| Sub-heading : God or Conscience?
Man creates a god in his imagination who is his moral arbiter. He is thus externalising his conscience which was provided by nature to safeguard against the chaos of free will. Conscience when listened to is uncompromising, so if his courage fails him, man subjectively invokes the help of a god presumed to be kind, loving, forgiving, helpful and all-powerful. The adherents of some religions even think they are the chosen people of their god and that he will aid them against their enemies. These beliefs are dangerously subjective and counterproductive since they weaken personal initiative. They also explain why the supernatural religions have made so little positive impact on mankind. If such a god existed and he was able to influence human behaviour, it could only be via the conscience which is man’s only source of knowledge of right and wrong. As the conscience nature endowed man with is autonomous, his help would serve no purpose, which predicates against the existence of a god. Those who put their trust in God are simply expressing their own psychological need whose fulfillment requires his existence.
When confession is made to God or to a priest they become surrogates for conscience. The motive for such confession can only be to escape the consequences of having disobeyed the conscience. Nature has not only endowed man with conscience but also with a sense of guilt as a reminder that the conscience has been ignored. Without the capacity for guilt man could become very dangerous. The act of confession is therefore hypocrisy or desperation. The alarm sounded by guilt is the signal to desist and to make amends. The prior knowledge that confession is an option undermines the conscience.
The human personality inevitably lacks coherence since it has been modified and added to piecemeal, according to the requirements of evolution. Man’s instinctual motivation takes place in a different part of the brain to his reason, so they remain uncoordinated and often at variance. Before man evolved from instinct to reason procreation was initiated and supervised by instinct, and so no moral questions arose. When man attained to reason he acquired the ability to exploit his sexuality, but nature perceived the problem arising from evolution and endowed him with conscience. Thus man had the means of avoiding moral chaos while retaining his autonomy. If God rather than conscience were the moral arbiter, man would become an automaton and would be morally diminished.
Although nature endowed man with conscience, it was for pragmatic reasons only. She herself does not have conscience but a certain integrity motivated by the need for survival of the species. Conscience being optional, free will enables man to use it in ways more noble than nature’s utilitarian purpose. Those who find it difficult to accept the unsentimental but bountiful reality of nature. Prefer to attribute conscience to God whom they credit with being willing to love, forgive and reward man. But they fail to see that if God as creator is responsible for nature, He cannot be morally superior to her.
In schools instead of religious instruction, which appeals to the emotions rather than to reason, it would be more productive to explain how nature, loosing control of man through the instincts, devised conscience to bring order to the potetial chaos of free will, and t5hus gave him the option of moraql autonomy. Thus children would become confident of being able to cope with life themselves rather than automatously feel the need for external help and consolation.
Because of their otherworldly preoccupations, religious institutions epitomise subjective complacency rather than the unrelenting zeal for the objective truth. Thereby they devitalise conscience and so deny themselves the enlightenment which would help sustain their credibility and relevance. To accept beliefs acquired automatously without the endorsement of intellect underwritten by conscience, is recklessly credulous and can only bring in train further erroneous thinking. Although conscience manifests itself in such areas as human rights, tolerance, the environment, and social and economic aid, it is far from having the ubiquity that a well -ordered world requires.As conscience is made optional by free will, and as its absence is a prime cause of ignorance and vice, it is vital that educational institutions take on the education of conscience. As conscience is the driving force behind all true religion, there should be no abstentions on religious grounds.
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