Freida (@fredfredsonaire)

The Question Box. Is not conscience a sufficient guide for a man, even if he does not believe in God? No, for conscience is simply the practical reason, determining what is right and wrong in human actions. It is by no means infallible, but may lead men astray in morals, as it may lead them astray in telling them how to invest their money. If you divorce morality from religion, and deny that God is the basis and sanction of the moral law, reason becomes a blind guide, subject to public opinion, caprice, passion or prejudice, and the commanding power of conscience loses its validity and force. Once you admit the existence of God—Creator, Lord and Final End — you admit a Supreme Power possessed of an absolute right to command an inferior, dependent creature, who in justice is bound to obey his Lord, and fulfill the end for which he was created. All law supposes a superior. The modern agnostic theory that each man’s reason originates the moral laws by which he is bound, is contrary to reason, revelation, and common sense. No man can be superior to himself, or regard himself as his own superior. “When an agnostic or atheist,” writes Father Sharpe, “claims possession of a conscience, and ascribes certain of his actions to the influence of a sense of duty, he recognizes the principle of causality;... he further recognizes a principle of stability and consistency in the world... Again he is guided in his estimate by the possession of certain ideals of perfection, such as goodness, beauty, truth, which he tries to approximate to in his own actions. But these guiding principles are the elements of the idea of God” (Principles of Christianity, 68).