An athiest argument for an uncaring or non-existent god is suffering, say, as in starving children. I consider this a strawman argument but there you go.
The apologists defence is that humankind has been given all the tools for health and prosperity, and has failed in their duty. The resultant victims will receive their reward in the afterlife. I consider this inadequate, but there you go.
This argument, back and forth, brings to mind the 1984 famine in Ethiopia, a decided failure in leadership. (As an aside, Ethiopia claims a long history with Christianity, counting their royal lineage back to Solomon's day). Here's a chronology of that famine (Quoted from The Fate of Africa by Meredith):
- Rural life in Ethiopia was generally precarious. Poor rains or dought were frequent hazards. A leading historian...documentedd at least one famine every decade between the fifteenth and nineteenth centuries.
- Population growth had compounded the difficulties of rural existence, resulting in over-cultivation, deforestaton, soil erosion and land degradation.
- Mengistu's agricultural policies had added to this burden....Peasats were forced to accept low prices dictated by officials.
- Peasants were also forced to deliver grain 'quotas' to state officials, regardless of the circumstances they faced. If they failed to do so their assets could be confiscated...
- Using scorched-earth tactics, the army destroyed grain stores and houses, burned crops and pastures, killed livestock and displaced about 80,000 farmers .... More than 100,000 residents and 375,000 migrant labourers were forced to flee.
- Dawit, an official with the Relief and Rehabilitation Commission (RRC) in his memoir, Red Tears, [Mengistu] said "Your primary responsibility is to work towards our political objectives. Don't let these petty human problems taht always exist in transition periods consume you. There was famine in Ethiopia for years before we took power - it was the way nature kept balance. Today we are interfering with that natural mechanism of balance, tnd taht is why our population has soared to over forty million"....I understood what he meant. 'Let nature take its toll - just don't let it out in the open...make it look like we are doing something'.
- No rain fell in the Ethiopian highands between October 1983 and May 1984.
- In February 1984 the RRC recorded taht 10,00 people were dying in shelters each week; in March it put the figure at 16,000.
- Dawit, "Everywhere we saw people carrying corpses, digging graves, grieving, wailing, and praying."
- "People who had not eaten for days, weak and deathly ill were climbing the mountain in an endless, winding stream of suffering."
- "We saw the terrible agony of people forced to choose between leaving their dying wives, husbands or children behind or staying to die with them."
- In view of Mengistus's refusal to take any action or sound the alarm, Western donors felt no inclination to treat the crisis with any sense of urgency.
- More than half of Ethiopisa's budget was directing towards maintaining an army...
- Dawit's asessment in March was that to get through 1984, Ethiopia needed 900,000 tons of grain. An assessment by the UN...put the figure at 125,000 tons.
- Mengistu also ordered famine areas to be closed to all foreign visitors nd banned donor representatives and journalits from travelling there.
- At the end of September the Christian Relief Development Association sent a direct appeal to the UN's Disaster Relief Organisation asking for 'immediate and extraordinary ction', warning that otherwise 'hndreds of thousands of people will die.'
- Mengistu...relaxed travel restrictions.
- 'There was this tremendous mass of peope, graining and weeping, scattered across the ground in the dawn mist.'(Mohamed Amin)
- [Mengistu's plan to resettle 300,000 results in greater suffering and loss of life]
There are villains and heroes all over this messy tale. But there you go.