An article similar to Daniel's link appeared in last Saturday's "Faith" pages of the KC Star. I'm going to cherry-pick, because the website requires registration to read the whole text, and because some of it has already been said here.

It opens rather like R.L.'s "both ways" post below, but without the accusatory tone:

The stupendous Asian tsunami has raised anew ancient and frustrating questions about why there’s evil in the world. Theologians refer to this as the problem of theodicy, and many acknowledge it’s the best argument atheists have for denying God’s existence. Scholars outline it this way:

- An all-powerful God could prevent evil.

- An all-loving God would want to do that.

- But evil and suffering exist.

- So should we conclude that God is weak, not loving or simply nonexistent?

My problem with this approach is that it assumes a particular "kind" of Deity -- the Judaeo/Christian/Moslem one -- and a "literalist" interpretation of Western scripture (yes, I'm including Islam as a "Western" religion, owing to its monotheistic base in the same culture that spawned Judaism and Christianity). In that light, it's ironic that the argument of atheists is cast in the same "literalist" language; that is, they define a particular God in order to deny his/her/its existence.

The response from within the article that comes closest to my own is this one:

When people wonder why God doesn’t prevent evil, some theologians ask us to imagine a world in which God, in fact, did just that.

"Do we really want God to prevent things from happening... by manipulating the laws of physics in such a way that we would never know from one moment to another which were working and which had been suspended?" asks author and teacher John Blanchard.

In his booklet "Where Was God on September 11?" Blanchard writes that "if God tweaked the laws of nature billions of times a day merely to ensure everybody’s safety, comfort or success, science would be impossible."

[emphasis added]

Because we live in a universe where science is possible, we rational Western scientific-minded types can be assured that the Indian Ocean tsunami was caused by an undersea earthquake, a side-effect of the subduction of one tectonic plate beneath another, which results from a number of conditions established during this planet's formation, some of which in turn result from the unknowable number, kind, size, age and chemical makeup of the supernova(s) which seeded the molecular cloud from which this solar system condensed. All that would seem to imply that God, if existent at all, is not the sort who meddles with the Laws of Physics, or with the mathematics of chaotic systems . . . which implies that discussions of theodicy are irrelevant.

We "know" -- which is to say, we have either engaged in personal study and rational thought, or rely on the reputations of those who have -- that human consciousness needs to understand the world in which it lives, and that, even when facts are absent, it will still attempt to explain. We have a few thousand years of direct cultural evidence, and inferences from even older cultures, that such explanations are bound up with, and probably initiated, the concept of Deity. The idea that deities might be influenced probably was arrived at simultaneously. Thus, Religion: a codification of behaviors meant to influence Deity.

We also "know" (see above) that humans, being primates, are social, and make rules to govern their interactions. It is no great leap of inference to subsume rules of social behavior into rules of worship, if one accepts the idea that getting along with one's fellows is also "pleasing to the gods." Biblical literalists (and atheists whose arguments are equally narrowly focused) need to realize that the process of influencing deities through codified behavior -- i.e., religion -- is thousands of years older than the invention of writing. What seems to have appeared in a historical moment, as if (to give one example) whispered into the ear of Moses on Mt. Sinai (or Horeb, depending on the chapter one reads), is simply an artefact of the Final Codification: writing it down. That the rules contained in Torah (to continue with the same example) are so detailed, and in many cases restrictive, has implied to some that God micromanages human behavior. Since those rules were combined in the oral stories with millennia-old fragmented tribal memories of things like floods, parting seas, pillars of fire and smoke, and cometary apparitions, some have inferred that God micromanages the physical world as well. Yet we find ourselves in a world where science is possible, which permits us to conclude that no micromanagement is occurring.

Does this, therefore, negate all of the worth religion has brought to human culture? Some would argue as much, citing the uncountable deaths and incomprehesnsible suffering done "in the name of God." I would suggest to those that the death and suffering they speak of was done by humans to humans as an expression of power. It is no less an aspect of human nature to desire and wield power over one's fellows than it is to imagine some higher power at work in the world, and there are always those who believe the power they have grasped (or inherited) allows them to bend the rules in their favor, or break them with impunity. Whether power emanates from wealth, kingship, priesthood, or a combination, what is done with it stems from human, not "divine", motivation.

In his "both ways", post, R.L. said this:

Those that believe in god but are able to discard the ugliness and hatred taught by most religions and adhere to the positive parts of the religions (which are common to nearly all religions) have my respect... Those that behave like decent human beings even though they do not fear hell, or divine retribution since they do not believe in those myths have more of my respect...

And I wonder how different that is from the Kingdom of God that Mary Anne speaks of so eloquently in her post in this thread. To my mind, there is no difference at all.

One more quote from the article in the Star:

Lama Chuck Stanford of the Rime Buddhist Center of Kansas City says: "We don’t know why these things happen. We don’t even know why we’re here. From the Buddhist perspective, the important thing is to recognize the interconnectedness of all things and the importance of compassion.

"The best Buddhist response is trying to respond with kindness and compassion."

Placing blame upon God for either "causing" or "allowing" death, disaster or other so-called "evil" is a waste of brainpower better spent rescuing and rebuilding. Evil is something humans do to other humans.

So is Good.

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If anyone wonders where I fit personally in all of this discussion . . . Mary Anne said: Of everything religion has given us, these two are the most worthwhile: the ritual and metaphor that allows us to turn off the Voice of the Analyst so we can just be in the Kingdom, and the metaphor of a common story that helps us to talk together and be with each other so that all our small hearts can grow larger, together. I made a personal study and a rational choice to adopt the ritual and metaphor of Judaism -- but deep down where it counts, to me God is the Laws of Physics.