mjohnson asked on his blog "How can there be a God if there is so much evil in the world?".
This is one of those huge Gordian Knot questions that keep people puzzling.
I don't claim to have the answer but I'll offer some thoughts.
The argument usually goes along these lines (and I wish I had a flipchart stand and marker pens for this):
1. God is all-powerful, loving, and perfect.
2. A perfect, loving God would create a universe that was perfect (e.g., no evil and suffering).
3. The universe is not perfect but contains evil and suffering.
Therefore,
4. God does not exist.
Which is a nice and neat argument. Difficult for a person of faith to refute. As someone who was raised as an evangelical fundamentalist Christian that part of me would want to jump in here with "God's Plan" for the world and how that got derailed in the Garden by one Adam and Eve. The plan was messed up by free will (that ghost in the human machine) and therefore humanity brought pain and suffering on itself. Which sort of neatly side steps the questions above.
And if you pointed that out then the EFC in me would say "Ah.. but the suffering isn't from God, it's from the devil". (If you can't sidestep it you distract with a new shiny ball)
And if that still didn't work and you were asking questions then the EFC would probably say maybe suffering has an outcome we're not aware of. Like a pearl comes from an irritating piece of grit inside an oyster so too our pain and suffering can become something beautiful. (Which doesn't help anyone at all! Aside from those people who make the posters which say hang in there with a cute kitten on it.)
There's also groups of people who say "God is testing some people by giving them a lot of suffering. He is testing whether they become thankful to Him and follow the path prescribed by Him or they become arrogant. He is testing the deprived if they remain patient and stick to the path God has prescribed or they become a disbeliever."
I find that a totally offensive idea but it gets taught as truth.
So... I haven't really answered it or even really covered all the bases... but I'm tired and my eyes are starting to hurt from staring at the screen. I'll read some more and think some more and talk some more.
Feel free to add and discuss in the comments section.
) it can only hope the child will choose the right path.
Alrighty, then! My philosophical mind leaps to action, and immediately it appears that you have to attack the premises. There is only one where you might get traction, I believe, and not to where you want to get to.
It's denying that God is all-powerful, loving and perfect.
It might interest you to know that Richard Dawkins thinks the problem of evil is one of the _weakest_ arguments against religion, because all you need to do is postulate a nasty God. In case you don't want to go that far, though, it's all in the definitions. What do you mean by 'all-powerful'? How do you define 'perfect'? The stronger you make the terms (eg - postulate that God can perform logical impossibilities), the more you argue yourself into a cul-de-sac.
However it's what you've been doing already as an EFC. If you say that Satan's to blame, then why hasn't God stopped him?
The other two premises are even worse to argue, though.
To dismiss the second premise you have to ask yourself whether there is any reason why a perfect loving God would put us into an imperfect world. Given the level of evil there is in the world, this is a tough question to answer.
The third premise, unless you're Dr Pangloss, is impossible to bypass. Though I have seen some theologians saying that tragedies can be good because it gives you the opportunity to show your compassion. One theologian actually said this about the Holocaust, which as you can imagine met with stony contempt from his listeners.
So ultimately you can have your God by redefining the term 'God'. The argument would then fail. Whether it'd result in something you wanted is a different matter entirely, but I don't see any way around it - I think you'd only get traction there.