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Can our conscience/sense of guilt be used as evidence for the existence of God?

A Divine Law Giver = God

Two options :This sense of moral responsibility comes from

u a sense we have that there is an objective moral law.
u `rom a conscience.

Ideas about conscience

Augustine:

+ Conscience is the innate voice of God. When we feel guilt, it is because God is
communicating to us the fact that we are not meeting his standard.
- Cannot be the case because each of us responds to conscience in a different way.
- Augustine¶s conscience cannot be used to establish God¶s existence because he
assumes that God exists in the first place.

Aquinas.
+ Saw Augustine¶s mistake and denied it was innate voice of God.
+ The only thing which was innate was our desire to do the good (synderesis)
+There are primary precepts established by God and our conscience is our reason
figuring out how we should respond to these ideas.
- Only the desire to do good could be implanted by God, so this argument is circular
too and can¶t be used to prove God¶s existence.

Kant ± 
" with philosophy, in his moral argument.
+ Breaks the circularity problem, by saying that God¶s existence can¶t be proved by
pure reason, since reason operates in time and space and God exists outside.
+ Suggests ought implies can and suggests that since we ought to achieve the
Summum Bonum, we can do, but not in this life. God is therefore required as a
postulate of practical reason.
- Davies successfully challenges Kant, saying it could easily be a ³Pantheon of
Kantian Minded Angels´ who were responsible for sustaining an afterlife.
- Kant may only prove that God is logically needed, which cannot prove that God
exists.

Trethowen ± develops Kant.

+ Each and everyone of us has value in the eyes of others ± there must be a source of
this value.
+In that case, there must be an ultimate source of Morality.
- Trethowen asserts all of this as fact without giving any supporting evidence.
- Existentialists - Nietsche, Camus and Satre ± conscience is a system we use to hide
from the fact of our freedom. (³I do not care about my mother´).
All of these examples seem to fail ± where then might it come from?

Strongest challenge from `reud - sense of guilt does not come from a law giver.
+ We have powerful base instinctive desires, emanating from the Id in our
subconscious.
+This is challenged and contained by the force of the super-ego (the expectations and
influence of parents and society)
+Super-ego internalises and reflects the anger and disgust it feels at our base desires
back onto ourselves.
+This creates guilt and this is what we call conscience.

- `reud cannot rule out the possibility that the Super Ego comes from God.
- Is conscience really the same thing as the Super-Ego? Is the super ego really active
in the way the conscience is.

`romm provides a link between `reud¶s ideas and the conscience.

+Conscience definitely stems from society.
+ Two types Authoritarian and Humanistic.
+Authoritarian is just like the super ego ± the voice of society in our head telling us
what to do ± commanding us.
+Humanistic is something which develops from inside the self ³our own reaction to
ourselves´
+If from is right, then there is no need for God because even the good type of
conscience could have come from inside of our minds.
- Still no empirical evidence for this so the logical positivists may say that it is
meaningless.

‡# ± 

saw religion as something which enabled capitalism to grow.
People could have a good conscience about gaining money as long as they gained it
honestly. Religion gave us the Protestant work ethic with promise of pie in the sky
when we die. Therefore the conscience was seen by Weber as a construct of the
capitalist society to keep us working.

‡!
"
 saw religion as the ³Social Glue´ for society. Therefore the function of
the construct of conscience would be to adhere sects or tribes to each other. They
create a collective conscience or a conscience collective.

‡ 
saw the conscience as a construct of the ruling classes to help keep them in
their place. As long as they could believe that they would be rewarded in the future
life they did not seek to change their dismal and sad lives. Conscience was
constructed and governed by the priests and clergy to stop the need for change.

Conclusion

Neither side can conclusively prove that it does or doesn¶t come from God. Those
who believe it can prove that God exists fail mostly because they begin from a
position of faith. Those who suggest that it comes from inside the human mind fail to
rule out the possibility of it ultimately coming from God, especially if we accept
creation ex nihilo.