalue]

(Edit: looks like I got beaten to the punch!)

I'd like to add that this issue is often known as the "problem of evil". You can find many discussions about this on the internet if you use that phrase. The problem is that if you listen to religious people talking about it, they won't give you proper answers, they will just try and twist things so that they make sense even though they don't. That's if they will talk about it at all and not just tell you to be quiet, as in your case.

If there really is an all powerful, all loving god, he would not need people running around beating and silencing people who talk out against him. If there is such a being, it is nothing like the god described in the quran or the bible.

So I recommend listening to atheist videos, as you'll get a more rounded discussion. For example, here's a clip from one of my favourite shows, the atheist experience. I'm not trying to deconvert you, or saying you should only listen to atheist. I'm just warning you that religious people are so heavily programmed to defend their religion at any cost, they will say anything to claim it is right, and use absurd twisted arguments that get you nowhere.

This video talks about christians, but the problem is exactly the same for any religion making all-good god claims. "Free will" is often given as the answer. But this is absurd, because god has decided what it is and isn't possible for us to do. He could have made it so that we have a range of choices, but they are all good, like in a wonderful dream where you are choosing between doing one amazing thing and another, and what you do never hurts anyone else. But instead he chose to give us horrible choices too, knowing we would do them. As things are now, we don't have total free will. I can't decide to fly to the moon, or to another galaxy. I'm bound by the rules that god supposedly put in place. So he gives me limited options. Then why are some of these options horrible?

Another feeble argument is that you cannot have good without evil. This is nonsense, if god made us so that we can't be happy without first being unhappy, or seeing others unhappy, then that is his fault. He didn't have to make us that way as an excuse to put evil in the world.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=drSjXBc4cFA