Believers

Re "God's dupes," Opinion, March 15 I read with interest Sam Harris' article on Rep. Pete Stark's (D-Fremont) coming out as a nontheist. I am one of a possible minority of believers who wouldn't mind a nontheist as a president if his or her qualifications were stellar. I would actually prefer that to someone manipulating belief for political purposes. But Harris lost me when he claimed that "Dominionist Christians who openly call for homosexuals and blasphemers to be put to death" were "the truest of true believers."

An hour before Wednesday's Cal State Northridge-Cal State Los Angeles baseball game, CSUN Coach Terry Craven called his players together for one of those team meetings--a sort of spiritual you-gotta-believe revival--that's supposed to turn a struggling team around. It seemed as if Craven might as well have been straightening deck chairs on the Titanic. The Matadors were in a slump.

Re "That need for opium," Opinion, Oct. 6 Gregory Rodriguez makes two assumptions: that religious faith cannot be grounded in evidence; and that we must therefore find some psychological explanation for it, which, from Marx and Freud on, always turns out to be "fear." Both, methinks, are painfully condescending. People of faith believe for the same reason a person holds to any worldview -- it makes sense of a wider range of our deepest experiences. The view that religion is ultimately grounded in fear is thus just as much an article of "faith" as any. And less cogent, for it fails to consider the possibility that faith appeals not to our weaknesses but to our strengths, that believers believe not because their fears are soothed but because, like hearing a great piece of music, they have been awakened, emboldened, "surprised by joy."

Seaweed can shrink your waistline. Grow your hair. Bring down your blood pressure along with your blood sugar. Build up the strength of your bones and your brain. Make your joints stop aching and your bowels get moving. Give cancer short shrift, and give cellulite and wrinkles the old heave-ho. That is, if you believe the hype - only some of which is backed up by reliable evidence. The data are strongest that seaweed can reduce inflammation, premenstrual syndrome symptoms and even the growth of tumors (in animals)

Today, a century and a half after Charles Darwin published "On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection," the overwhelming majority of scientists in the United States accept Darwinian evolution as the basis for understanding how life on Earth developed. But although evolutionary theory is often portrayed as antithetical to religion, it has not destroyed the religious faith of the scientific community. According to a survey of members of the American Assn. for the Advancement of Science, conducted by the Pew Research Center in May and June this year, a majority of scientists (51%)

Los Angeles County sheriff's deputies and animal control officers were searching by air Thursday for four pit bulls believed to have mauled a woman to death earlier in the day in the Antelope Valley community of Littlerock. Hours after the attack, Los Angeles County Supervisor Michael D. Antonovich offered a $25,000 reward for information leading to the dogs' capture. The 63-year-old woman was out for her morning walk about 9 o'clock when she was mauled by the dogs. Her name has not been released.

"Oh, you mean the guy with the 70-year-old head and the 20-year-old body-builder body? That picture has got to be Photoshopped." Dr. Jeffry Life smiles when I tell him about the general reaction I get about the famous picture of him with his shirt off, the shot that turned a mild-mannered doctor in his mid-60s into a poster boy for super-fit aging and controversial hormone replacement Appearing in medical-clinic ads in airline magazines and...

Three people were shot to death, and a was fourth wounded, in a dispute that may have been over drugs at a Harbor Gateway apartment complex, officials said. Police said the incident appeared to be isolated. "There is no additional danger to the community members in the area," LAPD Capt. Nancy Lauer told reporters Friday. Police received a 911 call about 5:35 a.m. from a resident who reported hearing eight or nine gunshots in an apartment building in the 1600 block of West 205th Street.

The yellowing government survey map of San Nicolas Island dated from 1879, but it was quite clear: There was a big black dot on the southwest coast and, next to it, the words "Indian Cave. " For more than 20 years, Navy archaeologist Steve Schwartz searched for that cave. It was believed to be home to the island's most famous inhabitant, a Native American woman who survived on the island for 18 years, abandoned and alone, and became the inspiration for "Island of the Blue Dolphins," one of the 20th century's most popular novels for young readers.

Ruminah winces as she recalls the afternoon a mob ransacked her tiny hair salon, smashing windows and destroying both the business and her faith in justice in her homeland. More than a decade later, the reason she was attacked still haunts her: She is part Chinese. In May 1998, during two deadly days of racially fueled mayhem, rioters killed 1,000 people and raped 87 women, most of Chinese descent. Others cowered in their homes as the rape squads, reportedly led by army thugs, roamed the streets of Jakarta, the Indonesian capital.