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What our Readers Are Saying

Letters

to the Editor

This Kedron HOA is not involved in suit

Re: Front page article from Dec. 8, 2004, titled, "PTC ordered to pay paper's legal fees."

I am the president of the Kedron Hills Community Association aka Kedron Hills Homeowners Association in Peachtree City. Our subdivision is located off Peachtree Parkway below the Kedron Kroger.

Our homeowners association is not now nor has it ever been involved with any lawsuits or negotiations with developers regarding the proposed development of the Kedron Target or surrounding property.

The Peachtree City Planning Commission invited me to the initial discussion more than a year ago when the project was first announced.

Since we are located so far away from the development, the association made several comments regarding the development and traffic problems on Peachtree Parkway as well as the cart path destruction during development.

Our elementary children go to Crabapple Elementary School and the cart path destruction was an issue.

I formally am requesting that you stop referencing those parties suing or negotiating on behalf of neighborhoods surrounding the proposed development of a Target as the "Kedron Hills Homeowners Association."

I have made several phone calls to the Citizen trying to clarify this matter. I would like a clarification printed in the next Citizen explaining that the Kedron Hills Homeowners Association is directly tied to Kedron Hill subdivision and is not a party to any legal proceedings.

If any other persons are claiming to be part of Kedron Hills they are fraudulently using our subdivision name and association.

William M Kessler

Peachtree City, Ga.

Coach controversy had positive effect

The article, "Mom's campaign to fire FCHS head coach loses steam," printed in the Dec. 8 issue of The Citizen is not accurate.

Needless to say, the media exposure your paper and the AJC provided by covering the story has applied the pressure to the school that is necessary. The FCHS football program will be watched very carefully next season.

Your article and the letters printed brought attention to the situation beyond what I ever thought possible.

I was pleasantly surprised when a coach from another football program outside of Fayette County contacted me and informed me that the news had made it all the way to Athens, Ga.

Parents I already knew and parents I had not had the pleasure of meeting before have reached out to offer their support to ensure our youth receive the dedication and direction needed in our football program.

Even middle school parents with children joining the program next year have expressed concern and their support.

The 2005 football season might be the first successful season in a long time for FCHS. More than likely, the best athletes will be on the field.

Relationships and financial contributions will not play a major role in the makeup of our team (it would be a little obvious next year), even though the Touchdown Club has been very generous and purchased an $8,600 state-of-the art weight machine for the boys, and allocated up to $10,000 for lights to be put on the practice field (by the way, I hope the school system is picking up the electric bill on this).

Please note these gifts alone will not make a good program. Developing players and utilizing the right players on Friday night is what is needed.

Beyond the football program, your coverage has opened a line of communication between parents to speak out on other issues FCHS is experiencing with administration.

The FCHS leadership that has been in place for so long, and is often referred to as the "Good Ole Boy Network," has been served notice that a new day is dawning. (It is rumored Dr. Warr will be retiring from FCHS at the end of this year. We could only be so lucky).

Now let me clarify, there are some great teachers at FCHS and I have had and have the pleasure of my son being in their classes or tutored by them. But, there are problems at this school that will be addressed.

For parents reading this, I cannot say enough about documenting everything to fall back on. The U.S. Department of Education stated this is key with this school.

Thank you, Citizen, for the hype we needed to get the ball rolling!

P.S. I am Carolyn Michelle Jones for those that are confusing me with Carolyn Lane Jones.

Carolyn M. Jones

[email protected]

'The Santa effect' a better headline

This is a response to the article, "Why Santa Claus is bad for children." First, the article was originally entitled, "The Santa Effect," a much less inflammatory title. If you were going to change the title you should have changed it to, "Why Santa Claus is bad for Christianity.

The reason I know so much about the article is because my son wrote it. I am proud of him for having the courage to speak out against something that has almost completely taken over our celebration of Christmas. It is not easy to take on an icon that is so ingrained in our society that it is likened to taking on religion itself.

In the last few years I have come to understand what he is talking about. Try going to the store and finding an outdoor decoration that depicts the holy family.

You can find any form of blow-up figure that is imaginable from Winnie the Pooh to the Grinch. Pretty packages and Santa's sleigh are everywhere.

I challenge you, the next time you are driving at night to count how many creches you see compared to Santas and toy soldiers.

To make it even scarier, this is Fayette County, one of the most religiously conservative places I have ever lived.

Why have we moved so far away from the true purpose of Christmas? Why do we all rush to the mall for that picture of our little ones with Santa? Is it possible that Satan, who has a great deal of power on this earth, is just reveling in how lost we have become?

