[Vision2020] LETTERS TO THE EDITOR: March 21

[donald edwards]

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR: March 21


Friday, March 21, 2008 - Page Updated at 12:00:00 AMUnite for peace and justiceThis week is the fifth anniversary of the Iraq invasion and occupation. Many are feeling an increasingly urgent need to reshape our current war economy and the militaristic foreign policy which drives it. America's war economy is contributing to failing infrastructures in our cities, underfunded schools, entrenched poverty, a health care system inaccessible to many, and a menacing and secretive national-security state.Idaho taxpayers have paid $1.2 billion for the costs of the Iraq war through 2007, according to the National Priorities Project. For the same amount of money, we could have provided 337,467 people with health care, or built 11,417 affordable housing units, or established 143,836 Head Start places for children, or salaried 23,517 elementary school teachers, or funded 312,414 scholarships for university students.Rather than direct our tax dollars and human resources to destructive purposes, we should demand that these resources be directed to attending to our many domestic needs, and to re-engage all nations in constructive dialog, pursuing diplomatic solutions to conflict. Be a voice to change the course. Join the Palouse Peace Coalition for a rally and march to demand that we redirect our resources of destruction to provide for the common good. Unite for Peace and Justice, gather at noon in Friendship Square on Saturday, March 22 for speakers and music.Kathleen Benton, for the Palouse Peace Coalition, Pullman Science, religious faith compatiblePastor Stan Hudson's claim (Faith Matters, March 14) that religion and science are equally faith-based, because no human was 'around for the beginning' is remarkable. Isn't the purpose of reason to infer what we can't actually see? By a certain scat in the woods, we infer a nearby bear; by an oak tree in our yard we infer an acorn in the soil years ago, even though there may be no human witnesses. Evolution is a fundamental principle of biology. In collaboration with geology, paleontology, archeology, and other sciences, it teaches Earth is a bit more than 4 billion years old; life has been here for about 3 billion years. We humans are very late arrivals, a sprig on the tree that binds every living thing into one family. Scientists rely on evolution to find oil, to battle HIV, and to grow better crops, to name a paltry three of the thousands of ways biology betters our lives. No 'faith' is required for a principle supported by overwhelming evidence and so successful in its application. Pastor Hudson could test his claim that science and religion are incompatible. If he polled the science faculty of the local universities, he would find every shade of religious belief, from devout to complete skeptic; not all the devout would be Christian, either. His results would reveal that science is in fact compatible with religious faith; it is not, however, compatible with ignorance. Living by faith alone, without science and reason, can be dangerous. Remember the bear scat?Jim Wallis, Moscow
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