Does an atheist, as author Susan Jacoby claims, have the upper hand in dealing with theodicy, the so-called "problem of evil" (that is, if God is omnipotent and omni-good, why does he [appear] to allow or make people suffer?)?  Well, yes.  If there is no God, then, well, there is no problem.  We do not need to wonder why God does not seem to be doing anything about our or others' pain.  He's not there.
     Hence, when we consider, as I did a couple of days ago, the children dying from winter cold in various refugee camps in Afghanistan, we do not need to think about why God did not appear to care about them.  He's not an issue.
     Fair (and true) enough.  On the other hand, if we insist that God has nothing to do with anything, including pain, we devolve the dilemma back to a highly untenable starting point:  ourselves.  Not that we are not capable and good, and not that we cannot find meaning in this world without thinking about God, but if we make ourselves the beginning, end, and sum of existence, we reduce the universe to a very small point. 
     For many of us, this very small point is more than enough.  Life is, life was, life happens, and that's all there is to it.  We're born, we live, we enjoy, we age, we die.  What more do we need?  We can explain everything we need to know to live.  As Richard Rorty remarked, "Explanation, not truth is the important thing."
     Maybe so.  But this leaves us with virtually no way to understand misfortune and tragedy except to say that it happens.  What does this solve?  Virtually nothing.
     Sure, invoking God's presence renders tragedy immeasurably more complicated.  On the other hand, however, it does more than restate the obvious.  It elevates our thinking to a higher plane, a plane that we did not make or invent, and presents a hope which originates apart from and frames beyond who we, in ourselves, are.  It sets tragedy in context, an eternal and infinite context, one that, regardless of what we suppose our origins to be, must exist.
     And this makes all the difference.  Otherwise, we're drowning in a sea of ourselves.