The other thought is that perhaps suffering isn't the all-important issue we think it might be. If two people can respond so differently to the same event, there must be something deeper behind their behaviour. This was my point in my opening e-mail. We bring our preconceptions to the issue. Of course it will further shape those preconceptions, as each of life's experiences shape our concepts of the world, but somehow Christians seem to look at this whole thing differently from atheists.
Life is fragile and dangerous and death is the end.
The only hope is that God is good and bigger than the sorry lives we lead. To put this another way, the Bible's explanation for the world's problems is to blame human sin. When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband. The desire to have wisdom like God is actually described here as the first sin.