Conscience is actually two words. “Con” which means “with”and “science” which means “knowledge”. So, this one word means “with knowledge” and it denotes an entire study of many scientists and other people.
Most people who deny God also want to deny the existence of a conscience because it doesn’t make much sense if we all evolved. How did we get a section of ourselves that can determine between good and bad if we are senseless primordial soup-remakes?
That is the very purpose of the conscience: to alert of us of what is bad and good. If you don’t have a good conscience running then there is something wrong that must be explored.
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Conscience is a tool to make us survive longer. Just as much as our hands are, a tool to analyze the world, compute probabilities, built communities is very helpful for survival. Even if that was wrong it makes more sense than "magic man did it".
And FFS no atheist denies the conscscience of others, that's insane.
christian_leftie said it in fewer words than I was planning to.
Conscience is a combination of knowledge gained by experience, knowledge gained by teaching and basic empathy for others. All three working together to help us decide how to act. There is noting supernatural about it.
"Most people who deny God also want to deny the existence of a conscience because it doesn’t make much sense if we all evolved. "
Quia Latine exponere vis, dico tibi id non bonum esse quod non sequitur abuti. Nullo modo nullum numen praesumptum conscientiam negat. Argumentum enim tuum falsum et erroneum est. Vere stultissimus es.
"That is the very purpose of the conscience: to alert of us of what is bad and good. If you don’t have a good conscience running then there is something wrong that must be explored."
You fundies would be raping and killing if you weren't afraid of your imaginary giant man in the sky who will torture you if you don't obey him, by your own admission, while atheists manage to have moral standards without the threat of the magic man. There is something wrong that must be explored
What on earth is the stupid fundie talking about? Of course conscience is real, its a key evolutionary trait allowing us to form family groups and communities. Its both one of the reasons we invent gods, and one of the reasons we don't actually need them.
The first tentative steps towards a conscience was taken when the first social animals evolved. If you live in a group with other similar animals, you have to work together for the benefit of the whole group.
Many scientists are among those "people who deny God". They most defintely don't deny the existence of a conscience.
It must absolutely blow their mind that things that Xtians believe couldn't possibly have souls (dogs, other primates, dolphins, birds) will exhibit altruistic behavior, grieve, laugh, and exhibit moral characteristics.
There are adaptive advantages to altruistic behavior. Anthroplogist think that without altruistic behavior the conversion from hunter/gather to farming based societies would not have happened on the wide scale it did....
No atheist denies the existence of the conscience, though no skeptic accepts any claim that it is infallible. As any function developed by mutation and natural selection across generations, it stands to be both incomplete and biased toward social darwinistic mores. It takes an application of rational thought (hence the need for PHILOSOPHY) to recalibrate it for a species which now uses the word rather than the gamete as the basic unit means of adaptive communication.
It isn't atheists who deny the existence of the conscience. Quite the contrary, we often say that is what we rely on to make our moral decisions. Personally, I try very hard to avoid actions which will violate my conscience.
It is religious zealots who deny the existence of the conscience. THEY are the ones who often say things like "without gawd there is nothing to stop someone from stealing/murdering/kicking puppies/what have you." Their apparent lack of an internal moral compass seems to be a point of perverse pride for them.
I am sorry that Jacob will probably never read this. The issue is "already answered," ad nauseum, and frankly I am sick of it.
This conscience idea is easy to test. If it's an evolved attribute for social inhibitions then entire cultures will lack warnings from their cultures about specific things. If it isn't, then these inhibitions, coming from the one God, will be universal, speaking to each individual.
"How did we get a section of ourselves that can determine between good and bad if we are senseless primordial soup-remakes?"
Speak for yourself re. "senseless."
What kind of brain so thoroughly fails to grasp the idea that we evolved from lower life forms, that it insists we must still be lower life forms, contrary to all reason and observation, if that is the case?
As for conscience, here. Learn why we aren't your god's meat robot Tinker Toys.
Who denies the existence of the conscience? We may not agree that it's come angel or spirit sitting on our shoulder but we still agree that there's something inside us distinguishing right from wrong. It'd be stupid for a pack animal to exist without one. If you're trying to have a happy and healthy tribe, it doesn't do you any good if everyone is raping, killing, and stealing from other tribe members. Even if that tribe somehow didn't destroy itself, it'd certainly be immediately conquered by a more cooperative tribe.
Look at the meaning of the very word as you just defined it. It means to reflect on your actions with knowledge. That is what a conscience is.
It's not a little voice in your head that tells you what to do. That's schizophrenia.
This is very easy to refute. Why is a sense of right and wrong useful in evolutionary terms? Because if you consistently did wrong, if you lied and cheated unceasingly, you might be distrusted and shunned by your community. If you murdered and stole all the time, you would definitely be punished or exiled. So a sense of right and wrong is a part of socialisation, it's a part of our nature as social animals.
I love it when a fundie moron attempts to define the meaning of a word based on his lack of knowledge. From Merriam-Webster:Middle English, from Old French, from Latin conscientia, from conscient-, consciens (present participle of conscire to know, be conscious, from com- + scire to know)
@Dr.Shrinker: That's a very good point. Not only that, but if you're just obeying rules from a book, why do you need a conscience? When Abraham was ordered to kill his son, he just had to obey. A conscience would have been a burden to him. On those occasions when God orders you to do something which you feel is morally wrong, your conscience is just getting in the way. What this clearly demonstrates
"Conscience is actually two words. “Con” which means “with”and “science” which means “knowledge”. So, this one word means “with knowledge” and it denotes an entire study of many scientists and other people." Etymological fallacy
"Most people who deny God also want to deny the existence of a conscience because it doesn’t make much sense if we all evolved."
Nope. Most atheists believe in the existence of a conscience. Also, the evolutionary explanation of morality has been studied by scientists and is pretty well understood.
The characteristic of conscience makes one function better in groups. Those who live in groups survive better. If you don't "have a good conscience running" then you are a sociopath and likely function poorly in your group or may be expelled from your group.
P.S. In my experience, few atheists are sociopaths.
"Most people who deny God also want to deny the existence of a conscience because it doesn’t make much sense if we all evolved."
The question "How did we get a section of ourselves that can determine between good and bad if we are senseless primordial soup-remakes?" only makes sense if you reject a priori any claim that anything might have evolved. You could as easily ask "how did birds get beaks" or "how did squirrels get the sense to hoard nuts for the winter". It presupposes that there is a limit (arbitrary) to what traits may arise through evolution, usually those traits which the writer considers "special" and "unique" to human beings.
Because we are a social species. We live and survive in groups. Sure, you might be able to live comfortably if you just kill every other member of your tribe to keep all the resourced to yourself, except:
-You won't have any help gathering resources,
Thus, natural selection weeded out the "it's all about me" humans and favored the "we're all in this together" humans. And really, conscience makes even less sense for Christians to have, because they've got grace through faith alone. Why not just kill everyone else in your community and then confess your sins to Jesus? That way, you get to have your cake and eat it too, getting all the stuff for yourself on Earth and going to Heaven when you die. Why be good and saves when you can be bad and saved and get the same result?
These are exactly the same people that insist you must instill the fear of God in the children, teach the youth the way and immerse the young in the word of God.
Teach. We were all helpless unknowing infants once, a consience is just one development we aquire with experience. Some of us are lucky enough to learn that very little is inherent, certainly not the belief in a God.
Um, nonsense and lies. Atheists don't deny the conscience at all, nor does it "not make much sense if we evolved". It's fundies who make unsubstantiated claims like God being necessary for the existence of a conscience.
Confused?
So were we! You can find all of this, and more, on Fundies Say the Darndest Things!
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