I am sorry that you can't see what I see. The big picture fills in so many gaps. You are staring at a few dead pixels so nothing makes sense.
I am glad not to see what you see. The world you see is dark. I don't see that idea serving you in any way, but it certainly costs you.
As for things making sense, I have no issues there. The world makes sense to me, and I think that I have a good sense of how best to engage it to maximize satisfaction while recognizing and avoiding a lot of common pitfalls, so I don't know to what your pixel comment applies.
I wish I could help you to know what I know.
I already know what you believe, at least in the area of how the world is and what is to come, which is what I assume that you mean by the big picture.
As I just indicated, I would not trade places with you. I wish I could help you to know what I know. Perhaps you would learn to see that besides unhappiness and ugliness, the world is also filled with examples of love, goodness. and beauty. I think that you are missing out on that due to a dogma that emphasizes the negative about the human condition.
Are you never happy? I think I recall you saying once that you like to garden. If so, are you happy when gardening? Do you not feel a sense of beauty, wonder, and accomplishment when you turn raw land into an eye-pleasing assortment flowers, bushes, trees, vegetables, and herbs? If you can do that then, why is your writing so dark? Why do you seem to resent it when I tell you that I am happy? You call it selfish indifference to the plight of others.
Is that what was going on last night as I sat on my covered terrace amidst orchids, potted palms, and chimes while rocking in a rattan rocker listening to the patter of rainfall and looking out into my lighted garden, sipping some white wine? Should I have been more focused on trafficking in children or worm infections of the eye that cause blindness? Maybe I would if I "knew" what you "know." That seems to be what you expect of others.
I am not anti-science....I am just highlighting the downside of some of its branches. I am questioning the unprovable "facts" where guesswork replaces any real evidence. I am asking whether science is "the opium of the masses" of unbelievers? You who think we have drunk the Kool-Ade...have you actually manufactured and drunk your own?
There is no downside to any branch of science except perhaps to those with religious beliefs contradicted by some of those branches. Your position on evolution and abiogenesis has been refuted multiple times. You present the science as being unfounded as you have done again here - just guesses and assumptions. It's been explained to you how the ideas you call assumptions were arrived at, and what the evidence in support of them is, something you never address. You just repeat your previously rebutted claims and continue to make the same mistakes that you made last year and the year before, still demanding proof when that is neither necessary, possible, nor the manner by which you come to hold your own beliefs.
And you continue to blame scientists for the harmful application of their work by government and industry. I'd call all of that anti-science.
Furthermore, you have no real interest in science. You never sought an education in it, and appear to be in the same boat as most creationists arguing against science: Your interested is limited to ways to undermine its authority.
Like so many in that nation it seems as if all the focus is always on America. There is a world outside of the USA and its friends.
Yes, I know. I live in it. My wife and I retired and left America ten years ago to move to Mexico. Our community has a large number of people like us from Canada and the States, but about 80% of it is Mexicans who were born and raised here. Although there are walled-off Americanized housing developments, we live in a Mexican neighborhood, where the women often make tamales in the street while watching the children playing ball, or the street is blocked off for 24 hours for a funeral. We hear the clip-clop of mounted horses walking by, roosters every morning, and burros and sheep calling out. We live almost as humbly as our neighbors, walking almost everywhere.
I have also traveled extensively, and seen some pretty poor parts of places like Jamaica, Indonesia, and Madagascar. I think I have a good idea that the world is not all like America.
And yes, I see extreme poverty not far from home. Remarkably, the people don't seem as unhappy as one might think - certainly not as unhappy as you think. The kids may be running around in bare feet on dirt floors, but they and their families are busy playing, doing the laundry, and the like, and seem relatively content with their simple lives.
Things are grim in so many nations now....politically, socially, morally and spiritually, we see 'bankruptcy' in all of them, everywhere.
Yes, I know you do.
I see something else here. I see an emerging nation for whom life continues to improve as foreign businesses invest in the local economy giving young Mexicans an incentive to learn business practices and English, and the opportunity to work indoors wearing a tie.
Not surprisingly, immigrants like me and my wife, who are arriving in greater numbers each year, patronize local Mexican businesses, have Mexican craftsmen making improvements and repairs on our home, and pay taxes to various levels of Mexican government. All of this is bringing the local standard of living up.
It's a pleasure to live among people whose futures seem brighter than that of past generations, which was the kind of optimism I grew up with in mid-20th century America. Parents expected their children to have better lives than themselves, which is what I see here, but is no longer the case in the States, where children are no longer expected to have better lives than their parents. Instead, they look back to the past as the golden years.
Have you ever known a time when there were so many natural disasters?
I don't know the statistics there, but I am convinced that the effects of global warming have already begun to visit us and do harm. I do not see the implications of that the way you do. Man will invite catastrophe, many people and animals will suffer or die, and humanity will be forced to make a corrective change. It is not a sign of the end of the world.
We are used to eating well here....but because of food shortages and economic constraints, we will most likely have to tighten our belts. This is not surprising to us JW's because we expect these things as we see the world careen towards its end.
Sorry to hear that. We non-Jehovah's Witnesses also expect such things.
We try to take care of others as well.
you have no idea what we individually do for people
I know what I see. I have never heard anybody tell me that they were helped by the Jehovah's Witnesses individually or as a church. I don't see the Jehovah's Witnesses making a contribution to the community.
In the States and here in Mexico, they dress distinctively when going door-to-door or setting up a table of their literature in a public venue. They look like a scene from Little House On The Prairie, if that means anything to you. Is that style of dressing only for evangelizing, or do they dress that way for all purposes? The reason I ask is that I never see these people doing anything else but evangelizing, unless I am seeing them dressed like the rest of us and therefore unable to identify them as Jehovah's Witnesses.
you seem to want to blame God for all of it. He is simply allowing humans to experience the life they chose
I don't believe in God. If I did, yes I would blame the god. I would expect more from a god capable of doing so much more for us, just as I would expect more from a parent who took that indifferent attitude toward a wayward child, who, unlike a god, might or might not have the power to make the situation better
You and I have discussed my observation that God always seems to choose to do what would be expected if there were no god, although you've never commented on that argument, either. This is yet another example of the world behaving as it would were it godless, with no counterexamples.
Do you recall the coin illustration? A flipped coin comes up tails every time it is flipped. Is the coin loaded or not? Sure, an honest coin might come up tails 100 times in a row, but a loaded coin must. As the number of events accumulates in which the universe behaves as a godless world would, the argument for it being godless strengthens. If only once in awhile, things behaved as they would if a god had a hand in it, like producing a holy book that no human being could have written, or finding that believers in this god lived more charmed lives.
