Letters to the Editor

As an ovulating mother of four very beautiful children, “I’m really sorry that” Jim King was in the Florida Senate on the day he decided to vote against a bill requiring women seeking an abortion in the first trimester of pregnancy to have an ultrasound (“Tie vote kills abortion ultrasound abortion bill in Senate,” May 8). I’m really sorry that he is in the Senate representing me. He is a liberal in sheep’s clothing. He does not vote conservative. And what is worse, he feels it is necessary to go out and corrupt other conservatives, convincing them to vote like liberals, too.

If Sen. King cared about choice, maybe he should consider giving the baby women in their mothers’ wombs a choice about whether they want to live or not. They may not be aware of their right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, and they may not be aware of their right to free speech, but they still deserve to have their voices heard.

Sen. Barack Obama’s pastor disaster has raised the matters of African American churches and politics in the pulpit.

I have heard some commentators suggest that African American churches tend to talk about being victimized and so what Rev. Jeremiah Wright said was typical. Although I haven’t been in numerous African American churches, the ones I am familiar with are very godly, very loving, and yes, congregations that love America. In other words, they are the opposite of the offensive words that Rev. Wright spoke.

A long time ago, a pastor told me to stay away from politics in the pulpit. Thus, I have wisely never told people from the pulpit to support a political party or to vote for a particular candidate—even though some of those candidates attend our church. However, I believe there are times when a minister should speak up on political issues. When a moral issue is a political issue, a minister not only has the right to speak up, but also has the responsibility to speak up. From the pulpit I will speak out on issues like the sanctity of human life, the sanctity of marriage, and the sanctity of the laws of God—as did our Founding Fathers.

The words of Rev. Wright were wrong. They should not be excused, but condemned—even if he has been a wonderful man of God the other 30 years of his ministry. At my church, we teach our children something very different than the kind of harmful words that Rev. Wright spoke.

Sticking with the Bible, and only speaking about political matters where the Bible does, is a sure way to avoid this kind of pastor disaster.

I respect Dr. Kevin Folta’s appreciation of science (May 1 letter to the editor), but he plainly does not know how to make the distinction between science and philosophy. His assertion that “evolution is a fact” is totally without any scientific basis. His fatal mistake is that he has equated science with Naturalism (which is a set of assumptions asserting that there is no God). Evolution can only be true if Naturalism is true, which clearly cannot be shown by science.

Certainly he is right to say that science has rules. The only problem is, when those rules are applied to evolution, there is a total disconnect. Regardless of the protests of many believers in evolution, Darwin’s theory requires one to ultimately address the question of origins. This simply cannot be done using scientific methodologies. When it comes to the topic of evolution, all Naturalistic scientists have done is to dress Naturalistic philosophy in scientific terminology. Hard science simply cannot show what evolution purports without starting with the Naturalistic assumptions.

And the idea that science cannot function as science without a Naturalistic base is also a fiction. In fact, it was the Christian worldview which led the first modern scientists to believe that nature operated in a systematic way which could be studied in the first place.

It is utterly amazing that real scientists have such a hard time making the distinction between science and philosophy.

Dr. Folta has erected a straw man whereby he defines the terms of the argument. The debate concerning Intelligent Design was never about “science” versus “not-science.” The questions that need to be answered are whether or not Darwinism and the Theory of Evolution should be subject to the same rigorous scrutiny that all other scientific theories have had to undergo.

Insofar as the unanimous opinion of the scientific community in regard to evolution is concerned, I would like to remind Dr. Folta that a few hundred years ago there was no debate in the scientific community as to whether the earth was the center of the universe or that the world was flat.

There were scientists and scientific theories long before Darwin. Before Darwinism, theories of science were vigorously debated. Only those which could be proven by empirical evidence or duplicated in the laboratory were accepted as valid. Provable cause and effect was the sine qua non for the entire scientific theory. The theory of evolution violates this dictum at every turn. For Dr. Folta to imply that the discovery of “miracle” drugs was somehow due to Darwinism is disingenuous at best.

The academic establishment has crushed any meaningful debate as to the merits of ID. The group of oligarchs that make up today’s academic establishment fears honest and open debate and has made a mockery of the term “academic freedom.” If a professor even mentions Intelligent Design, it will often result in his or her being denied tenure or even fired.

Dr. Folta said there is no debate about evolution. Well it depends on what definition of evolution you are using. Everyone believes in micro-evolution like bacteria becoming resistant to antibiotics, but not all scientists believe in macro-evolution.

For instance, a recent paper came out in the journal Science which shows that the Avalon explosion (575 Mya) was a real event, as was the Cambrian explosion (543 Mya). The Avalon phyla were not the ancestors of the Cambrian ones and neither have ancestors in the fossil record. Will any ever be found? I believe the scientific evidence says, “no.” The oceans prior to about 580 million years ago were too salty, full of sulfides, oxygen poor and deficient in molybdenum. Between 600 and 800 millions years ago the earth froze over several times. All that existed up until these two explosions were microbes, like cyanobacteria.

The space-time theorems of general relativity show an actual (transcendent) beginning of matter, energy, space and time. Many astronomers are still fighting the Big Bang theory, because it sounds like creation.

A few years ago scientists took the skulls of living primates, and their DNA, in an attempt to compare their evolutionary tree. The skulls told a different story than did the DNA. All scientists have, of most past life, are their bones.

Folta said, “Everyone can wrestle with all it came to be in other forums.” Then evolutionists need to quite trying to tell us how we and other creatures came to be.

Although ID does not have a scientific model, Old-earth creation organizations like Reasons to Believe have been building one and presenting portions of it at universities in the U.S. and around the world.