Scientists Support Intelligent Design

Editor, Times-Dispatch:

In a recent column, A. Barton Hinkle says that evolution is scientific and intelligent design is not.

Intelligent-design theory is supported by doctoral scientists and researchers at universities and research institutes around the world, including such notables as biochemist Michael Behe (Lehigh University), microbiologist Scott Minnich (University of Idaho), emeritus biologist Dean Kenyon (San Francisco State University), and quantum chemist Henry Schaefer (University of Georgia). ID research has produced hundreds of peer-reviewed scientific publications, and has been cited by other scholars in journals such as the Annual Review of Genetics.

Conversely, scientists are not necessarily unified in their support of evolution. More than 900 well-known scientists (including evolutionary biologist and textbook author Stanley Salthe, and Giuseppe Sermonti, editor of Rivista di Biologia) have signed a public statement voicing their skepticism of Darwin's theory.

Meanwhile, biologists such as John Davison and Mike Gene are researching evolutionary processes as prescribed or teleological, yielding new insights into the development of the living world, possibly explaining evolutionary processes that we do not as yet understand.

Science demands that even well-established theories be constantly and rigorously challenged. To teach evolution in the absence of dissenting scientific viewpoints is a disservice to the student, and, well, unscientific.

Todd A. Wilson. Chesterfield.

Warner's Energy Plan Is Smarter Than Gilmore's

Editor, Times-Dispatch:

Jim Gilmore's "drill here, drill now" slogan may be effective political theater, but it's utter nonsense as policy since every expert says it won't do a thing to help consumers who are hurting now. Further, it does nothing to address the real problem.

Opening up drilling off the U.S. coast won't produce a single drop of additional oil for eight to 14 years, and even then, even at the most optimistic estimates, would increase the world's daily supply by no more than 1 percent.

In other words, no effect on gasoline prices would be seen until 2020 - and even then the effect will be too small to notice, much less make a difference at the pump.

What we really need is an energy policy that not only reduces our dependence on foreign oil, but actually reduces our use of oil, regardless of where it comes from.

Compare Gilmore's thoughtless posturing to the thoughtful, forward-looking energy solutions offered by his opponent for the U.S. Senate, Mark Warner.

Warner's energy ideas will create green jobs and wean us off of our dependency on oil - especially the oil purchased from countries led by blatantly anti-American leaders, not just in the Middle East, but also in Venezuela, our own backyard.

Warner's energy ideas will also improve the electricity grid and promote tax incentives so people can buy and drive plug-in hybrid vehicles.

And I don't think I'm the only Virginia voter who prefers intelligent solutions from someone I trust like Warner over the cheap election-year slogans of someone I don't, like Gilmore.

Steven M. Morris. Glen Allen.

Ingenuity, Not Drilling, Will Solve Energy Crisis

Editor, Times-Dispatch:

I found Rep. Eric Cantor's Op/Ed column, "Let's Show Some Common Sense," astonishing. He asserts that we can solve our "most pressing issue of the day - gasoline prices" by drilling in previously protected areas in the United States.

Knowledgeable people say that at best we would meet 4 percent of our need for oil, 60 percent of which we currently import, by doing as Cantor suggests. The only people who would benefit from this would be the oil companies, who already have it pretty good.

Cantor's voting record is about 93 percent in step with the Republicans who have stonewalled for the past seven and a half years all efforts to reduce our dependence upon oil.

This country has a lot of very bright people. We were the first to place a man on the moon. We invented the transistor, which became the heart of integrated circuit chips. Had we pursued independence from oil at the beginning of the Bush administration, I believe that we would not be held up at the gasoline pump today.

Roger Hildreth. Richmond.

Don't Move to the Desert If You Don't Like Sand

Editor, Times-Dispatch:

I read the article about Hanover changing the rules for homeowners shooting guns on their property - people passing judgment on what types of weapons people should be allowed to shoot on their own property.

There are enough ordinances and laws governing the usage of people's personal property. People move to the country with unrealistic expectations. They complain about gunfire and the fragrance of nature around farms, call the people who have lived there for generations rednecks, and gripe about the loss of certain services they had in the urban areas.

They should be realistic about the areas they live in. It's like moving to the city and complaining about street lights coming in through the windows at night.

Carl Shuler Jr. Mechanicsville.

Is It Taxes, Tolls, Or . . . Treachery?

Editor, Times-Dispatch:

A recent front-page headline asked, "At Issue: Taxes or Tolls?"

I believe the issue should be : "Why our elected politicians, knowing well in advance that the time would come when these funds would be needed, chose to spend our money on other vote-buying schemes, thus creating this present crisis."

Gene Puckett. Midlothian.