• Let the police do their job • Making choices • Judge government by its compassion • Where’s the scientific evidence? Let the police do their job I read with interest Mr. Yata’s letter concerning our new Police Chief and
• Let the police do their job
• Making choices
• Judge government by its compassion
• Where’s the scientific evidence?
Let the police do their job
I read with interest Mr. Yata’s letter concerning our new Police Chief and the over-budget spending.
What Mr. Yata failed to mention was that Chief Lum was not the Chief when the budget was set. Simply, as the Chief explained, there was a shortage of officers which required our existing officers to pick up the slack, which means overtime, which means more money spent. End of discussion. There has been a dramatic increase in drug arrests and a reduction in crime with this Chief and vice squad. Mr. Yata, do you want business as usual in the old days with rampant crime and drug dealing?
We should ask ourselves why this Mayor and Council are on a continuing rampage to remove this Chief and put “The Old Boys” back in the Vice unit? Could it be that Vice is getting too close to home and heads are going to roll? Come on, Mayor and council, back off and let the police do their job. The general public knows what is going on.
How about asking why this Council finds it necessary to spend $300,000 hiring outside attorneys to fight lawsuits brought by the people to make our council open up and be honest? Are our County attorneys so incompetent that they can’t fight their own battles without hiring extra help? Come on guys, we are not stupid!
- David Lindstrom
Princeville
Making choices
It is true that as one journeys through life one has to make choices. A sane and intelligent person may choose to believe in God. A sane and intelligent person may choose not to believe in God. But a sane and intelligent person knows that he, or she, is indulging in belief thinking. Either way it is a belief. There is no proof.
Do not confuse morality with a belief in God. A nonbeliever can be as moral, honest, just, loving and compassionate as a believer. Perhaps even more moral, honest, just, loving and compassionate because he is not carrying around religious teachings that preach intolerance, which breeds hate; that preach fear, which breeds intellectual stagnation; that preach guilt, which breeds torment.
There are thousands of different religions. Hundreds of Gods. The three major religions, Christian, Jewish, Islamic, each have Gods who seem to be in constant conflict with one another. Within these three religions are various sects. The Christians have Baptists, Catholics, Lutherans, Mormons, Seventh Day Adventist—it’s quite a long list—and they feud. All of these sects have a book—the Bible—and each interprets it differently and they fight over that. To an intelligent outsider it seems like eternal warfare. A sane and intelligent nonbeliever might suggest they stop fighting. That seems, to an intelligent nonbeliever, a reasonable request.
One does not interrupt a math book. One does not fight over the correct answer to an algebraic equation. One does not go next door and kill someone who holds to a different scientific theory. A sane and intelligent person may choose a moral, honest, just, loving and compassionate path of reason and reject the Book believer and their quarrelsome Gods.
I rest my case.
Judge government by its compassion
We often speak of or read or hear about the quality of one government or another. “Communist” governments were (and still are) deemed to be “undemocratic” and “bad”. Those governments with a “Capitalist” economic system are automatically “democratic” and “good”.
Instead of judging a government by its economic system it would be more realistic and equitable to judge it by how compassionate it is and how well it responds to the needs of its people, particularly the less fortunate and those in greatest need.
Compare the response of the U.S. Government to Hurricane Katrina with the response of the Cuban Government to its recent hurricane. The state of the art emergency response system employed by this tiny country which was praised by the U.N. as a model quickly and efficiently evacuated a million people without the loss of a single life. What was the response to Katrina? In addition Cuba offered to send to New Orleans, the same day as Katrina struck, 1,100 doctors highly trained in emergency medicine. The U.S. government rejected the offer at the cost of numerous deaths and untold suffering.
It’s true that this is only one example, but this is the type of thing on which our judgments of governments should be based rather than the propaganda put out by a government and its captive media.
Where’s the scientific evidence?
I’d like to respond to Mr. Christiansen’s letter that appeared in the Garden Island Sunday, Sept. 25, 2005.
Mr. Christiansen I am amazed that you are so informed about my qualifications to speak on the subject of evolution. Like most evolutionists you make broad, outlandish statements as if they were fact, without a shred of scientific facts to back it up. As well you are without knowledge of what it takes to become a “dentist.”
For the record, I have had 10 years of training, all science based. I have had the same anatomy, physiology, pharmacology, histology, embryology etc of a medical doctor. To test this statement, I took Part One of the medical boards in 1982 and my scores were in the top ten percent of all the medical students that took this test in the nation. I have a Doctorate of Dental Medicine and I also have a degree in Chemistry. I know what happens at the molecular level.
Now, Mr. Christiansen, what is your scientific background? It’s real simple to get me to change my mind. I challenge you, evolutionary biologist Douglas Futuyma and Richard Dawkins to give me just one example of an increase of genetic information within a given species. It has never been observed with living organisms or in the fossil records. This increase in information is an absolute must for evolution to be possible. This has never happened at the molecular level and therefore it has never happened at any other level. Richard Dawkins was asked this same question and he could not give even one example of an increase of genetic information within a given kind. Where’s the scientific evidence? I’m supposed to believe this just because Richard Dawkins, the media, and our schools say so?
To go from simple chemicals to life is so complex with so many problems to overcome that it makes this process virtually impossible. Mr. Christiansen, instead of simply repeating what Richard Dawkins and others have said, you need to check out the scientific data for yourself.
As for me, I await your one example of an observed increase in information within a kind in living organisms or in the fossil records. Give us some scientific evidence.
