Letters to the Editor

Using Bible requires examining complete book, not just parts

Dear Editor:

For the past few weeks, I have been reading columns in The Breeze that have brought up the Bible and other doctrines. The authors of these columns have claimed these sources as the validation for their assertions on certain issues. I think that those who believe in and practice Christianity need to reassess why only portions of the Bible are heeded out of convenience, and others ignored.

In the past 100 years or so, women have come a long way politically, academically, industrially and even religiously. The female Christians I know of attend universities, read scripture in church, vote, become managers, and even chief executive officers.

It seems as if women's rights have gotten a little out of hand. Maybe, girls, we know a little too much. Saint Paul would be horrified to know some women are being ordained and elected to Congress because Paul trusted in the scriptures' authority.

For all of us using the Bible as a guide to point us away from sin, why not look a little closer? First Timothy 2:11-12 says, "A woman must quietly receive instruction with entire submissiveness. But I do not allow a woman to teach or exercise authority over a man, but to remain quiet."

In First Corinthians 14:34-35, Paul writes, "The women are to keep silent in the churches; for they are not permitted to speak, but are to subject themselves, just as the Law also says. If they desire to learn anything, let them ask their own husbands at home."

According to the Bible that I read, we shouldn't even be at JMU, let alone have the audacity to vocalize our convictions. We need to get back to the Bible's teachings and remember that it wasn't some book written hundreds of years ago by some flesh-and-blood humans.

It also wasn't written so that snippets here and there can be extrapolated and interpreted as invalid just because women have gained some rights out of political correctness. Shouldn't we question why there are girls in class as much as ask why there is a gay bishop?

I vow, after today, to let men speak on my behalf, to cover my head in congregation and to go home and ask my boyfriend all it is I wish to know.

Allison Collis
JMU alumna ('99)

Society lacks respect for life, dangerously threatening our future

Dear Editor:

I believe that it is sad that we live in a society where life is not held to be sacred, whether it be the lives of the unborn, the lives of those on death row, or the lives of those like Terri Schiavo. Life is a precious gift from God that always should be protected.

To say that one person's life does not qualify to continue is not a decision any person ever should have the right to make. Where would it end if we continue to make standards for life? Would those with mental illnesses, the homeless or homosexuals qualify to continue to live?

We can not call ourselves a moral society if we continue to make the decision of who deserves to live and die.

Ken Ong
JMU alumnus ('01)

Evolutionary criticism ignores complexity of subject, distorts science

Dear Editor:

Darwin's theory of evolution is a routine part of every biologist's life, like relativity to the physicist or calculus to the mathematician. But, to many non-scientists, evolution wrongly is perceived as a threat to deeply held religious beliefs. Consequently, evolution is a rare example of a modern scientific theory consistently discussed in popular forums.

The trouble is, evolutionary biology is not a single discipline. Rather, it is a branch of science that receives contributions from many branches of biology such as genetics and embryology, as well as from related fields like paleontology and anthropology. People study for years to become experts in just one of these disciplines, but the person wishing to comment intelligently on evolution needs to know something about all of them.

The complexity of evolutionary science — coupled with the lack of expertise of most of the people who write about it — has led to a horribly distorted view of what evolution is and why scientists believe it to be correct. A classic example of this is the article, "Summer Film Shows Animated Evidence of Intelligent Design," by Andrew Chudy in the Oct. 23 issue of The Breeze.

Chudy argues that a peculiar sea creature, known as the clown fish, is an embarrassment to biologists, owing to the complex mechanism by which it protects itself from venomous sea anemones. This argument is false, as I will show below.

Roughly, evolution is the theory that all modern species are related by a pattern of descent from common ancestors. Just as you and your siblings share a recent common ancestor (your parents), and you and your cousins share a more distant common ancestor (your grandparents), any two species alive today share a common ancestor sometime in the (possibly distant) past. The manner by which this tree-like pattern of relationships is achieved involves numerous well-understood genetic and environmental mechanisms.

