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“Certainly at all periods the pain and waste of human life was equally obvious… It is mere nonsense to put pain among the discoveries of science.  Lay down this book and reflect for five minutes on the fact that all the great religions were first preached, and long practiced, in a world without chloroform.

At all times, then, an inference from the course of events in this world to the goodness and wisdom of the Creator would have been equally preposterous; and it was never made.  Religion has a different origin.”

(C.S. Lewis, the Problem of Pain, 4)

“To ask whether the universe as we see it looks more like the work of a wise and good Creator or the work of chance, indifference, or malevolence, is to omit from the outset all the relevant factors in the religious problem.  Christianity is not the conclusion of a philosophical debate on the origins of the universe: it is a catastrophic historical event following on a the long spiritual preparation of humanity which I have described. It is not a system in which we have to fit the awkward fact of pain: it is itseslf one the awkward facts which have to be fitted into any system we make.”

(C.S. Lewis, the Problem of Pain, 14)