At times like these (the hurricane, the trampling to death of hundreds) I seem to find no use talking about God. Seems like most mentions of God either excuse the would-be God or excuse the evil, and provide nothing of benefit. I guess if I believed that this was just one big training ground for souls and we'd all understand it better by and by, maybe things would seem better. But if the best God can do is drown people to teach them a lesson, I'm afraid I'm out on that too.

So maybe I've just yet to admit to myself I'm closer to atheist than theist, if the concept of God proves useless in the face of the worst things this world has to offer.