Missionaries not useful

Dear Editor:

A Brimfield church hosted speakers from the “Arctic Region of the North Pole.”

Students from this church find that “their faith is under fire in … classes dealing with such topics as biology.” (March 23) Maybe geography, too?

And then a member wants to go to Nunavut Territory as a missionary because “currently the only churches there are frauds.” And what church isn’t ??! (Church … religion … fraud … the words go together.)

I know such comments will annoy the “true believers,” but I remind the rest of us that the work of these missionaries is NOT a good thing. The world does not need more people trying to spread their particular, irrational mythologies to others.

We have quite enough religion in the world; we could use a lot more rationality.

Dianne Centa

University Libraries & Media Services

Won’t get fooled again

Dear editor,

When I was growing up in the 1970s, global cooling was the established scientific consensus, reinforced by the blizzards of that era.

I was scared to death, because my parents were always reading and talking about the literature on a possible early ice age. My family was fooled once, we will not be fooled again.

Despite what Ken Riley told everyone at the Business Administration building, the Earth went through several cooling and warming periods before the industrial revolution. In fact, NASA has discovered that Mars’ polar caps are melting or receding. The cooling and warming cycles that planets go through probably has more to do with solar cycles than anything else.

Carbon dioxide is not a pollutant! CO2 is needed by plants and plankton in our plant’s oceans for photosynthesis. We should be more concerned about the actual air pollutants that we are breeding in our metropolitan areas. Fortunately, the six major pollutants, which include carbon monoxide and nitrogen oxide, have declined by 53 percent as the U.S. population has grown by 42 percent since 1970.

The Kyoto Treaty, which exempts major polluters such as China, is not the answer. Why is China exempted? China is classified as a developing nation. What a competitive advantage! American industries are burdened with environmental regulations, while China gets a pass so they can undercut their American competitors with their exports in the United States.

W. Roak Zeller

Kent, Ohio

Lenders left in a bind

Dear editor,

With two million homeowners defaulting on their mortgage payments, we are increasingly hearing denunciations of lenders for having loaned money to people who had no means of paying it back. But these denunciations reveal a disturbing double standard. For years, politicians pressured lenders to not discriminate against those with poor credit history and shaky finances. Now we have the despicable spectacle of politicians accusing lenders of not having discriminated enough and of having made too many risky loans.

Lenders are damned if they lend — and damned if they don’t. Whatever lenders do, politicians seem to always find their practices objectionable and will take advantage of any excuse to call for more regulations and increased political power over lending. Politicians should leave lenders alone, and instead of damning them, they should acknowledge their crucial role in making home ownership possible for so many people.

David Holcberg

Ayn Rand Institute

Irvine, California