THE PROBLEM OF EVIL

According to the Tribune Newspapers there has been a surge of wounded troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. At the largest American-run medical facility outside the U.S., Germany's Landstuhl Regional Medical Center, surgeons report that the severity of wounds is also increasing. It is said that many of the wounded wonder how a good and merciful God could allow such pain and death to occur. One of the chaplains at the hospital, Navy Cmdr. Joseph Sheldon responds with the trite and feckless, "I don't know the answer."
Well of course you don't shaman Sheldon. Has anyone ever been able to explain this conundrum. One can only come to the conclusion that if a so-called "deity" exists, it doesn't intercede in human affairs. This is likely due to the fact that, if extant, it lacks one of these qualities: omniscience, omnipotence, or omnibenevolence. In this case, it is not God as defined by religions.