"God is in control" is a Christian crutch!! They have no explanation for EVIL, which, by the way, was also created by their God. I am tired of all the useless slogans used by so-called believers.

It is a dilemma that is really quite absurd...

I ignore them and walk away as quickly as possible. I'm sorry for the loss of your son. Loosing a child has to be incredibly sad.

In these sort of discussions, I use the plane crash example (to show how fallacious the contention of "God is in control" actually is).

All survive - miracle

Some survive - miracle

All die - God's will

If everything that happens is "part of God's plan," then there's no possible element of falsification.

So sorry about your child. I cannot imagine how devastating your son's death is for you.

I just tell them that I refuse to be a part of any "God" or religion that thinks it's okay to harm/kill innocent people just for sport. My three week old son did nothing, and yet this idiot God decided that my son needed to die.

That's what I tell them. And then I tell them to shut the hell up and go away before I decide to nut them.

Don't talk to them. They will dodge every attempt at logic and leave you hurting even more. They don't realize what they are doing and you won't convince them to change. Just spare yourself the hurt and shut them down. Telling them, this isn't helping me and I'm just going to walk away now, should do the trick.

I say if your god really does exist, he's kind of a dick and I want nothing to do with him. My fellow agnostic atheists are much less indifferent and perverted.

First, my condolences on your loss. I can't imagine what it is like to lose a child.

If God is the creator of everything, than this necessarily includes suffering as well as evil. There are no two ways around it, everything is every thing. Even if we allow God not to be the direct creator of suffering and evil, then God created the one that did and allowed them to do it. In my thinking, this is pretty much the same thing. We cannot have a monotheist God responsible for everything and then carve out exceptions. I think the quote attributed to Epicurus is applicable for your comments:

“Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. 
Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. 
Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil? 
Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?”

Try not to think about them and the foolishness they speak. They're possibly not too bright, and their thinking is confused and/or shallow. It's not worth spending a lot of time stressing over.

I am sorry for the loss of your son. When you conclude that there is no god(s) then everything makes sense. No mysterious ways, no plan that is beyond our comprehension; just reality.

To your question, I’m at a loss what to tell these poor people. Maybe suggest therapy.

This is why I cannot believe in some omnipotent overseer. Psychopathic or uncaring, at best.

I wish you peace and comfort. Having lost a son myself it is all I can do.

Everyone's experience is different. Most of the religious people I have met are just doing the best they know how in a difficult world. They are only trying to help by telling you what they tell themselves when they encounter the unfathomable mysteries and traumas of life. The problem is that, well meaning though they may be, they may not have given the subject as much critical thought as you have, so that puts you in the leadership position. You don't really have any obligation to respond to them at all, other than to say thanks and move the conversation to another topic.

Living by a superstitious reckoning of the world is not ever going to make sense to a proactively rational person, but it can give some structure and stability to a person who doesn't examine it too closely. But the hard truth is, if you choose to confront life on purely rational terms, you will be placing yourself in the position of highest responsibility for what happens in your life. And while I do think it's noble, it's not an easy pass as some might have you believe. Our problems are still with us whether we lean on imaginary help or go it alone.

We all have the option to select a canned worldview or to build our own. The canned ones never fit perfectly, but a suitable DIY one requires a lot of time working in the dark. That's where communities such as this come into play. It's a good place to try out ideas, and see what has worked for other people. In the final analysis everybody, believer and unbeliever alike, is just doing their best to figure out how to cope. I wish you the very best.

My condolences on your loss.
Yes, there is a conflict of gods plan vs reality. If god has a plan for everyone, then every horror of life is part its plan. That must therefore mean god did it deliberately.
My maternal grandfather lost his Christianity in Italy. He'd been questioning it for some time, but when his artillery battery flattened an Italian town killing hundreds of civilians after the Germans had left, then that confirmed there couldn't be a god in the first place. No loving god could ever have good reason for that horror.
In the end, gods plan is just a cop out for the truth of 'shit happens'. My late wife used to save lives and make people happy, she was one of the most intelligent people ever to walk the earth and we loved each other deeply, so why did god decide to put us together, take the lives of three of our unborn children and finally her. Well, there was no god and these things happen. Not nice, but true.
Most people like to think there must be something more and blame everything on gods. Gods gave us an evolutionary edge, pulling small societies together and providing control to the powerful whilst providing answers to the impossible.
Christians cannot have both ways, if it isn't gods plan, then surely there cannot be a god then.
If it is gods plan, then every rape, murder, torture, illness is its fault. Therefore, we don't need prisons etc as everything must be gods will. Even the devil must be gods will.

Don't expect christians to make sense. They're promoting a myth, making things up as they go.

There are no gods, and religious faith is a mental illness.
They just spew their bullshit without thought.

I'm sorry for your loss, but the delusional are incapable of giving comfort. They hold no kind of logic.
The only thing I know about dealing with loss is that it gets easier over time, but you never stop missing the ones who are gone.
Good luck going forward.
Feel free to reach out when you need to.

I agree with your words fully and I can identify with what you said. Believers do not seem to understand that their loving god started out wanting to kill us for something we did not do. Then he offered a way out by killing someone else who did not do it either. Christianity makes such perfect sense.

My condolences. These Christians claim that their precious God kills people at random for a reason. I lost my fiancee 4 years ago to cancer and people were telling me it's God's will and there is a "reason" for it. Been 4 years and I still don't know what the so called reason is. I honestly don't know how to respond when folks say this kind of thing. It has never made me feel better about the situation. Again my condolences on your loss.

Dealing with Christian defensive reasoning is like talking to someone who has had way too much to drink ... Everything that comes out of their mouths is nonsensical gibberish that is without any rational thought !

• My sincere condolences for your loss - it can't have been easy.

I think God has been asleep at the wheel for some time

so we know there is no GOOD god. we can't know if there are ANY gods.

however, we also can't know whether there are bridge trolls, a tooth fairy, leprechauns or unicorns, but we can realize how unlikely their existence is, to the degree that some of us can confidently say there aren't any gods. if you're not convinced, you can say there probably aren't. it won't make any difference in the long run.

so any complicated response to the thing you hear a lot will turn out to be some kind of explanation that will be rejected at any rate, assuming it's even understood. perhaps "which god?" would give the erstwhile reassurer pause. yes, that's blowing them off. sometimes that's okay. or perhaps "sorry, i don't hold any gods" is better. it depends on who is trying to reassure you. you might decide the whole thing isn't worth your time, just that once. but if you decide you have the time and energy for a debate, some of what i said above might be useful.

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God had a plan for everyone? Then why is his plan for so many that they die of malnutrition in refugee camps before they turn five?

That's my go-to response.

I will give you a thought that can calm all storms in your mind:

"Don't think about God even for a second ever again in your life. He does not exist. You are free. Live free."

I am very sorry for your loss. There is no amount of christian or god in this. The people that say so, say so because they don't think for themselves. Just like the "flock" they are called, they allow someone else (a person/human) run their lives, so they can blame everything they do on "the devil" LoL Any real thought they have they suppress, have to go with the herd. Ignore them and live your life your way.

It’s tiring listening to their rationalizations for believing in a fairy godfather in situations like yours. They immediately fall back on their ridiculous catch all of “Have Faith”.