Several recent articles and surveys indicate despair and a loss of hope by many people in this country, especially in the younger generation. Complicated by fears that arose concerning COVID-19 and climate change propaganda, many who do not know God are despairing and living without hope. We all need hope to enjoy life and especially to face death. God is the ultimate source of hope. Any belief system without God provides no purpose or certainty and ultimately no hope. Apart from God, there is no morality for this life or hope for anything beyond this life.
The Bible, God’s Word, assures us of hope in this life and the certainty of eternal life after death if we have a personal relationship to God through the salvation offered by Jesus dying in our place for sin. This nation was founded on a belief in God and his word. Since the 1960s there has been an increasing rebellion against God, kicking him out of the schools and seeking to force him out of public life. We are reaping the consequences of these actions as God withdraws his hand of blessing. The increase in moral and social corruption, in crime, in natural disasters, in shootings, in drug use and more are the consequences of what we as a nation have sown by turning away from God.
The Bible prophecies that things will get a lot worse in the relatively near future as mankind continues to reject God. However, the God of hope still offers hope to those who have accepted Jesus as their Lord and Savior. Easter is coming soon and is a great time to get to know the God of hope and the light of the world who died so that we might have eternal life and life more abundantly now.
Larry Kirkland
Moscow
More on wokeness
After his insightful and well-written letters to the editor, I was glad to see that Ryan Urie finally has his own column in the Daily News. I, however, join letter writer Kathy Dawes (Feb. 24) in owning the woke = enlightened = progressive worldview.
In his column Feb. 17 column, Ryan supports the woke worldview but disagrees with the tactics that some use to promote it. He condemns “cultural warriors who gleefully shame, insult, and censor anyone who uses the wrong terminology, etc.” I join Ryan in rejecting these means (and I would add those that are violent) to promote political or cultural programs.
The term “woke” originated among Black activists who used it to signify a general awareness of systems of injustice. During the summer of 2020, 16 to 20 million people marched after the murder of George Floyd.
An analysis reported in Time magazine revealed that of the 2,620 protests in the sample only 220 were violent. Much of the violence happened after dark where the identity of the perpetrators was unclear. In some cases they were anti-protesters carrying BLM signs.
I condemn students and faculty who have tried to shut down lectures by conservative speakers. These incidents, however, pale in comparison to anti-woke legislators undermining reproductive rights of women and free speech for teachers at all levels.
Florida Ron DeSantis is a national leader for the anti-woke campaign. His plans for the state’s New College violate traditional principles of academic freedom and faculty self-governance, including hiring qualified faculty.
Classes in Western Civilization and the Constitution will now be required at New College. I hope that the hand-picked faculty will point out significant Islamic influences, especially in the theology of St. Thomas Aquinas.
In a previous column on this subject (bit.ly/3Tauj7o), I showed that from the Greeks to free market Adam Smith there has been a gradual awakening of the human mind to expand freedom and justice for all.
Nick Gier
Moscow
What are they for?
This is the note I received from Lauren Necochea, party chair for Idaho Democrats. It is absolutely right on. Just what good is the Idaho Republican majority in the Idaho Legislature doing for the citizens of Idaho?
“What are Republicans in power advancing? One far-right folly after another: criminalizing certain vaccines, bringing back firing squads, attempting to ban drag shows while taking down our entire cultural arts sector, taking away the rights of parents to make medical decisions for their children, ensnaring libraries in endless frivolous lawsuits, banning most absentee voting so that people with vacation homes can vote by mail but not those traveling to a loved one’s funeral, amending the Idaho Constitution to effectively eliminate our ballot initiative rights, allowing armed militias to parade down Main Street, and restricting bathroom use.
“These bills will not bring good jobs to our state. They will not improve our schools. They will not make raising your family more affordable. They will not lower your property taxes so you can stay in your home.”
Susan Westervelt
Deary
Mud puddles
Confession: my truck wears a sticker that reads, “Founding Member Coalition to Restore Lake Bonneville”. I’m a Zion Curtain expat and bumper sticker sentiment aside, I’m disturbed by what is happening to the last of Lake Bonneville, the shrinking Great Salt Lake. The dried lakebed is contaminated with arsenic (and more) that blows as dust into the lungs along the Wasatch Front. Will they wear masks to survive?
Now, hundreds of miles away, and the tragedy is still too close. My congresswoman thinks it’s OK for toxic waste to be dumped into surface water (she suffers from reductionism and calls them “mud puddles”). Cathy McMorris Rodgers couches this bad idea under the confirmation-biased dog whistle: deregulation. Except the only people interested in deregulating surface water are industries with a fiduciary duty to profit by polluting without care.
Who owns the surface water seeping into our shared ground water? Who owns the airborne evaporation from poisoned puddles? Sometimes there are floods that turn surface water into river feed. Other times there are droughts that turn puddles into toxic dust for the wind to blow and lungs to breathe. In this way, we all own surface water because we own the effects of the mismanagement. Cathy McMorris Rodgers’s plan makes indentured servants of taxpayers for future cleanup as it throws our health under her donors’ money buses.
I expect my government to ensure clean water, breathable air, safe food supplies, such basic human needs. At least one person (me) wants regulated clean surface water. Clean mud puddles are always the best for splashing.
Janet Marugg
Clarkston
The origin of life
I read with great interest the letters related to evolution and God. Physical chemists know a lot about the interrelations of atoms on earth, and biologists have impressive “trees” with scenarios of how earth’s organisms might have evolved. Biochemists have “Sears catalog-sized” texts relating the complexities of a living cell. The absence of almost any cellular “complexity” makes its life impossible. In the 1950s the Miller-Urey experiments demonstrated with harsh conditions in the presence of water, methane ammonia and hydrogen could produce traces of amino acids, later others developed processes that produce other molecules, some like nucleic acid bases and even polymers. Some small molecules have been found on meteorites. Unfortunately none that I know of to date come close to a scenario that could produce a real, living cell which would be needed to start any evolutionary biological line. Seemingly creating a cell might even be a challenge for the supernatural powers of God. Yet the miracle of life exists. Pushing 90, I will likely leave the planet without a good scientific explanation for the origin of life.
