I've given up...perhaps.

While I don't exactly have a huge audience for my blog, I do get a fairly decent amount of hits. Some individual posts have gotten up to 60 hits - My post where I speculated on the Green Lantern movie has received 90 so far. For the most part, I seem to average about 20 hits a day, and that doesn't count the MySpace version of this blog. Surely, not all of these hits represent actual readers, but I figure if even as many as five people a day check out my blog, that's pretty cool - especially considering that it's mainly my random musings, and I'm not offering any kind of critical information on anything newsworthy.

Anyway, my posts have tapered off. One of the reasons is simply due to exhaustion from the Blog-A-Day/Haiku-A-Day/Movie-A-Day marathon. Another is that I feel that I have exhausted a topic that I used to write about quite a bit. No, there will always be things to say about comic books, so long as I'm still reading them. I'm sure that I'll have things to say about beer and Shakespeare as well. What I'm pretty much spent on is religion.

I always say that it's best to keep an open mind and never get to a point in your life where you feel that you have all the answers. I especially feel this way when it comes to matters of faith and religion. Shoot, that was my attitude even when I was a believer, and I felt that I needed to keep it that way when I finally lost my faith. Basically, it took me about five years of not believing to finally admit that I didn't believe, and it took me another five just to make certain.

I think that this is why I posted on these matters for so long and why I so vigorously got into debate with people (mostly online) about the matter. I figured that maybe there was some chance that I was getting it wrong. Maybe there was some argument for a god's existence that I just didn't hear yet. Maybe there actually was a logical and sensible way to reconcile how a loving god could allow for so much suffering in the world.

I'm coming to the realization that it's just not happening. I've debated so many people, and I keep hearing the same things - many of those things I once used to say and have long since rejected. These aren't even people who all know each other and I need to branch out and try some different folks. The thing is, all these people just keep saying the same stuff, and it's starting to bore me. I mean, if I hear the "God allows suffering because we have free will!" argument one more time, I might go into a coma due to its sheer tediousness. I might also vomit fire if people give me the arguments of the ridiculous apologetics of C.S. Lewis and Lee Strobel. I might even turn into a chimpanzee and raise an army of damned, dirty apes if I hear any more arguments about how intricate and amazing the world is while completely ignoring things like parasitic eye worms.

Or maybe this is finally starting to really cement in my head because my best friend just died of cancer. A loving god wouldn't let dogs get cancer. Yeah, I know, people might interpret this into the "You sound really angry" argument to dodge the fact that I'm right. If ever there was an argument that was a slam-dunk against the existence for a loving deity, it's that one. Maybe you guys should cut your losses and try and convince me that Odin exists by this point.

I suppose another possibility is that Epicurus already took care of this issue long ago when he posed his riddle:

Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent.
Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent.
Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil?
Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?

Am I done with this topic? It feels like I am, but only time will tell. Sometimes I like to write for the sake of it, but as of now I'll just be repeating myself, I think.