questioningmyfaith said:
But, if you have any answers to my questions about the world getting worse and mankind destroying it I would be happy to hear.
Really? Then why have you not responded to any of the replies you have already had to your questions?
Even a simple thanks to those who took the time to reply to you, would be polite.
Saintbertholdt 4 days ago"If there is no god, is there hope for mankind"Definitely. If you look at the statistics, for example: Average human life expectancy, average available calories per day per human, infectious disease statistics and even population growth you'll notice that things overall are getting better over time for the entire planet.Regarding climate change: The fact that it has been detected and debated is a very good thing. You can't fix something if you don't know its broken."Why do humans seem to be so unable to rule themselves."Slowly but surely the world is democratizing. This is a good thing as it also goes hand in hand with free markets which is also a good thing.Human kind can still drop the ball in a big way, but I think that we're on the right track.Believing in God and the Watchtower does seem to give one comfort in that one supposedly knows the future, but this is an illusion. The future is an unknown country which makes it scary but also exhilarating at the same time.
OneEyedJoe 4 days agoThis reminds me of the Socrates quote from over 1600 years ago:The children now love luxury. They have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise.The fact is that every generation thinks the outgoing generation is old fashioned and that the next generation is doomed. You're focusing on the bad news which is often sensationalized and put forth more because it sells.
There's lots of good news out there too, though. There have been people in every generation for the last 2000 years that thought that "critical times hard to deal with will be here" was being fulfilled. Meanwhile the world has improved by just about every metric there is.
Billyblobber 4 days agoClimate change isn't "hopeless." You're looking at this from a strictly human-centric perspective, first of all, which makes sense when you've been around a religion that makes humanity the center of the universe.If humans are just another animal, then they don't matter to this planet any more than the dinosaurs, which were on the planet longer.
Even if they have an effect on the climate or blow themselves up in nuclear war, the earth will change as it has always been changing, and new life will appear or other life that survives will evolve and become the dominant species. So what humans do, only matters to humans themselves. And as such, we have the best chance of any species that ever existed on this planet to possibly outlive the planet itself (the planet will eventually die unless we can reignite the sun waaayyyy in the future - something that JWs assume God will do or something).
We are living in the best time in history. Life is safer, per capita, for people more than any time on this planet. Diseases are contained far better than they ever war. Wars are actually slowing down and have less of an impact on the average individual. People are living longer. People are getting closer towards cracking aging and other things.The news, etc. is purposely centered around constantly scaring people so that they tune back in, but stats don't match that. Similarly, religions have to tell people everything is going badly to give their followers a reason to pour themselves into them. But, again, facts don't match this. Look these things up for yourself.
^^ Those were responses you received on this very thread.
Why do humans seem to be so unable to rule themselves.
My response to that specific question would be:
Why should mankind be expected to govern ourselves without 'getting it wrong', or taking actions that may later turn out to have negative consequences? (your question seems to imply that you may actually mean 'why does human government always have flaws and make mistakes?', otherwise it doesn't make much sense because humans clearly are able to govern themselves.. We have governments. )
In the absence of an Omniscient God who wants to sort all our problems out for us, which is like wishing Superman existed, human governments are the best we can do.. Unless you support total anarchy?
www.civilliberty.about.com/od/historyprofiles/f/why_government.htm
In future, when you start a topic, maybe just confine your remarks to the subject you wish to discuss? It was your OP and subsequent posts that brought up the very things you claim that you did not want to discuss..
To then just dismiss everything said in reply to YOUR comments without addressing what was said, really comes across as arrogant and rude.
I'll leave it there. I hope you find peace in your new belief system.
Once I embraced my atheism, rather than running from it.. everything became clearer. Perhaps because it was MY belief, not a set of beliefs imposed by a third party.
Good luck to you. ;)