The rhetoric such as that expressed by the writer of "Technology versus the church" (letter, Sept. 17) may sound convincing enough on the surface. But people who attempt to discredit biblically based beliefs by pitting the Bible against science and technology are only luring uninformed readers into believing in an imaginary contradiction that simply does not exist.

Scientific research and study continue to support what the Bible says, rather than refute it. And placing a buzz-word label such as "technology" upon mere humanistic theory and beliefs is akin to those who kept insisting that the emperor wasn’t naked, in Hans Christian Andersen’s story, "The Emperor’s New Clothes."

The topic of homosexuality was specifically mentioned in the letter, for example. And the rhetoric of the activists who support this issue is to consistently claim how science has shown us that people are born as homosexuals, when, in actuality, science has never shown us that. It has quite consistently shown just the opposite, in fact, and demonstrates that there are many external factors that may contribute to a person developing a homosexual orientation and behavior.

The writer also seemed to suggest that faith-based beliefs, in general, somehow equate to an absence of "free thinking" on the part of such individuals, and that religious beliefs are the "source" of all of our troubles in the Middle East. But given his own letter, it seems to me that the letter writer was claiming to have it all figured out, through some very closed-minded thinking of his own.

Chief Warrant Officer 4 Dean BaileyCamp Taji, Iraq