MAILBAG:

I hope Judge Gray (“Welfare programs are a bad deal,” Jan. 6) demands more substantial evidence when hearing a case than he offers when proposing his economic theories.

In his piece he states America’s efforts in the last several decades to alleviate poverty have failed. His proof, other than some bumper sticker he saw? We still have poverty. Pardon me? Isn’t that like saying, “Gee, some Americans still smell bad. Guess there’s no point to any of us taking showers.” Or, “There’s still crime in America. Obviously we need to get rid of our judges and court system.”

If we want to evaluate the value of our welfare programs, minimum wage laws, etc., we need to ask ourselves what the country would be like without having had these programs. Tough question to answer. We could take a quick trip to the countries in the world that don’t have these programs and look for poor people. We’d see plenty. Or we could look to our own history. My parents lived through the Great Depression, before the days of government programs, and told me heart-wrenching stories of hunger and humiliation, of roaming the country looking for work.

My father was a strong, proud, hard-working man who would take any job and put his whole heart into it. He was also deferential to his employers, calling them “sir” and removing his cap in their presence. These employers were still not likely to pay my dad what he was worth, though. They paid as little as they could get away with.

Nor was he ever called to testify before Congress about minimum wage laws. As the author pointed out, we don’t seem to ever actually ask poor people what they think. Just so you know, my dad totally supported minimum wage laws. He had suffered too much at the hands of unscrupulous employers. And he would have been highly offended by wealthy people (like Gray) pretending to speak for him.

About 2,000 years ago a very important religious leader roamed this planet. He spent a great deal of time feeding the poor and healing the sick. You know whom I’m talking about. Our current president claims to lead his life by this man’s principles. On a certain occasion Jesus is said to have fed thousands with a few loaves and fishes. Do you really think that on the next day, if his apostles came to him and said the people still needed food, he would have said, “What? They’re hungry again? Well, I guess that didn’t work.”

No, Jesus continued healing and feeding people because it was right, not because it was the most economically feasible thing to do. And that’s why we should do it. Because it’s right.

JOE ROBINSON

Now let’s see the evidence for evolution

“Who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge” (Job 38:2): This was God’s question for Job.

My question for the National Academy of Sciences and Institute of Medicine: Show me your “overwhelming evidence supporting evolution.”

Tell me how the genesis of the universe occurred. Show me the observable irrefutable chain of evidence linking Homo Sapiens to the “primordial soup.”

Please demonstrate your repeatable experiments proving the validity of your evolutionary hypothesis. Enumerate the ways in which you have conducted fair experiments by controlling or eliminating all the variables.

The Emperor has no clothes. What should be taught in our classrooms is truth, not mere hypothesis and conjecture masquerading as demonstrable scientific theory.

WAYNE LEFFLER

Costa Mesa