Wars, Atrocities, Natural Disasters and Andrea Yates!

"Don't blame a demon or credit a god for what man is responsible for!" - G.D.Fury

During the 20th century an estimated 160 million people died in wars including 55 million in WW2, 18 million in WW1, 5-9 million in the Russian civil war and 3-5 million during the Vietnam war.
During WW2 after 2 hours of bombardment the wooden city of Tokyo was engulfed in a firestorm.
The aftermath of the incendiary bombings lead to an estimated 100,000 Japanese dead.
During the holocaust German soldiers murdered some 6 million Jews. Nearly a million people were slaughtered in the Rwandan genocide of 1994 and presently nearly a half million have been killed in Darfur.
In the 14th century the Black Death (bubonic plague) killed 25 million people in europe, one-third of europe's population at the time. In 1932 a Russian famine claimed 5 million lives.
More recently the tsunami 0f 2004 killed 220,000 people and displaced well over a million from their homes. The 9/11 terrorist attack in New York took the lives of almost 3,000 americans and Katrina killed a thousand people, tens of thousands lost all their earthly possessions and it left a million homeless.
In the past few years some of the most disturbing atrocities have been perpetrated by individuals including Andrea Yates who methodically, one at a time, drowned her 5 young children claiming "God asked her to do it."
A truck driver, Charles Carl Robert, burst into a one-room schoolhouse in Lancaster Pa. (an Amish community), lined up at least 11 little girls against a blackboard, and then shot them "execution style," killing six of them and claiming in a note he was "mad at God."
Tiffany Hall 24, killed close friend 23-year-old Jimella Tunstall and her unborn baby by using a pair of scissors to tear the fetus from her womb - later the decomposing bodies of Tunstall's three children, ages one, two and seven were found stuffed in a washing machine after being drowned.
Horrible accidents also happen every day - three boys who suffocated in the trunk of a car in Camden, N.J were thought to have been alive for at least 17 hours and maybe up to 33 hours after they became trapped.
It has been reported that around the world a child dies every 3 seconds from disease, hunger, unclean water and other poverty related causes - that's amost 30 thousand a day and over 10 million a year.

Thinking about these horrible occurences questions arise -
If there is a God does he cause these events? - Does God have any power over these events? - Is he a "Good God" or an "Evil God?" - If he is a "good god" how could he let these catastrophes happen knowing the excruciating suffering it inflicts on the victims and the pain so many other people suffer including loved ones, relatives, and friends?
Are religions a remedy or causing many of the wars and atrocities?
It has been said that in the name of religion more people on this earth have been killed than by disasters, diseases and pestilence combined.
Philosophers have speculated on the question of God for thousands of years - It's certainly something to ponder.

For more articles on this subject refer to - "Wars, Atrocities and Natural Disasters"