‘Conscience is the voice of god’ Discuss.

Most people would agree that conscience is the reasoned voice inside us that guides and tells us what we should and shouldn’t do. However peoples views on the origins of conscience can differ a lot; whether people belief its Gods doing or whether it’s innate or even whether it is acquired. In this essay I will be showing the viewpoints of various philosophers with their beliefs on whether conscience is or isn’t the voice of God. Ultimately I believe that conscience is not the voice of God.

John Henry Newman believed that conscience was the voice of God, and that following the suggestions of your conscience gives the same significance as to follow God’s laws and values. Newman used conscience as proof for the existence of God. He said that the fact that we feel guilty, even when it is impossible for anyone to know what we have done, for example, having bad thoughts about someone, proves that ‘there is one to whom we are responsible to’. This feeling we have of being accountable was how Newman saw our conscience. He believed that there must be a God that we are accountable to and the reason we feel guilty for wrong thoughts or actions was because we all knew that someone, who Newman believed was God, was looking down on us and we had to impress him in a sense. However there was a flaw to his theory as he didn’t consider people that perhaps don’t ever feel guilty. Also those who don’t believe in God – do they not have a conscience? If they hear no voice telling them what to do, how can you prove God exists?

Thomas Aquinas , a religious philosopher, also believed that conscience is the voice of God. He believed that conscience was the voice of reason but that our basic sense of right or wrong, synderesis as he called it, was put in place by God. In a way, synderesis was seen as a rule book as it was values and principles that God set out for us; and God gave us the ability to apply these rules to different situations. Aquinas believed that synderesis was reliable as it was from God. He believed conscience can make mistakes if it not provided with all necessary information when making decisions. Aquinas said that conscience, when correctly applied, will lead us to discover the natural moral law within human nature. Reason moves from knowledge of very general precepts to more specific secondary precepts. Developing our conscience is about acquiring, through repeated actions, for example, an honest person becomes honest through continuously repeating honest actions as Aquinas believed that practice makes it perfect. Aquinas said that most people would generally say conscience is separated: moral codes are set by God and humans work out how to follow them. Although this would seem to suggest conscience is the voice of God, Aquinas relied on reason that God was discussing conscience.
Another philosopher who believed that conscience was the voice of God was Joseph Butler, an Anglican Bishop. For Butler there are two basic principles of human influence: self-love and benevolence. Conscience is the balancing force of these two influences; It directs us towards the interests of others and away from ourselves. Like Aquinas, Butler argued that we have been made in the image of God with the ability to reason. Conscience is based on moral reason - a component of the conscious mind. It is innately God-given and gives us the capacity to make our own decisions based on Gods influence on our conscience. Butler would say that we must listen to our conscience because it allows us to act as a moral judge. It is not an instinctive feeling about what is right - instead, it is an ability to use reason to weigh up factors in a moral decision. Butler says we have a number of influences, but the conscience should not be seen as merely one among many drives or passions. The conscience should have ultimate authority over all of our instincts.

On the other hand, there are also beliefs that our conscience is not the voice of God – shown by the views of Sigmund Freud and Erich Fromm. Freud believed that people were psychologically conditioned to act in a certain way, and their sense of right and wrong are not absolutes, but depend on our life experience and our society. Freud believed that figures such as parents, religion and school impose a great influence on our decision-making than our conscience, which is said to be the voice of God. These ‘rules’ influenced on us are believed to over ride the conscience that is innate. An individual therefore leans to restrain its desires by the rules it as internalised through other types of authority, excluding God. According to Freud, a good conscience was the result of following the rules; a guilty conscience was when instincts were followed and rules are consequently broken. These rules can be so deeply ingrained as they have been influenced at such a young age that people may feel their conscience is the voice of God, when in fact they have inherited these rules and guilt.

Erich Fromm also supported the view that conscience is constructed by external authorities. He argued that all humans are influenced by external authorities, particularly from a young age. Parents, teachers, and church leaders etc., apply rules and punish those who break them. He believed that these rules are internalised by the individual. Disobedience and general failings to following these rules produces guilt, which can weaken our power and makes us more obedient to authority. This argument is strong in that we can see it happening in real life – children from a very early age can tell when they have done something against the rules given to them by figures of authority, e.g. their parents. Many killers and criminals did not have stable father figures and role models as children, and this has resulted in a non-existent morality. If conscience can change so dramatically depending on upbringing, then how can it be considered the voice of God?

To conclude, I support Erich Fromm and Sigmund Freud’s views that our conscience is not the voice of God. The way we have been bought up overalls this idea that God is there telling us what to do. Our parents ultimately have the biggest influence on our decision-making and what we think is right or wrong. Society also has a massive impact on our conscience as things can change from right to wrong depending on the society or country. For example, keeping dogs in cages can be seen as the right thing to do in China, however in the UK that is seen as wrong, which is due to how society is and how people have been bought up.