Fine for using a phone while driving should be increased

I am astounded the Government has not immediately increased the $80 fine for using a hand-held mobile now more road deaths are caused by their use than by speeding. It should be lifted to the fine which the minister responsible for speeding and mobile phone use, Phil Twyford, paid for using his mobile phone on a plane still on the tarmac — and so without risk to life. That was $500, not $80. How absurd is that difference? We need action now! Murray Hunter, Titirangi

Madcap idea

I was bemused to read Paul Little’ reference to creationism as a “long-discredited, madcap collection of myths”.

Let’s talk about the madcap “myths” of the evolution theory shall we?

Firstly, life began with a microbe in primordial soup that gained the ability to reproduce. How? We don’t know. It was obviously by chance, because there was no creator. Unfortunately no one, in the entire history of science, even in the highly controlled conditions of a science lab, has been able to repeat it.

Secondly, each species is the product of millions of incremental genetic mutations. So where are the zillions of transitional life forms we should see in the fossil record?

Thirdly, even the highly complex biological machines in our bodies that Darwin couldn’t see, but we can (thanks to the electron microscope), are a product of time and chance.

Perhaps creationism isn’t such a madcap idea after all. Eric Wolters, Tauranga

Different wavelength

Paul Little writes: “One day we will understand a lot more about the mysteries of time and space.” This, however, depends on humanity not self-destructing first!

In response to his dismissive comments on creationism, which he classes as “superstition”, science tells us that helium, hydrogen and lithium are the same elements from which everything in the universe has been made. Why and how did these exist and contain the right properties in the right proportions to develop into the world and all the life forms within it?

The “solid” matter composing the entire human race would fit into a thimble. So, we are little more than an assembly of magnetic fields and electrical impulses, or sophisticated holograms, and so is everything we see. Could that part of our being known as our soul be transported into another dimension (dark matter) by a change of wavelength?

To produce the energy to power our existence, each of the trillions of cells in our bodies contain billions of proteins which, as well as performing a multitude of tasks, transfers food and oxygen into the electricity we require. Why?

Our existence depends on a series of minute margins in proportions and relationships between many elements. Why?

It seems apparent that the more truths science understands, the less likely it is that they are the result of unorchestrated chance.

Atheists may tell us that all of the unimaginable complicated events that result in our existence and all that we know is the result of trial and error, coincidence or fluke. Really? In the words of an ancient unknown philosopher: “Pull the other one — it has bells on it.” Colin Hunt, location withheld

Have the confidence

A person can totally disagree with another opinion without feeling the other opinion has to be silenced.

Confidence in your idea means you don’t have to make the other people wrong for you to be right.

Unfortunately there are many people, many with a religious bent, who don’t have this attitude and immediately scream they are right. Avi Modlin, Orewa