The only answer offered by believers is that God gives man free will and that it is our fault--not God's--when bad things happen to good people. This is not an answer at all because it does not address the question of why the innocent should suffer for the exercise of "free will" by the guilty. And of course, natural disasters are completely outside the scope of the free will argument--unless you believe that God gave wind, water, and rocks free will.

People always ask atheists how they can get through the pain and hardships of life without believing in a God who will one day wipe away all tears. After one of my lectures, I had a conversation with a woman whose son had died of cancer at age twelve, and she spoke eloquently on this point. She said that she had joined a support group for parents grieving over the deaths of their children and that she soon realized she was better off, as an atheist, than the religious parents who kept asking why God would take the lives of their innocent youngsters. "I saw cancer as a malignant, random act of nature," she said, "but I never had to ask why, because I don't believe in a benevolent being who oversees the universe. I didn't ask, `Why him?' or `Why me?' because there is no reason. I didn't have to be angry at God, as these people were, on top of my grief."

The gulf between believers and atheists on this point is unbridgeable. Whenever I hear survivors of natural disasters thanking God for sparing their lives and their homes, I feel nothing but amazement and incomprehension. How can anyone possibly see his neighbor's house destroyed by a tornado and think that a deity had something to do with sparing his own house? What utter arrogance is embodied in such beliefs! As for the victims, the idea that "God must have his reasons" is the embodiment of utter passivity, a survival from the infancy of the human race. There are reasons, and they have nothing to do with gods and everything to do with the human capacity for evil and the indifference of nature.

If there were a deity responsible for both human evil and impersonal natural disasters, I would hate him. I would prefer to go to hell rather than to make bargains with such a cruel, capricious Master of the Universe.