Conscience

[Plane]

I was a little short with Plane on a different topic and I apologize. I want to try a different tactic for helping to understand something that is important.

An easy question, it shouldn't require any Internet searches and isn't a trick question in any way. Anyone may answer.

What is conscience?



Note "conscience" is very different from "consciousness" so please try not to confuse the two.

I probly enjoyed it , I accept your apology as genuine , you are pardoned.


I recall Mark Twain excoriateing his own conscience as completely useless , he said tht he would like to peel away all the parts of himself that have acreted through the training of society and family , pareing back the layers of himself that are the result of experience and the imprint of others untill he would reach the core of himself that was entirely and genuinely "me" and preserveing that ditch all the rest of that artificial , trite and phony "self " parts that were pasted on to his real self.

I was intregued by this idea , but I think he didn't really mean it , the result of that process would be an adult with the personality of a baby, not practical in any way to perform this peeling.

Conscience is something that is the result of training , so the different fashions of training current in diffrent eras naturally acheive diffrent results in detail , but the use of conscience as a tool of self controll for oneself and as a facilitator of social contact is almost universal in all societys I know about , very few people are truely Amoral and free of conscience, no society is .

Some people do burn their conscience untill it doesn't function , some seem to have an organic malfunction that prevents its operation , and some seem to have a weak conscience that doesn't guide them well. But most people have one and it is appropriate to the society that they live in.

Scriptural guidence helps to form a standard conscience , such that the scripture acts on the individual to help produce the conscience and on society to make the standard appropriate.

[Plane]

I was a little short with Plane on a different topic ....

I am curious , which was this?

[_JS]

Nonetheless, there is still a valid concept known as "conscience". The actual definition or opinions regarding the origins of this may have changed over the years, but i still is a valid concept. We all seem to agree on what a conscience is.


Don't we?

Very much so. The modern conception of a conscience is well-regarded and for the most part accepted across the world (though Eastern views may differ slightly).

Yet, in the past the conscience was considered valid and there was a consensus as well. It was simply a much different concept. The Greek synderesis and the Latin conscientia were far different concepts than what we have today.

[_JS]

I was a little short with Plane on a different topic ....

I am curious , which was this?

One of Rich's topics...Obama and satanism, or something like that.

[Plane]

Paul was a brilliant theologian (and in many ways the first theologian).
Constantine was a master of politics and warfare.
Muhammad was also a master of politics and he understood people with amazing acumen.

I would say that Paul was an excellent PR man. As a theologian, he was irrational and inconsistent, and a misogynist to boot.

Constantine was good at manipulating people.Of course, these were highly superstitious and uneducated people.

Mohammad was good at what he did, but he was a wacky fanatic who fortunately was born into one of the wackiest assemblages of fanaticism of a fanatical time.

I sure as hell would not take advice from any of them.

How does a person who acknoledges no authority in scripture develop a Conscience?

I seem to see such persons acting as if they do have a conscience , so I am not arguing that they don't , but I actually don't know where they got it from.


By the way , a conscience operates ahead of conscious thought , it may spur carefull thinking , but it operates before the carefull thinking begins so it is not scientific in operation ,it is con ,not pro ,science.

So is there an opposite product to con-science we could term pro-science which would operate in the opposite way?

[_JS]

Paul was a brilliant theologian (and in many ways the first theologian).
Constantine was a master of politics and warfare.
Muhammad was also a master of politics and he understood people with amazing acumen.

I would say that Paul was an excellent PR man. As a theologian, he was irrational and inconsistent, and a misogynist to boot.

Constantine was good at manipulating people.Of course, these were highly superstitious and uneducated people.

Mohammad was good at what he did, but he was a wacky fanatic who fortunately was born into one of the wackiest assemblages of fanaticism of a fanatical time.

I sure as hell would not take advice from any of them.

How does a person who acknoledges no authority in scripture develop a Conscience?

I seem to see such persons acting as if they do have a conscience , so I am not arguing that they don't , but I actually don't know where they got it from.


By the way , a conscience operates ahead of conscious thought , it may spur carefull thinking , but it operates before the carefull thinking begins so it is not scientific in operation ,it is con ,not pro ,science.

So is there an opposite product to con-science we could term pro-science which would operate in the opposite way?

Conscience is innate from creation by God, regardless of one's beliefs. That is the typical religious view. Not many Christian churches that I know of hold the view that one must be a certain faith to form a conscience.

Also, most people hold that a conscience operates both before and after decision-making.

[Plane]

Paul was a brilliant theologian (and in many ways the first theologian).
Constantine was a master of politics and warfare.
Muhammad was also a master of politics and he understood people with amazing acumen.

I would say that Paul was an excellent PR man. As a theologian, he was irrational and inconsistent, and a misogynist to boot.

Constantine was good at manipulating people.Of course, these were highly superstitious and uneducated people.

Mohammad was good at what he did, but he was a wacky fanatic who fortunately was born into one of the wackiest assemblages of fanaticism of a fanatical time.

I sure as hell would not take advice from any of them.

How does a person who acknowledges no authority in scripture develop a Conscience?

I seem to see such persons acting as if they do have a conscience , so I am not arguing that they don't , but I actually don't know where they got it from.


By the way , a conscience operates ahead of conscious thought , it may spur carefull thinking , but it operates before the carefull thinking begins so it is not scientific in operation ,it is con ,not pro ,science.

So is there an opposite product to con-science we could term pro-science which would operate in the opposite way?

Conscience is innate from creation by God, regardless of one's beliefs. That is the typical religious view. Not many Christian churches that I know of hold the view that one must be a certain faith to form a conscience.

Also, most people hold that a conscience operates both before and after decision-making.

This doesn't match my opinion , the scripture I thought in operation here was "Train up a child in the way he should go and when he is old he will not depart from it."

I think that you are right in the sense that conscience is nearly universal , but that some persons are free of it seems to argue against it being truly universal ,if a persons upbringing fails to inculcate a conscience does he develop one himself ? by what process?

Are we confusing" Moral Sense "with conscience ? I think a distinction could be made.

I was insuffeciently precice when I said that conscience operates before conscious thought , I didn't mean to imply that it then stopped when the conscious mind began , I agree that it operates during and after as well.