Will and Ariel Durant’s “The Age of Voltaire” talks about the Lisbon earthquake: “At 9:40 a.m. on All Saints’ Day, November 1, 1755, the earth shrugged its shoulders in Portugal and northern Africa; in six minutes thirty churches and a thousand houses were demolished, fifteen thousand people were killed ...Why had the Great Inscrutable chosen so Catholic a city, so holy a festival, and such an hour when nearly all pious citizens were attending Mass?”

On Dec. 14, 2012, a gunman shoots 20 school children. If a god exists, why does it let these events happen?