Assess the view that conscience is given to us by God.

Authors Avatar

Lila Muneer

Assess the view that conscience is given to us by God.

The conscience is usually seen as a device for moral decision making, it gives us a feeling or sense of morally right or wrong actions. So where does the conscience come from? Thinkers such as Newman and Aquinas argue that the conscience is God given. However there is a strong case against this put forward by Piaget and Kohlberg.

Newman believed conscience was the voice of God. He said the conscience should be as equally acknowledged as memory, reason and imagination as a part of our psychology. He claimed that the conscience is an indisputable fact of our psychology. For Newman the conscience is a device for governing our moral choices, he states that without conscience there could not be morality (precondition) and that conscience converts our moral feelings into moral rules, it is authoritative. This is proven by the fact that we feel guilt or shame when we ignore our conscience, we would not have these feelings if conscience did not have authority. As a result of this we are duty bound to obey our conscience. Newman states that the feelings that conscience draws out of us imply a higher order that is able to instil fear into us and inflict punishment onto us. Newman states “there is a sanction higher than self” and as we regard the conscience as an independent arbiter it cannot instil fear into us itself. Newman states that this then implies the existence of “one to whom we are responsible” this means that conscience is the voice God.

Newman’s view holds some strength as it accepts the strange nature of conscience in naturalistic terms (unlike Aquinas), conscience is an intuition.  He bases his idea of conscience on our own experience of conscience. However, Newman cannot not account for moral conflict, why are there times when we genuinely don’t know what to do? Newman states that conscience is the voice of God, the voice of God should be universal, so why do we have cultural and moral relativism? The idea of God is not necessary, Dawkins explains that cooperation is a desirable trait and therefore conscience can be explained by evolution. Taking the fact that we have moral and cultural relativism into account it seems that conscience cannot be the voice of God. An evolutionary standpoint as suggested by Dawkins seems more logical.

Join now!

Aquinas gives a rationalistic account of conscience (compared to the intuitive account of Newman). Conscience is a process or tool which allows us to reach informed moral decisions. Aquinas believes conscience comes in two parts, synderisis the knowledge of right and wrong which is God given and conscienta which is our application of synderisis to moral situations. So for Aquinas conscience is the act of applying our God given knowledge of right and wrong (natural law theory) to what we do. Aquinas states that your conscience can lead you to make the wrong decision but people cannot knowingly do wrong; ...

This is a preview of the whole essay