You have hit upon the best answer to the theological “argument from evil” against the existence of God, i.e., the argument that an omnipotent, benevolent god cannot exist because there is evil in the world.
It is conceivable that the set of physical laws that create a world in which conscious beings exist is not logically separable from those that create a world in which tsunamis and earthquakes kill hundreds of thousands of them. If there are to be conscious beings at all, then there must be natural disasters. God, omnipotent or not, cannot create one without the other any more than God can create a world in which 2+2=5.
Bob --
You have hit upon the best answer to the theological “argument from evil” against the existence of God, i.e., the argument that an omnipotent, benevolent god cannot exist because there is evil in the world.
It is conceivable that the set of physical laws that create a world in which conscious beings exist is not logically separable from those that create a world in which tsunamis and earthquakes kill hundreds of thousands of them. If there are to be conscious beings at all, then there must be natural disasters. God, omnipotent or not, cannot create one without the other any more than God can create a world in which 2+2=5.