Director Roger Nygard traveled the world asking theologians, scientists, skeptics, and everyday people 85 tough questions to try to understand The Nature of Existence! Now that he’s asked the experts, it’s YOUR TURN! To offer your own insights on today’s question, “Where does morality, or our “conscience,” comes from?“, Leave a Reply below!
A collective consciousness or a singular consciousness.
Human experience and our relation to and perception of suffering.
One may argue that conscience is genetically determined. Whatever allows the gene to be replicated in successive generations is good for the gene, though not necessarily for the organism.
Culture plays a part in how right and wrong are learned as well.
Many people claim their holy books as the source for their morality, however not everyone takes their holy book literally by stoning disobedient children for example..
Morality and our conscience are traits we evolved to be able to survive, and indeed thrive, in a social life style. To put it in simple terms; would you be able to tolerate working all day with people who weren’t the slightest bit considerate towards you? Now when the situation is pure survival, a sense of right and wrong become essential when relying on other individuals to help you survive; you will be much more inclined to help someone if they can decide that it’s wrong to torment you and steal your food.
From the nature of our consciousness. A physically healthy mind automatically begins integrating everything we sense and experience from birth. When we attempt to act as opposed to something we know to be true, our subconscious supplies uneasy feelings that remind us something’s wrong. If we try to evade or explicitly act against what we know our subconscious rebels. This is the feeling of moral guilt, and the actual aspect that gave rise to religious concepts of virtue and sin.
us, our brains, our parents, our logic, our experience, our civilization