FearlessLeader2 said:
So, other than a lame dismissal based on ignorance of current world events, do you have any legitimate refutation of the four horsemen's ride being in progress?
Well, let's see. Death, War, Pestilence and Famine, right?
Well, Death is a busy guy, but - comparitively speaking at least - no more so recently than at many times. Indeed, while there are more people in the world than ever before, and thus more people dying, people are living longer than they used to in most places (Africa being the only continent where this isn't the case). The world is a bit short on mass deaths at the moment, at least compared to past spectacles. The Black Death, various Mongolian exploits, two World Wars, Mao's Great Leap Forwards ("I don't get why nobody's realised that you can double agricultural production by planting the seeds closer together. Everybody do that!") - none signalled the end of the world, and they were more impressive than current events. Meanwhile, fiery nuclear death still seems a way off.
War? Actually, the world's almost relatively peaceful right now. It's not short of strife, true, but excepting the non-stop adventures of the United States and the usual bunch of African civil wars, it's comparatively quiet right now. Just the same old border disputes and ideological squabbles. It's certainly been worse in the past. Most of the time, in fact. Especially this last century. Things which have been worse in the past aren't exactly heralds of the apocalypse, unless it's a very slow apocalypse.
Pestilence? Still getting about, but not at an all-time high. AIDS is doing well, but counter that with the loss of old favourite smallpox plus the frankly unprecedented - if hardly universal - levels of sanitation and medicine in the world, and it would seem that Pesty is concentrating on just one continent. Ending the world one piece at a time, perhaps. Worries about superdiseases of the future abound, of course, but these have as yet failed to materialise.
Famine? He doesn't seem to be up to anything too out of the ordinary. There are still plenty of people who have trouble getting enough food, but there always have been. There are just more people these days. On the whole, the last century was much more impressive for big famines. Future water shortages could hit Asia pretty hard, though, but that's the future again. Perhaps Famine's just reshoeing his horse right now.
If anything we've mostly just got background levels of doom and gloom right now. More people in the world make that a bigger background, but more people also imply that the four are doing a pretty crappy job of population control these days. Parts of the 20th Century saw them galloping about a fair sight more than they are today, but even so the world doesn't appear to have ended sixty years ago. Give it twenty years, perhaps. Or is the end of the world a slow, gradual process lasting, say, four thousand years? That's about how long people've been expecting the world to end 'any day now' for, you know. How far do these guys have to ride?
Well, you did ask.
P.S: Revelations isn't real.
You know your faith is stronger than that. Chin up, and rethink what you're saying.
