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Why waste time and energy pointing out the whys....why nots
I suggest that you purchase a plane ticket tonight and fly right over to those Ethiopian children and feed them.....
God has placed us here to do His work.....feed the hungry.\

Has God not given man the ability to reach out to others in record number of time through air travel.......do not grumble...feed them my friend!!!.....

EDIT: In response to your question, believe me, i am doing something.....I am not complaining for one thing.....we each are called for a special purpose,,,you may be called to help the hungry....I am called to help the sick. don't you worry about what others are doing...just get busy. God puts us right where He wants us....He heals and feed everyday my friend.....we are often just too blind to see.

its you who says God does nothing...do you want a genie who does all your wishes...is that what God is to you...if so you can't have choices in life...so people starving to death in Ethiopia and the crack baby who suffers isn't because of other peoples choices...it theirs alone...and because they have no choice of their situation God the genie should take away all bad things that happen to humanity...it isn't a malevolent God that does this...it is a malevolent humanity that does this...shifting the blame only makes you feel better to beleive there is no God...nothing more...because i don't see atheists rallying together to stop all the suffering in the world because of a "impotent or malevolent" God which they don't beleive exist...but there are tens of thousands of Christians out there everyday doing something about it...if God working through them isn't good enough...then do something yourself instead of complaining about Christians and Christianity...

Christians won't give you a satisfactory answer because they can't without betraying their stupid and unsupportable beliefs.

You are of course quite right, as was Epicurus. Spinoza too, and many other great minds who have seen through the nonsense of this religion. There are starving and dying children who are innocent and who are not "spared" their suffering because there is no god out there to do so. There are starving and dying and suffering people because Nature is neither benevolent or malicious. It just IS, non-sentient, not out to either hurt or help us. Creation and destruction of life are the package deal.

Fairness is a concept of people, not Nature, and humans invented a god who has human characteristics, but doesn't act like a human being. Any human being with a heart, and with all the powers attributed to god, would ACT and would wipe out all the suffering.

Not so with Nature. But it is nothing personal...

Very good question! It is profound and compelling, even more than 2,000 years when Epicurus posed it.

I don't mean to sound smug or condescending, but the answers given before me did not answer your question and it appears they did not intellectual grasp the meaning of your question.

First, I think you partly answered your own question. Religionists will point to the "free will" argument. Another way to look at it is when ministers and priests look skyward and simply dismiss Epicurus' question with "God works in mysterious ways. We as mere mortals do not understand His ways." Not very satisfying, but that has placated people for hundreds of years.

The Hindu view is that God the Creator - Brahma - is in a state of meditation, and totally uninvolved in this or any other world or the affairs of people. Period.

The atheist view is that there is no god.

The Buddhist view is very complicated, because the Buddha neither confirmed or denied God's existence - but that his purpose was to teach the Buddhadharma, which are the laws for living righteously and alleviate suffering in this world.

So, I haven't answered your question either ... but I think the Wisdom of the East (Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism, etc) may be closer to the real Truth, and that "Divine Providence" (God) is not an anthropomorphized diety that has a white beard and wears a night-shirt, and is watching you when you masturbate!!!!

Isn't it obvious? Because we have free will, all of this is our fault. So that makes it perfectly logical to tell grieving parents whose child has died of a birth defect that "God has a plan for us all." Get it?

Free will = what we have in that there is a plan for us. So we can choose whatever we want! But God knows what we'll choose which seems like and is a contradiction but God works in mysterious ways.

So that's why your hypothetical crack baby has to die.

Geeze...what's not clear about this?


Edit: I should add none of this would've ever happened if we didn't get kicked out of that sweet Garden of Eden...sure God put the tree of knowledge and the snake there and then was somehow absent when the snake convinced Eve to eat of the tree...but that's our fault. Actually, it's your fault (if you haven't been baptized).

You are making a straw-man arguement. Starting with the use of Epicurius to ponder the source of evil. You jump over "free will" and glibly say that God is only telling us it's not his fault.

The evil is in man. In your example, the Ethiopian child is starving...as are many in Myanmar...because men choose to deny entry to donated food stuffs...or appropriate them for their troops...or sell them for money. Your arguement is simply that God could overcome it if he wanted to.

When a crack baby is born, yes it is awful. But you imply that if God does not override the decisions that the mother made to produce a miracle...well then God must be impotent.

You are right to say that saying "free will" does not make the problem go away. But putting out straw man arguements and accusing God of not overcoming evil does not either. If you really believe that something should be done, if you really believe that there is no God, and if you believe that it is wrong for this to happen to children...then why are you here? Why aren't you delivering food to Ethiopia...sacrificing a Big Mac or whatever? Why aren't you working on an answer instead of ranting that someone else (God?) should be righting the wrongs that you see?

I think that you must be making God into your image, instead of thinking it could be the other way around.

God has never said "it's not my problem". He has declared that the problem is with the human heart, which is corrupt and twisted, and he has provided a way to deal with it one heart at a time. He has said that there is justice for the orphan and for the poor...but he has also said that there is more to it than just this one life.

Is God willing to prevent evil? He is...he just left it with you and me to decide if it would be necessary. If we choose that it will have sway in this world, then you and I are not fit to critique how God will overcome the mess...