Why doesn’t God stop tragedies?

The “Asbury Revival” in Kentucky at the Asbury University had to end because the volume of people became unmanageable. It was a glaring example of how so many people seek religious comfort.

Greatest cover-up in history

to arrest 368 people and rescue 131 victims in a human trafficking sting. Fourteen of these people were arrested in Santa Barbara County.

Here in California, children as young as 11 years old are being sex trafficked. These kids are being raped 2030 times a day. This story too cited Sen. Wiener and Gov. Newsom’s SB 357 as contributing to these heinous crimes.

Unfortunately, local law enforcement officials indicate that the Central Coast has become a hot spot for human trafficking for a variety of reasons. These reasons include our proximity to Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Fresno, which facilitates movement of the workers and availability to “markets” and plenty of cheap motel rooms to ply their trade.

Perhaps one of the worst cases of child abuse ever involved a gay couple in Georgia who had adopted two special needs boys only to sexually abuse them ritually for several years. Not only that, but they also pimped these boys out to others after sending out video solicitations to other pedophiles. It was so abhorrent a pedophile turned them in after having received the solicitation.

Hopefully, these “parents” will each receive the nine life sentences a grand jury is considering in their indictment.

As difficult as it is to believe, pedophilia is also escalating in our schools at an alarming rate. Millions of children in American schools have indicated on surveys that they have experienced physical sexual contact from an adult, most often a teacher or coach.

Some members of the media and academia are no longer referring to child predators as pedophiles. Nope, the proper term is “minor-attracted persons.” That is par for the course, wouldn’t you say? Let us consider it a “condition” (we were born that way) instead of an inclination to abhorrent criminal activity. There is also a movement to decriminalize sex between consenting adults and children. California is already leading the way.

F irst, it was called a conspiracy theory. Then discussion of it was banned. Today, the “ lab leak” theory of the origins of COVID-19 is true.

COVID-19 originated at the Wuhan Institute of Virology and then was unintentionally spread. Why was it forbidden to talk about the lab leak? Did powerful institutions have a stake in downplaying the Chinese origins of the virus in order to shift blame to the rest of the world?

China did, as it was likely COVID-19 was spreading in China as early as October 2019. That was also the view of the World Health Organization that is linked with China.

And what about Dr. Anthony Fauci and funding for gain-offunction research?

Even the Obama administration was against gain-of-function research. Finally, there was a political aspect to this issue. The lab leak couldn’t be true because the right sounded the alarm on a possible lab leak first. Going forward, history will show that the COVID-19 lab leak cover-up was historic and monumental. And not in a good way. Millions of people died. The question of the day: Will anyone be held accountable and will gainof-function research be outlawed in the future?

Diana Thorn Carpinteria

Now comes news that the California legislature is considering extending foster status through age 26, given the fact many 21-year-olds are not ready for self-sufficiency. This bill, supported by the

California Judges Association, seeks to get a handle on rampant homelessness among kids aging out of foster care by extending housing and case worker support.

But many or most nonfoster kids also struggle with successfully participating in democratic society and go off the rails as well.

Maybe some perks and responsibilities of citizenship for all young Americans need to be delayed for a handful of years, or more carefully vetted, until our youth can become more selfsufficient. This could include things like driver’s license, gun ownership, jury participation, alcohol consumption, military service, running for public office (think George Santos) and even voting.

Today we gift young people with privileges and duties they don’t even know how to spell, let alone exercise responsibly.

Kimball Shinkoskey Woods Cross, Utah (Former Goleta resident)

As the world plunges ever deeper into utter chaos and so much death all around us, my mother often asks why God doesn’t do something about it. Not being very religious anymore, I’ve seen my approach over the years shift to view our existence more from a scientific perspective. I usually reply to my mother, “Because He gave us free will.” That’s what I was always taught in Catholic school, and it’s the only answer I have because no one knows the answer. If you believe in an Almighty God, in short, He created us, then cut us loose.

For the billions who hold strong religious beliefs that there’s a deity “floating” around somewhere keeping an eye on us, I can’t prove or deny it, because there’s no way of knowing. If true, is this the same “Being” who also had a hand in creating the vastness of the universe? I shrug, because again we have no idea.

That’s where the word “faith” fills in the gaps. There’s no way, in our wildest imaginations, can we or will we ever know how all this came about, while we’re alive. When we die, do we just puff away? Or, do we turn into energy and become part of the limitless universe? There’s only the one-way ticket to find out.

However in the meantime, getting back to my mother’s question, if there is a supreme being keeping a close watch on the people of Earth, and you’re a very religious person, then how come He (fill in whatever pronoun you like) doesn’t step in and stop all the madness taking place? How come the trillions of prayers going His way don’t have an impact?

First of all, this madness has been going on since the planet formed. For reasons that still escape me, evil has been working its terror beginning with the fictitious story of Adam and Eve and the snake.

Men have raged war as far back as history will show us, and I’m sure farther back than that. Men love to have power — not to say there hasn’t been a fair share of women who desire power, but men are inherently stronger and loaded with testosterone and find the need to use that energy to take over countries and kill millions of innocent people in the process.