Problem of evil
The philosophical and theological challenge of reconciling the existence of suffering and evil with the existence of a benevolent, omnipotent deity. The strongest formulation — usually attributed to Epicurus — asks why an all-powerful, all-knowing, all-good God would permit gratuitous suffering. The problem recurs in different shapes outside theism too: karmic frameworks face their own version when they explain misfortune as the fruit of past-life misdeeds, shifting responsibility onto the sufferer.