Wednesday, October 9, 2002

I'm sorry, but I just can't help myself. Dr. Moffatt's smug assertions about the nature of the human person are just too much to take.

In his latest column, he assures us that morality is basically an artificial construct communicated to children primarily through a crude system of reward and punishment. It's almost as if he is saying we are little more than Pavlov's dog, learning only to avoid pain and seek pleasure as we struggle blindly in the world.

Has Dr. Moffatt or anyone else who has this mechanistic view of humanity ever considered that morality might be inherent to the human person? That rather than discovering morality through trial and error, kids actually have some innate sense of right and wrong and depend on parents to help them realize this sense more fully?

As a Christian, I believe that God has written morality on the hearts of all people. Our conscience is the inner voice that communicates this inherent morality to our conscious minds. Religion, far from being some artificial codification of moral rules, is an attempt to describe how this relationship between morality, God, and the individual person originated and operates. In so doing, it helps us understand ourselves more deeply than any pseudo-scientific dissection of the "human animal" could ever do.

Trey Hoffman

Sharpsburg