Moral judgments are like that

David Brooks wrote this in a column in the New York Times humbly entitled "The End of Philosophy:"
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/07/opinion/07Brooks.html?_r=3&ref=opinion

"Think of what happens when you put a new food into your mouth. You don’t have to decide if it’s disgusting. You just know. You don’t have to decide if a landscape is beautiful. You just know. Moral judgments are like that. "

Now let's play a game. Suppose that you did know who wrote this or where it was published. Give some reactions to it. As one who teaches undergraduates, if I found this in a paper I would flunk the student. But how about you? Here are some other random reactions I would have:

• I wonder if this person ever went to college
• So the difference between Hitler and Mother Theresa was differing taste buds . . .
• What would it be like never to have ever been stumped by a moral dilemma? Is he God?
• I wonder what he thinks minds are for? Calculating interest on bonds?
• I wonder what he would say to a man who said: "Killing is sweet. It is a high like no other."
• Is it possible this person reads books or has he learned everything he knows from TV?
• I hope I never find this person in a position of authority over me

I hear that The New York Times is possibly going to go bankrupt - in a financial sense. But it went bankrupt in an intellectual sense some time ago. Imagine, they actually paid him to write that for them! Wow . . . he could sell refrigerators to Eskimos and get them to pay extra if he threw in a subscription to the NYT!

By the way, like Mark Shea, I'm tired of hearing about the End of History, the End of Faith, the End of Philosophy. http://markshea.blogspot.com/2009/04/end-of-op-ed-pieces.html

Give us a break from the narcissism is right. I'm launching a new movement called "The End of Titles Proclaiming the End of Things." The only "End" we should be interested in is the Return of Christ, the coming of the Kingdom and the end of sin.