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I don't care. What happens after my death, the quality of my soul, should it exist, doesn't matter to me. I'll live as best I can because it is the right thing to do. But its origin isn't any concern of mine.
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Your conscience isn't something that some divine entity instills in you. It is learned. It is molded as you age and experience life. We learn from those who surround us. Sometimes we become like them and sometimes we choose a different path. It's all about choices.
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Evolution favors a society that does not destroy itself. Additionally, if teamwork allows a society to prosper better than lack of teamwork, then evolution will probably favor a society that exhibits teamwork. I am a product of that evolution, so I suspect that my conscience is so derived.
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Ultimately, one's conscience is self serving. The natural course of action will be the one deemed to be in the greatest interests of the largest number of people. We are socialized enough to understand that we must always strive to support our common welfare. How long can we survive as one against the world? Aside from that, even as infants we quickly learned to mimic those around us. We become mirrors to each other, smiling automatically in return for smiles received and vice versa. The greatest joys in life are achieved in the bringing of joy to others; the law of reciprocity. No God is required to instill in us the sense to make the best moral choice.
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As far as I am concerned our conscience comes from the length of our memory. Animals with longer memories have larger amounts of conscience awareness.
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Believing in "God" is not the only belief system in the world. There are many other religions and beliefs. For example, I do not believe humans are "evil". I believe we all are doing the best we "know" how at any given time....
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Jimmie Cricket's is that a loaded question. :P It amuses of course that a persons "conscience" is a single construct, and one that we all posses more or less identically. C.S. Lewis argued that, yes is the answer to both questions, and that, moreover, this PROVED the existence of god, and he argued this idea most notably in "Mere Christianity". What Lewis missed was why would the existence of conscience demand a very specific type of creator, one who is god, one who created angles and battled Satan; why couldn't something else be responsible? Such as another god, one who does not battle Satan for instance, or, why couldn't conscience be the result of cultural memes that have been passed down from generation to generation. Moreover, there is no reason to think that "conscience" is homogeneous in all people: there are myriad ideas regarding marriage, honor, the treatment of others, and in just about all areas of life. So, in short, it's pretty likely that this thing we call "conscience" is a mix of our societal environment and biological mix-up. Or a very confused and schizophrenic god...
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