Conscience Is the Voice of God

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Sigmund Freud was a psychiatrist who formed a very influential theory of personality. He believed that there was no such thing as a soul and his view of the mind was essentially mechanics. He concluded that the human personality consisted of three parts: the super-ego, the ego, and the id. The superego was a set of moral controls given to us by outside influences. It is often that our moral code or conscience and is often in conflict with the id. He believed it that it was the construct of the mind. The ego is the self- consciousness which is the part seen from the outside world. The ID is the unconscious self, part of our mind which contains basic drivers and represented memories. It is amoral, has no concerns about right and wrong and is only concerned with itself. For Freud, conscience is clearly connected with the sense of guilt we feel when we go against our conscience. Therefore it is only a construct of mind. Freud did not believe in any absolute moral law and held that our moral code, and thus the construct of our conscience, is shaped by our experiences, it is culturally dependent, and this explains the different moral codes found in societies. It is not a Voice of God. The Super ego exists in our subconscious and reflects negative experiences. The feeling of guilt is linked to the third stage of his theory of psycho-sexual development of the Oedipus complex, where Oedipus killed his father and married his mother. These sexual feelings get repressed into the unconscious which the forms the basis for the neuroses that lead to the concept of guilt. However, only following the super-ego leads to neurosis. The ego needs to find a balance between the id and the super-ego. For example, if a child learns their moral behaviour from their parents, teachers and other authorities, is any choice free? If the super ego internalises the disproval of others and makes the guilt conscience that grows into an internal force regardless of any individual rational thought or reflections, is it not just a form of moral control which traps us in its grasp?

The scientist Charles Darwin believed that conscience is not the voice of God, but a survival strategy. He claimed that we have self-promoting genes or selfish genes that are programmed for survival. He believed that we have developed over time. Our ancestors found that co-operation is often more successful than competition. He called it “lust to be nice”, and said that “we have the capacity to transcend our selfish genes.” This means that conscience is biologically programed into us as a result of millions of years of evolution. Dawkins argued that goodness is innate to human as we have evolved an innate sense of right and wrong. This idea is similar to what Butler and Newman put forward. A key weakness of this theory is that is completely ignores the role of socialization as one of the necessary components of the development of morality. We know that people have an idea of what is right and wrong based on the laws that work within their society. Even if one says that conscience is the Voice of God, we know that our experiences and society also are involved in shaping our morality.

It is difficult to come to a summary whether conscience is the voice of God. However, Conscience is clearly innate within us and is acquired by observation of others through authority members such as teachers, parents. People can sometimes be torn between what to do, which questions, whether conscience is the voice of God. I believe that it is down to God who tells us what we should or shouldn’t do.