We take nothing away from our children's ability to imagine and play make-believe by telling them the truth about why we celebrate Christmas.

There are plenty of places for those activities: A good book, a day in the woods, a dollhouse, a play fort. In fact, the truth is so much more thrilling than anything we can make up.

Consider this: In many countries the present-giving day is Jan. 6, "Little Christmas." This is the day the three kings (Wise Men, Magi), arrived to bring their gifts to the Christ child.

Why don't we have a King at the mall for children to visit? A Wise man, the one who brought the gold, frankincense and myrrh, the true gift-giver?

Please don't get me wrong. We have a tree, we give gifts, we even hang stockings. But, there is a creche in our front yard and another one under our tree. We are trying very hard to keep our eyes and our hearts centered on the reason we celebrate Christmas.

Christmas is not about snowmen and lights, it in not about who gets the most presents, it is not about the North Pole and little elves.

When the time comes and we are standing before our Lord, do you think he is going to be in a fuzzy red suit saying, "Ho, Ho, Ho"? He is more likely to be standing there with a tear in his eye as he reviews our Christmases past when we "Hung the stockings with care", instead of celebrating the birth of the Son of God.

May we all work harder at remembering that Jesus truly is the reason for the season!

Becky Wallace

Fayetteville, Ga.

Finally, the truth about Santa Claus

Thank you for someone finally having the courage to speak their mind openly about Santa.

Ever since my daughter was very young she has known the truth. I agree completely with Tim Wallace and his well-written letter to the editor (Dec 8 issue).

I, too, believe that our children deserve not to be lied to. Why has society created this false god and taken the glory away from the One who so rightly deserves it?

I have stood my ground through years of well-meaning people saying that I was depriving my daughter of the "magic" of Christmas. Excuse me? Where in the world are our priorities? On Santa, toys and greed? What a shame.

I hope that parents will one day wake up to see what a terrible mistake they are making by continuing this "tradition." Give your children the real story.

Tell them about Saint Nicholas and give them an understanding of how the whole Santa myth got started. Then tell them that some children like to honor Saint Nicholas by pretending that he comes to visit us for Christmas.

It is fun to pretend, all children understand that. But, make it clear that it is just that: Pretend. The focus should always be on Jesus and his birth. Isn't that the real reason for the season anyway?

Delia Frederick

Peachtree City, Ga.

Blind faith or rational faith: Which is it?

Last week Jason Crain made the statement that faith in general is "based on a lack of evidence, not the existence of it."

This is true of the blind faiths of most world religions, including humanism, but when it comes to the Christian faith, nothing could be further from the truth.

Faith in the existence of an intelligent Creator is supported by tremendous evidence. The humanist belief there is no God is the blind faith that is held in spite of the evidence.

It would take many issues of your paper to cover most of the evidence but I would like to mention just a few.

Suppose one comes across a book called "War and Peace." Anyone that does not come to the table with total bias will perceive that the information and the complexity contained in the book is great evidence the book had an intelligent creator.

Carl Sagan vainly hoped for that one intelligible message from space that would "prove" that there was intelligent life elsewhere in the universe.

DNA is not just a message, it is an entire language complete with punctuation. DNA tells stories that are far more complex and contain far more information than the book called "War and Peace." Why is this not considered evidence there is an intelligent Creator behind the existence of the DNA?

The humanist position equates to a faith that the book "War and Peace" had no creator, that it is the result of purely natural, undirected forces.

Which is the faith that is based on the evidence and which is the blind faith that goes against the evidence?

The existence of our life-sustaining planet is a possibility that is so remote, it takes blind faith to believe it is the result of purely natural forces.

There are many factors required for us to be able to live here. Our distance from the sun, the tilt of the earth, the stability of our rotation, the size of our sun, the sun's distance to the nearest star, the size of the moon, our location within the galaxy, the age of our galaxy, are just a few of the hundreds of characteristics that must be "just right" for life to be possible on this privileged planet.

Even considering the vast size of the universe, to believe that we are here without an intelligent Creator is like having the faith that someone can win the lottery 100,000 times in a row without any special help.

Which is the faith that is based on the evidence and which is the blind faith that goes against the evidence?

The appearance of the "first life" is a possibility that is so ridiculously remote that many humanists are giving up hope of ever finding an explanation based on purely natural forces.

About 40 years ago, mathematical biologist Harold Morowitz calculated that the odds of assembling even the simplest one-cell life out of a primordial soup even under ideal conditions to be 1 chance in 10 raised to the 100,000th power. That is a 1 followed by one hundred thousand zeroes.

