[Vision2020] 9/12/2005 Daily News Letter to the Editor

[Saundra Lund]

Visionaries:

A friend forwarded to me the following Letter to the Editor, which appeared
in yesterday's (9/12/2005) Daily News.  In light of Doug Jones' bizarre
excerpting of it, I thought folks might appreciate the ability to read Mr.
Campbell's letter in its entirety.
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Find a more qualified writer for column

If the Moscow-Pullman Daily News insists on giving a weekly column to Ed
Iverson (Opinion, August, 27 & 28), then it at least should also plan to
reserve a weekly space in the "Letters to the Editor" section for me. 
Iverson claims that "The source of moral authority is either the Christian
scriptures (or something similar) or it is personal and individualistic."
There are (at least) two problems with this comment. 

First, it is a false dilemma. The Scottish philosopher David Hume, for
instance, held that morality was founded on human sentiment. This is neither
scriptural nor individualistic, since human sentiment is something that we
all share. There are other views, but Hume's is particularly interesting in
the context of Iverson's column since it speaks to the connection between
morality and "a mother's grief" without resorting to relativism. 

Second, the Divine Command Theory that Iverson endorses - which lies behind
the alleged moral authority of Christian scripture - is problematic for
exactly the same reason that relativism is problematic. In fact, the former
leads to the latter. If moral truth is founded on the mere word of God, then
it can change - for an all-powerful God can change his words. If God came up
with a new scripture making abortion moral, then Iverson would have to admit
that it was so even though he now thinks that it is immoral. If Iverson
claims that God would never do that, then he is relying on something more
than God's mere words. 

It is a shame that, in an area with two state universities, the Daily News
cannot find a more qualified person to lecture us each week about such an
important and delicate topic as the nature of morality. 


Joe Campbell
Moscow 
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Saundra Lund
Moscow, ID

The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good people to do
nothing.
Edmund Burke

***** Original material contained herein is Copyright 2005, Saundra Lund.
Do not copy, forward, excerpt, or reproduce outside the Vision 2020 forum
without the express written permission of the author.*****