Decay
Hold it dear, this word. Imagine a forest without termites, without fire, or leaf-eating bugs. Remember that aquarium without any algae eaters or committed gods. What if ice and snow never melted? Is there enough soil on Earth to grow a garden great enough to feed a world without predation? All creatures eat and are eaten. The price we pay is that we all get a turn.
The mountains collect snow, reserving water in high, cold temperatures, which slowly melts to feed our rivers throughout dry seasons in warm climates where crops prefer to grow; and the prices we pay are the earthquakes, blizzards, floods, landslides, and storms which bring death and destruction.
Add to the mix man's free will. We don't subscribe to "mating season" or hunger pangs to justify our kills. We'll breed for glory or money or fame or fun, and kill for all the same reasons. We choose polygamy, monogamy, promiscuity, fidelity. We choose to kill, to rescue, to heal, to mame. He have free will - the freedom to do as we will - instead of being mere puzzle pieces in a world we need not bother to understand. The price we pay is knowing that we are susceptible to becoming each other's victims.
If there is no God, then we are just products of nature, and all we do is natural, thus defensible and allowed; then morality is just a word, categorizing illogical behavior like self-sacrifice, unconditional love, courtesy, and repayment of debt. If there is no God, then "right and wrong" become a matter of natural selection, after all, what is more natural than the strong overtaking the weak? And there is no hate without a God, only fear, territorial disputes, indifference, and indeference.
The student asks, "I know that all things must live and die, and that death employs many agents of decay, but some are simply awful in their work; how can we praise a God who allows such terrible things?"
The wise one teaches, "God doesn't allow terrible things, He gives us, and us alone, the capacity to sympathize, and to love so deeply that we are capable of defining things as terrible."