Big questions with no answers

By Donald A. Collins | 22 May 2026
Church and State

(Image by Steen Jepsen from Pixabay)

Having just celebrated — and I mean celebrated with thanks — my 95th birthday in quite good health, I can only be hopeful for more good ones with my loving family gathered about my circle of friends and me expanding.

As an agnostic, my thanks needed not help from the unknowable.

Kara Swisher did an interesting program on CNN on Saturday, May 17, about wanting to live forever, but obviously her tongue was in her cheek since a lot of what she was talking about was how to deal with death and how to address it with sensibility. She had lost a parent early in life, which gave her a long-term perspective on worrying about losing someone close early in life.

My maternal grandmother believed in the literal word of the Bible, which she gave me at ten with my name printed on the front. I still have it largely unread and certainly long ignored. Her two sons, one my father, attended church, but certainly were not very observant, but I would call avid Christians. My parents put me in Sunday school and dragged me to church until I was able to decide for myself.

In middle life, I married a Jewish woman with a lovely big family. Neither she or her family exhibited any affection for Judaism, except to attend temple when it seemed to be good for their community reputations.

To me, working as I have for most of my career for women’s right to choose, whether or not to have children, I ran smack dab into the people whose religions caused them to take ideological positions conflicting with mine.

I am cognizant of the benefits of being part of a community when it is embracing love and the liberalism of non-racism, which, of course, many religions seem unable to embrace.

Since planet Earth is facing serious environmental problems, dangerous wars, and a long-term possibility that feeding the present number of people, now up four times in my lifetime at 8 billion +, may create conditions that will already lead to dramatic conflicts. Many experts have predicted that Homo sapiens will bring down themselves and our fellow animal and plant creatures in a sixth extinction, as covered in a book of the same name by Elizabeth Kolbert, which won the Pulitzer Prize in 2014.

Thus finding answers to the various hard questions we face today will be mandatory and must be done on a timely basis for the first time in the history of Homo sapiens. That we have created such magnificent progress in so many ways in the 66 years since that asteroid hit the Yucatán Peninsula suggests that all of our communications networks have been unable to get sufficient attention to make major steps toward correcting these big questions.

I am not at all confident that finding ways to work together in peace can occur on a timely enough basis to save us from ultimate destruction. Of course, our planet will go sailing along with or without us. Other generations, hopefully, will come along to recreate a different set of circumstances to allow humans millions of more years.

Sapiens are such a small blip on the 13-billion-year history of our planet that the time of l sapiens is almost immeasurable. Let each day be important to you to appreciate!

If you need religion, then embrace it, but don’t allow it to drive you into a secular observance which removes you from true spiritual appreciation. Perhaps meditation can also help you, as it allows your body and mind some space to ponder the unknowable questions.

Former US Navy officer, banker and venture capitalist, Donald A. Collins, a free lance writer living in Los Angeles, CA, has spent over 60 years working for women’s reproductive health as a board member and/or officer of numerous family planning organizations including Planned Parenthood Federation of America, Guttmacher Institute, Family Health International and Ipas. Yale under graduate, NYU MBA. He is the author of 15 books: “From the Dissident Left: A Collection of Essays 2004-2013”, “Trump Becoming Macbeth: Will our democracy survive?”, “We Humans Overwhelm Our Earth: 11 or 2 Billion by 2100?”, “What Can Be Done Now to Save Habitable Life on Planet Earth?”, “Vote”, “Can Homo Sapiens Survive?”, “Will Choice and Democracy Win?”, “Can Our U.S. Survive 8 Plus Billion of Us”, “Economic Growth: A Cancer on all Earthly Life”, “On the Precipice of Political Disaster in 2024”, “Democracy at Red State Risk”, “Does Trump Go to Jail or to The Oval Office?”, “Trump: Pardon or Punish?: The Nixon Precedence Was Not A Trump Coup Denied!”, “Common Sense: When will Trump be Impeached, Indicted, and Exited?”, “Trump–unrestrained dangerous liar!”, “Our Ethnic Mix May Save Us!” and “Trump will be gone before November 3, 2026!”.

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