An all-powerful God who genuinely cares about people could very easily construct a world in which there was no such things as earthquakes or famine or devastating floods or cancer. In fact, an all-powerful God could construct for His creation a world in which nothing bad ever happened to anyone. But of what benefit to human beings as we know them would such a world be?

That perfect world free from the suffering caused by natural disasters and disease would also be a world populated by creatures unrecognizable as human beings. Humans are what they are in great part due to the horrific events that take place every day. A lot of people have tried to define what separates man from all other animals, but when it comes down to it the single feature that really separates us is our ability to learn from misfortune and apply what we have learned to making things better for those who come after us.

The torment caused by disease and the despair that results from disaster causes individual pain and suffering that, thankfully, most of us may never have to confront. The by-product of that specific suffering, however, has been a general progression of society as a collective unit. Flooding that may have killed thousands led to technological achievements like dams and levees that have saved the lives of millions. Then there is positive outcome of things that an all-powerful God would seemingly be able to stop from happening. Malaria has killed millions of people over the century, but perhaps among those millions were a handful of victims who might have gone on to kill tens of millions had they lived long enough to become despots or invent weaponry of mass destruction or negatively influence history in some other way that makes the destruction caused by malaria pale in comparison.