Sunday, May 20, 2007

Our Consciences

Is our conscience genetic or is it acquired? It appears that having a conscience (for humans) is as genetically determined as a woman having menarche. However, what "triggers" that conscience is mostly acquired.

Studies have shown that it is very difficult and sometimes impossible for feral children who have been found after a certain age to ever acquire the impulse control and moral judgement deemed mature. Allowing everyone to answer only to their own conscience would certainly not be efficient at ensuring behaviorial conformity or tribal continuity. But is that the role of religion -- to ensure behaviorial conformity and tribal continuity? Whether one believes the answer to that is "yes" or "no", it's true that religion is used as a tool to do just that. 

While it's important, I'm not talking about our conscience's role in maintaining social order. I'm talking about our fealty to our conscience, regardless of whether the behavior such fealty precipitates appears good, bad, or ugly. We all have a choice at all stages of life to be true to whatever our conscience requires of us -- or to go against it. 

This presents a behavioral dichotomy. Our behavior may be wrong, and rightly condemned, and yet I believe we should do what we believed is right, as determined by the situation. As a species, we govern the behavior of our members. We reward behavior we approve of and punish behavior we don't. Nature governs by authority of evolutionary instincts, which have as its goal the survival of our species. Our goal should be to judge motives, not our knowledge or success.

My ultimate point is that I don't believe it's the deed or belief that determines our sin or righteousness. It's our fidelity to our conscience, regardless of whether it's considered right or wrong according to books, laws, or dogmas. I could drop the hammer on Hitler, but I would not call it punishment. I would call it removal of something that harms people, the same as a bacterial infection or a hydrophobic dog. I would judge their acts as unacceptable and do what was required to stop them, but any judgement of them is out of my league.

Granddad

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