Take off your sectarian blinders, JH. Jesus said exactly the opposite of what you've been taught. Do you really need to have me, who is thoroughly skeptical about the Bible, explain it to you? Don't you have enough spiritual sense to get the point?
2 Peter 3:4 says nothing about signs. It says that people would scoff at the notion of Christ's return, not because they failed to see any supposed signs, but because, as you quoted, "From the time when our ancestors fell asleep, everything has remained as it was from the beginning of creation." It's not that these people would be too stupid or unobservant to see some signs, but because there would be no signs to see! How do we know this? Because 2 Peter 3:5-7 states that "the last days" would be like the days of Noah. The people of Noah's day were not given any signs of impending doom; thus the people to whom Peter was talking could expect to be given no signs. 2 Peter 3:10 makes this perfectly clear: "The day of the Lord will come like a thief." How does a thief in the night come? With signs that announce that he is about to arrive? Of course not. A thief in the night comes without any warning at all. The only "sign" of his arrival is his arrival itself. Everything Jesus said in Matthew 24, Mark 13 and Luke 21 tells Christians: "You can't know the time of my coming, so don't even bother trying to figure it out. I'll be there when I arrive. Any of you who start looking for a sign should be avoided by real Christians."
Why is it so hard for many Chistians to understand these simple points? Partly because they don't read the Bible and think for themselves; they accept spoon feeding from their religious leaders, just as JWs do. Partly because their indoctrination makes them impatient for "the end" and so they so much want "the end" to come Real Soon Now and to get their reward that they refuse to consider anything else. In other words, they've been deceived, and this deception makes them feel good.
AlanF