Letters in the Editor's Mailbag.

Byline: The Register-Guard

Leave the pledge alone

In his July 27 letter Jeffrey Watts asks for a reasonable explanation for why "under God" should not be removed from the Pledge of Allegiance. I will try.

To begin with, while our government is secular by design, its purpose is not to affirm the tenets of atheism - which are just as much a religiously held view of the world as any other belief. If it were, we would also have to remove "known only to God" from the tomb of the unknown soldier.

The constitutional issue is less a matter of right or wrong and more a matter of opinion whether it be two words from a president or 22 pages from a judge. Under some zero tolerance policies, toenail clippers are considered to be weapons.

The word "God" comes from the old English word for "good." In Oregon we are in the process of removing the word "squaw" from our maps because we are told that it comes from an old Indian word for "vagina." Since "God" is just an old word for "good" that does not describe or identify a specific deity, perhaps we should just leave well enough alone.

Lastly, removing the words now that they have become part of our cultural heritage would be rather dumb because the same political will that put them there in the first place still exists. It would transform something really insignificant into something very important, and probably result in a constitutional amendment to make constitutional what a political minority considers unconsititutional.

NICHOLAS J. URHAUSEN Eugene

Record shows evolution

Ed Heaton, in his July 26 letter offering a rebuttal of evolution, manages to appear informed while demonstrating the contrary. Many assertions in the letter are worthy of correction, but I barely have space for two.

1) The evolution of limbs is well documented in the fossil record. Lobe-finned fishes evolved legs while still in the water. Scientists believe this is the case because fossils like Ichthyostega, which has legs that couldn't bear its weight and a large, finned tail, are clearly aquatic. This is called a pre-adaptation: an organ evolved for one use (pulling the body through floating weeds) later became co-opted for another one (supporting the body on land).

By the way, this all happened during the Paleozoic era, rather than the Mesozoic, as Heaton asserts.

2) Mutation does not mean a "net loss of information" to anyone other than a creationist. A mutation is any change in the genetic code. It can be be good, bad or neutral. Every single person on earth has multiple mutations. If each one of these represents lost information then we must be losing massive quantities of genetic data every generation! And yet... .

Mutations can create new information through a process called gene duplication. When a cell divides, it may accidentally "copy" a gene twice. One gene performs its normal function while the copy is free to mutate and gain new functions. It's high school biology, and yet creationists never seem to get past the "mutations destroy information" argument. There's nothing so willfully ignorant as a determined creationist.

ERIC MARTICHUSKI Eugene

Evolution can't happen

Yes, creationists do actually think from time to time. Albert Einstein, who was a rather smart person, believed God created the universe - as did Sir Isaac Newton, who developed the theory of gravity. Also, there are a lot of creationist scientists out there with a wide range of degrees.

Ponder this: Natural selection (along with mutation) is said to have caused organisms to evolve from one basic kind (animals which can reproduce with one another) into another basic kind. This is prohibited genetically, since all of the information for the development of an organism has already been encoded in the DNA of its parent. For example, genetically, a wide variety of dogs can come to exist, but a dog can never become anything other than a dog.

Evolutionists have tried to explain that natural selection happened in conjunction with mutations to the genetic code. This could not produce evolution, however, since mutations do not create new genetic potential, they just alter what is already there. Mutations are small, random, and harmful alterations to the genetic code.

Natural selection also contradicts the second law of thermodynamics, which states that, left to themselves, all things tend to deteriorate rather than develop. "Survival of the fittest" demonstrates only how an organism has survived, not how it has evolved.

CAL CROWE Florence

Speak out against attack

In his July 26 letter, Todd Johnson asks why President Bush and Vice President Cheney are planning an attack on Iraq. Johnson presents convincing reasons why such a venture would be dangerous, costly and ineffective. He concludes that we, the people, need to convince our administration that we do not want the United States to invade Iraq. I heartily agree.

We must write to our elected officials and to our local newspapers, letting officials and fellow-readers know that they are not alone in opposing ever-increasing cycles of violence. And, by the way, could it be that Bush and Cheney are planning more war to distract attention from investigations into their corporate past?

HENRIETTE FOSS Eugene

Pension undeserved

I'm almost convinced that the average American has little or no voice in the system. Buried deep in the bowels of the July 27 Register-Guard was a two-paragraph story about convicted felon Rep. James A. Traficant Jr., D-Ohio. His colleagues kicked him out of the House of Representatives because he's a crook - but here's the interesting part of the story: He will still get his pension of $37,000 a year. (That's more than my pension, which I worked 30 years to get, and I'm not a convicted felon.)

What's wrong with this picture?

Also, as if to add insult to injury, members of the 104th Congress, in their striving to take care of the people who elected them, voted to reject a proposal that would have ended tax-subsidized pensions for those members convicted of a felony. Hey, does Congress really care about you and me?

GENE L. GILLETTE Eugene

Clinic donors betrayed

For more than eight years I worked as staff fundraiser for All Women's Health Services, soliciting donations statewide for both the Eugene and the Portland clinics. Recently I submitted my resignation to executive director Lois Smith in protest of the Eugene clinic's closure. I believe that she and her administration betrayed the dedicated Eugene clinic employees whom she abruptly terminated, as well as the women of Southern Oregon whose access to abortion services is now severely restricted. I also am concerned that contributors from Southern Oregon will feel betrayed, because they have long expected that their gifts would be used partly to serve women from their area.

On July 16 I was informed that Smith was closing the clinic immediately, but that my services would be retained. Other employees were instructed to gather their possessions and were locked out of the building. In a subsequent telephone conference with Smith I became convinced that the Portland clinic would provide minimal, if any, assistance to clients forced to travel to Portland - contrary to her previous press release claiming that she would not "abandon" the women of Southern Oregon.

It is also my strong opinion that this executive director has violated the trust of the many Southern Oregon contributors to whom I have felt a serious ethical commitment. I continued in good faith to solicit gifts until two nights before the closure, assuming that collected funds would partly support Eugene clinic services as usual. Virtually all these contributors have expressed unwillingness to support an abortion clinic based exclusively in Portland. I would urge those people to reconsider before sending the money they pledged. They deserve to know that it will go to solely support the Portland clinic.

MARTI BLACK Eugene

Acknowlege our potential

Tears of gratitude came to my eyes after reading Amanda Fitzpatrick's letter regarding people that are afraid to learn about Adolf Hitler's youth because his life shows that "anyone has the capacity for evil." If we could all take responsibility for our shared potentiality as human beings, to be good or evil at varying degrees, depending on infinite possibilities which none of us have the capacity to judge, the world might become a more harmonious place to live.

I am grateful to Fitzpatrick for having the compassion and courage to speak this powerful truth.

JANNA LEIGH LATHAM Eugene

Bush controlled timing

President Bush is very upset that, when he gave speeches regarding boosting investor convidence in the stock market, CNN and Fox News displayed the current status of the Dow Jones Industrial Average alongside Bush's picture during these addresses. These displays showed stock values dropping as he spoke.

I would like to remind the president that he chose the time and place for his speeches and notified the press, in advance, to get live coverage of his uplifting speeches. CNN and Fox, along with all media sources, have the right and the duty to report it as it was happening. They had absolutely no way of knowing what the stock indexes would do.

Had stock prices gone up during his speeches, President Bush would have jumped on that like a hungry, starving lion on an easy kill, and used that coverage to his full benefit. Hypocrisy? I think so.

KEN PETERSEN Eugene

CAPTION(S):

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