While there has been some pushing and pulling on that number over the years, the estimate has never been substantially overturned.

Getting all the chemicals to form the necessary amino acids to form the necessary chains to form the necessary atomic structures to form the necessary cell structures for even the simplest cell to form by natural forces, requires a faith that must be the textbook definition of a blind faith.

Even getting over these overwhelming odds, you would still only have a structure; something (or SOMEONE) still has to get the life going.

Science tells us that life only comes from life. Well, except when they don't want it to be that way.

Which is the faith that is based on the evidence and which is the blind faith that goes against the evidence?

These are just three of many evidences upon which our faith is based. Believing there is no Creator in spite of the evidence, that is the blind faith.

Pepper Adams

Peachtree City, Ga.

Stem cells: The soul exists, but that's beside the point in this debate

I apologize, Mr. Crain. I did not mean to characterize your assessment of my argument in a positive light in order to flatter myself. Rather, it was my impression that we were engaged in polite discourse and were acknowledging the merits of each other's arguments, even if we ultimately disagree.

That being said, I'm very grateful to you for providing many fruitful topics for discussion. The question of souls and their existence is the first.

You may not believe in them, but in a country with democratic principles, you have to take notice of the fact that about 80 percent of people do.

Moreover, every culture throughout history has believed in the soul or in some other similar concept. That may not be scientific proof, but it cannot be dismissed as irrelevant, either.

On a more scientific level, while the soul cannot be proven empirically, that doesn't mean it doesn't exist.

You believe in plenty of things which aren't provable by science: human will, courage, friendship, sympathy, and love.

Love is the prime motivating force in the world, binding parents to children, husbands to wives, dogs to bones, etc. Yet, it is utterly unprovable in a scientific sense because it is not made of matter.

A materialist is someone like you who only believes that which is provable by the scientific method. There are many such people around. Some of them, like Joseph Stalin and Pol Pot, didn't believe in God or love and used their materialist philosophies to justify the deaths of millions. But I digress.

I am a realist. I believe in what reality demonstrates to me. Sometimes science confirms a given reality, sometimes experience does, and sometimes a certain reality has to be taught to me by a greater authority than myself, such as the Bible or the Church.

Whatever you think of the concept of "soul," the fact remains that something is noticeably different about living things compared to dead ones. Let's call that difference "life" and distinguish between life and mere matter.

Life is characterized by its animating force. It causes the being it inhabits to move, change, and develop. In the case of humans, the life force is also characterized by reasoning and the higher emotions.

An embryo may not exhibit all characteristics of human life, but it does not lack them absolutely, either. It moves, changes, develops.

At some point, as early as the first trimester, it feels pain. If normal development takes place, it soon achieves at least a modicum of reason and emotion, even before birth.

So, when does the embryo go from being mere life, like a plant or amoeba, to being a human life?

I contend that occurs at conception, when the separate "lives" of the sperm and egg end as they fuse into the single life of the zygote.

You may disagree, and I may call that in-dwelling life a "soul," but please don't think that my argument is so easily reducible to whether science says the soul exists or not (if you want to read a philosophical proof of the soul, please consult Thomas Aquinas, although his proofs are generally too long and difficult for most).

Regarding your argument about the one scientist who claims adult stem cells are useless for curing diabetes, I would say the following.

First, that is only one scientist. What does the scientific community say? I bet there are others who disagree with this one guy.

Second, embryonic stem cells have not been proven capable of curing ANYTHING yet. You are someone who requires proof, after all, so I would think this would be an important consideration.

As a reminder, adult stem cells have already been proven to cure over 50 diseases.

Third, even if embryonic stem cells could cure diabetes, it would not make destroying the embryo acceptable.

I don't care if embryonic stem cells could cure every single disease in the universe. That would not legitimize killing one life to save another because I believe, based on science AND faith, that an embryo is a human life (still not sure what you consider it, though).

Your explanation of Catholicism and the Catechism was pretty good, but you misunderstood my point. I was not implying that what the pope or the catechism affirm as truth is insignificant by calling it the tip of the iceberg.

What I meant was that behind the catechism and the pope's solemn pronouncements on faith is a mountain of scriptural evidence, theology, philosophy, and teaching tradition.

I agree with the pope on embryonic stem cells not just because he's the pope, but because the underlying theology and philosophy of his statement is supported by 2,000 years of consistent reverence for the sacredness of life by the Catholic Church.

(By the way, what is so wrong with defending human life? You'd think those of us who are defending the sacredness of all human life were trying to bring smoking