"If you believe in a loving God, why do babies die of leukemia?” I’d never engaged seriously before with the question, but when faced with hostile questioning at university, I was stumped for a reply. After graduation, I became a Dominican friar for a couple of years in a community of exceptional intellectuals, but the more I read, the less convincing became the traditional excuses for God. “Divine punishment for sin?” Really? In a baby? “God uses suffering to enhance our character.” Well, many people collapse under the weight of life’s trials, so I’m not sure that model of a sadistic deity works either. Then there’s the all-time classic: “It’s all down to the Fall.” Our disobedient ancestral parents caused death and disease to enter the world and suddenly there were thistles and barbed wire in this former earthly paradise – apart from the fact that mortality and decay were around long before homo sapiens appeared on the world stage.