Conscience

From BrethrenPedia

Conscience is a moral faculty that allows one to make a reasoned judgement or decision about right and wrong. Popular usage of the term often describe it as a personal "feeling" or "intuition", sense, or feeling that impels individuals to believe that particular activities are morally right or wrong. Some metaphors about conscience appear, such as the "voice of conscience" or "voice within", which are fine provided that we realize that metaphors have limits as the expressions surely do. Modern day scientists in the fields of Ethology, Neuroscience and Evolutionary psychology seek to explain it as a function of the human brain that evolved to facilitate reciprocal altruism within societies. As such it could be instinctive (genetically determined) or learnt.

Conscience can prompt different people in quite different directions, depending on their beliefs, suggesting that while the capacity for conscience is probably genetically determined, its subject matter is probably learnt, or imprinted, like language, as part of a culture. One person can feel a moral duty to go to war, another can feel a moral duty to avoid war under any circumstances.

Many churches consider following one's conscience to be as important as, or even more important than, obeying human authority. This can sometimes lead to moral quandaries. "Do I obey my church/military/political leader, or do I follow my own sense of right and wrong?" However, as a Catholic in pursuit of truth, one looks first for principles located in Sacred Scripture, clarified by Sacred Tradition and taught in any age by the teaching church.