This is not a new debate, and I certainly don't have any new insights on the topic. But recently I have heard a few Christians make appeals to conscience on items where I think they can be shown to be at least partly wrong. In fact, I think they are entirely wrong, but am trying to be generous. This has made me more alert to secular folks, and those whose religion I don't know, referring to decisions made that are conscience decisions, even if they don't use those words. It turns out there is a lot of that. I had ceased noticing it very precisely.
It is even worse when Christians claim it is a conviction of the Holy Spirit, but we do that. It comes close to violating the Second Commandment, or the Third, depending on your numbering. (I had very good commenters on both those posts, BTW.)
I am having a hard time separating all these appeals to conscience from using "I just feel that..." as a reason. There may be some heritable component to conscience, but I believe it is largely formed, and fairly temporary. My evidence is that my own conscience has changed over time, sometimes for the better, but in other ways I am less sure. I have observed this in people I have known over time, and it is a product of who they have read and who they have associated themselves with. It is a little too malleable for my taste. Who you choose to associate with will change you. In fact, if you are trying to make personal changes, changing your associations in both 2-D and 3-D space is likely the best way to proceed. (I am including reading, music, movies, and other arts here.) You will become like them, all parents know in the back of their minds. While that is not always true - you may be the person who influences the others, and you may have multiple groups of association with varying degrees of influence over you, it is true most of the time, and it is one of the most common ways of deceiving ourselves. When you move to new digs, your neighbors aren't going to tell you it's in Snobtown, and even if that idea sneaks into your mind, they will be quick to reassure you that it's not so.
On the other hand, we think it is a terrible thing if someone has no conscience. Also, the point of virtue ethics is to train a conscience, not eliminate it. Do we endure the widespread abuse of conscience as a source of morality because it is the only garden that a good conscience can grow in? God seems to have taken that approach with humanity and free will. Paul also speaks approvingly of the consciences of non-believers - or pre-believers - in his letter to the Romans, that they already know some things are right, even though the Holy Spirit has not come to them.
I suspect some very smart people over the last 2000 years have weighed in on the matter, but it hasn't come up in my reading that I recall.
4 comments:
I've been writing down that stream of conscience that makes me what I am since 1984. As with you, I can look back into any snapshot of what I was way back when. At the outset I was just post college and embarked on a Navy career. One can see that focus from the first journals. Everyday started as a new page. Some were brief and some went on for pages. I grew in all ways as I rose in time and rank. You know what never changed? Yep. The core of my being was set at the outset and reinforced over the next 40 years. War College, War, Staff duty, Command and nothing shaked the foundations. It's a little scary to see the world go mad at such a tender age and realize that this is exactly who they are, who they will be, who they will always be and yes, I consider them vile ignorant little shits. Thanks to the schools of education that is what they are and what they will always be.
The Catholic Catechism has a great deal positive to say about conscience, certainly more than I have. https://www.vatican.va/archive/ccc_css/archive/catechism/p3s1c1a6.htm
There is the sense that it is a good thing, given by God, but fallen like everything else that man has touched.
A pang of conscience is more useful to warn me against a mistake than to confirm me in a course of action. If my conscience is screaming "That's wrong!" it's possible I'm just confusing a sick quirk (spiders! yecch!) with a true moral judgment, so maybe I should double check--but I'd be a fool to ignore the signal altogether, and in case of any doubt I'd better go with the warning. But what if my conscience is warmly assuring me "That's OK"? It's not a good idea to argue, like Marianne Dashwood, that a course of action must be good because it makes us happy, and we are never happy when we know we are doing wrong. The chances are too great that we're merely gratified and oblivious.
@ T99, that accords more with what the Catholic teaching is, regarding the conscience as a warning system, and often a good one, rather than a permission system, where it is inadequate.
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