One consequence of this theory is that relatively simple, bacteria-like organisms, which lack complex organs, evolved over time into highly complex organisms like you and me. Evolutionists argue that this happened gradually, via natural selection.

In any population of organisms, random genetic variations will cause certain individuals to be more fecund than others. As a result, favorable variations will spread and harmful ones will disappear.
Over time, these favorable variations pile up, the result being a massive change in the nature of a species. Complex systems thereby can form from simpler precursors by a gradual accumulation of small changes, at least in principle.

Whether this is a viable explanation for any particular system depends on the specific properties of that system. Contrary to what you hear from many critics of evolution, every complex system studied in detail either has yielded to this sort of analysis, or at least has provided no reason to doubt Darwin's theory. It is one of the great triumphs of evolution that it successfully explains complex systems.
Yet, it precisely is here that Chudy believes he has found evolution's fatal flaw. Chudy writes, "The clown fish's immunity could not have developed through a gradual process. The Darwinists' primitive clown fish entering an anemone for the first time, unless blessed with the ability both to deactivate the anemone's stinging cells and to incorporate the anemone's own mucus, would have faced, at best, sickness and, at worst, certain death."

As I read this, I was reminded of a quote from the great Oxford biologist Richard Dawkins — "Never say, and never take seriously, anyone who says ‘I cannot believe that so-and-so could have evolved by gradual selection' … Time and again, it has proven the prelude to an intellectual banana-skin experience."

In this case, the flaw in Chudy's argument is not hard to spot. It is clear from the quote above that he is envisioning a primitive clown fish encountering a modern sea anemone.

But, surely, the primitive clown fish actually would have encountered a primitive sea anemone, one whose stinging apparatus was not as complex as the modern form. The anemone's sting then would have evolved in tandem with the clown fish's defenses, a phenomenon known as coevolution.

Another possibility is that certain primitive clown fish did not possess immunity from anemone venom, but, rather, possessed a slight resistance to it. Such fish would have survived brief contacts with sea anemones, whereas their nonresistant brethren would have been killed. Natural selection then would have caused the genes coding for venom resistance to spread, and this would have formed a platform for further improvements.

The problem facing biologists is not, "How could this system have evolved gradually?" It is, "Of the many scenarios by which this system might have evolved gradually, which is the correct one?"

Almost any textbook on evolutionary biology will contain a chapter explaining the sort of symbioses Chudy finds so mystifying. Let me suggest that reading such books is a better way of learning about biology than watching Disney movies.

Darwin's theory has been the central organizing principle of biology for more than a century. That does not make the theory correct, but surely it counts for something.

It means that evolution is not a crazy idea and that it has a large and solid base of evidential support. It also means that the theory will not be defeated by a simple, three-sentence argument of the sort that Chudy — and most other critics of evolution — provide.

Anytime you hear someone say that some aspect of natural history has "baffled Darwinists for ages," or that some particular evolutionary explanation has been "more suited to the realm of science fiction than science fact," your bologna detector should start ringing. You are listening to a person more interested in dismissing unpleasant theories than in learning about modern science.
Jason Rosenhouse is an assistant mathematics professor.

Arson poorly reflects support for war, hurts our American freedoms

Dear Editor:

I was distraught and appalled to read the headline story in the Oct. 21 issue of the Daily News-Record about the arson attack on a Harrisonburg family who had anti-war signs displayed outside of their house. This illustrated not only total ignorance and hatred toward other human beings, but also showed total hypocrisy. This kind of act achieves nothing.

Our country was founded on the freedom and right to voice opinions. President George W. Bush and many of our country's leaders repeatedly have said that the terrorists involved in Sept. 11, 2001, attacked the United States because they were jealous of our freedoms as a democratic country. The arsonist, by violating someone's peaceful right to dissent, is no better than the terrorists whose hatred cost the lives of thousands of Americans.

Will Weaver
senior, SMAD