Have you ever lost faith in your higher being?

I have lost faith in pitbulls

Our Lord and Saviour Harambe? Nope.

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If that is the case, why does he let an innocent sweet 4 year old get mauled almost to death by a dog. (It was not a pit bull)

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Plantinga's Free Will Defense is a good place to start as an answer to the logical problem of evil.

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God's creation of persons with morally significant free will is something of tremendous value. God could not eliminate much of the evil and suffering in this world without thereby eliminating the greater good of having created persons with free will with whom he could have relationships and who are able to love one another and do good deeds.

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Summarized by Plantinga:

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A world containing creatures who are significantly free (and freely perform more good than evil actions) is more valuable, all else being equal, than a world containing no free creatures at all. Now God can create free creatures, but He can't cause or determine them to do only what is right. For if He does so, then they aren't significantly free after all; they do not do what is right freely. To create creatures capable of moral good, therefore, He must create creatures capable of moral evil; and He can't give these creatures the freedom to perform evil and at the same time prevent them from doing so. As it turned out, sadly enough, some of the free creatures God created went wrong in the exercise of their freedom; this is the source of moral evil. The fact that free creatures sometimes go wrong, however, counts neither against God's omnipotence nor against His goodness; for He could have forestalled the occurrence of moral evil only by removing the possibility of moral good.

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As it relates to pitbulls and your story: Men are free to breed and train pitbulls to be violent. Free to own them and care for them in ways that encourage violence. We are experiencing a consequence of that freedom. A freedom that is necessary for the existence of a genuine relationship between a creator and his creation.

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If that is the case, why does he let an innocent sweet 4 year old get mauled almost to death by a dog. (It was not a pit bull)

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one of life's greatest questions. A ton of extremely intelligent people struggle greatly with the idea of a higher power. Is there one? I'm not sure. If there is, I'm sure we don't know much about him/her/it, and we are mostly kidding ourselves into thinking we do.

Live life as a good person. Try to do what you think is morally right, regardless of what others are doing. Do more for others than you do for yourself.

If you do those things, I would have trouble thinking the higher power would view you in ill regard.

Also, very sorry for the kid. That is awful

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Live life as a good person. Try to do what you think is morally right, regardless of what others are doing. Do more for others than you do for yourself.

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Being a religious person is living a weird paradox- do nice things and you go to Heaven, if there is one. Or do nice things and die and be eaten by worms because there is no Heaven, but you made the world a little nicer and brighter while you were here. What's the downside of that again?

This human existence is about free will, including that bad things can happen. Through God good can come from catastrophe but it requires faith and strength.

Grown ups should not believe in fairy tales. That is just 1 little girl, more than 17,000 children under the age of 5 die every single day from preventable diseases like pneumonia and diarrhea. And why give a 3 year old terminal bone cancer? And don't give me that "works in mysterious ways" nonsense! And really don't get me started on all the things that are wrong with that book. Look if that shite helps you sleep better at night than knock yourself out, but it is nothing but a story to provide comfort of the unknown and control of the masses.

God is a mythological character.

God does not watch over daddy's little angel.

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If you believed in a God, have you ever just lost faith in him?

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I grew up in Alabama with Christian parents (although they weren’t all that devoted as far as regular church attendance, etc.) but gradually became an atheist during my college days 20 years ago.

My issues with religion:

1) Most people believe what they do because of their culture and upbringing. It’s that simple.

2) Science continues to answer questions about the world / universe and it’s more reasonable to think that what we don’t know now will be answered in the future. Saying “God did it” has never been a good answer.

3) There are about 7 billion people on the planet. Good and bad things are going to happen and for every instance where someone lives when they should have died someone dies who should have lived.

4) People have a hard time coping with loss and hard times and need to believe someone or something is looking out for them and their loved ones.