Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, November 9, 1994 TAG: 9411170006
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-10 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Goodman's reasoning in dismissing the book as pseudoscience is as follows: Results of the scientific studies and statistical analyses of those studies set forth in the book don't comport with my moral outlook or social perspective. Therefore, I reject the findings as immaterial, despite whatever scientific validity they may have, and condemn the authors as racists for reporting and analyzing these data.
I don't take issue with Goodman's right - as one in the business of dispensing opinions - to disagree with any social implications the authors may draw from the empirical literature. However, she apparently discards the book's potential scholarly merit because she dislikes the results. She implies that public opinion should govern the nature-nurture debate rather than empirical study. She doubtless would have praised a book in which the empirical evidence accorded with her intuitive views.
By her own admission, Goodman isn't competent to evaluate the book's scientific worth. Rather than dismissing the book's scholarly caliber in a righteous furor, she should leave those judgments to those qualified to make them.
HARTMAN E. BLANCHARD JR.
ROANOKE
Bullets or abortion, it's the same
EVERY time I think I've read everything there is to read about abortion, I read something new that just amazes me.
In Suellen Stracke's Oct. 24 letter to the editor (``Abortion isn't equal to murder''), she states that abortion isn't murdering a baby, but she also says it ``isn't the mere removal of lifeless tissue.'' Well, which is it?
You can't be on the fence on this issue. Either an unborn baby growing inside its mother's body is a baby or it's not. I read recently about a woman who shot herself in the stomach to kill her unborn baby because she couldn't afford an abortion. She was charged with killing her baby. What difference could it possibly make, whether she killed the baby with a bullet or an abortion procedure? After all, its her baby. If she wants to shoot a bullet into it, whose business is it?
PEGGY N. DUDLEY
UNION HALL
Churches, focus on Christ, not politics
THANK you for printing James W. Watkins' Oct. 24 commentary (``Paranoia infringes on matters of faith'') concerning his visit to his local Christian Coalition group. I, too, find it disturbing that many Christian organizations have become increasingly political. It appears that conservative politicians use their influence in the Christian community to spread unsubstantiated rumors about the Clinton administration, and to promote a climate of fear and paranoia. That these rumors and videos are blatant propaganda is obvious to anyone who has barest hold on the facts, and they serve only to further the political ambitions of those who create and promote them.
As a pastor, Watkins is right in ``refusing to prostitute my pulpit to passing partisan political winds.'' A religion based on love, peace and forgiveness must embrace everyone, of any political leaning. Christian organizations that engage in promoting hate, fear and vicious rumors aren't serving Christ, but are serving the politician.
LAURA SCOTT
ROANOKE
Halloween glorifies violence and evil
REGARDING your Oct. 31 front-page Christian-bashing article under the guise of defending a holiday (``Fears of Satan doom Halloween rites'' from The Washington Post):
Halloween ``wholesome''? What wholesomeness is there in giving so much attention and honor to so much that's obviously unwholesome? What do you find wholesome in the portrayal of violence, blood and gore, so synonymous with celebrating Halloween, that we should put it in the same category with Thanksgiving and Independence Day? Those things that were, at one time, regarded as intrinsically evil - such as witchcraft, shedding of innocent blood - we now celebrate and glorify with much frivolity.
Halloween has long passed the day of being an occasion to give candy to cute little trick-or treaters knocking on neighborhood doors. Whether Halloween has its origins in Satanism or not, it's definitely misnomered, as you would have it, a ``holiday.'' Holy it isn't!
BONNIE COVEY
RADFORD
Memo: ***CORRECTION***