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First time, tonight.

scootsy said:
First off, you are presupposing that they are laws. Fallacious to do so. Kant said that moral duties can easily be determined by the categorical imperative. Only act on those maxims which you can at the same time will to be universal law. We could have easily determined morality this way. Do our actions yield contradictions in conception when universalized? Is an action really moral if I say, i will murder this person, but it would not be just for anyone to murder anyone else.

Begging the question. Another fallacious statement where you presuppose that moral principles are moral laws.

Quite a jump to make. How can you say that moral laws presuming a moral lawgiver is equivalent to saying god is the ultimate standard of good? Those are completely different statements.
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Well many people think of conscience as a mere feeling or inclination. But conscience is not itself an inclination but rather an arbiter of inclinations, what Adam Smith once called the "impartial spectator" that gives us our highest sense of ourselves. When there is a strong inclination like the instinct for survival and a weak inclination like the instinct to help a stranger, conscience typically intervenes on the side of the weaker instinct. It uses no compulsion in urging us to follow its edicts, yet it exercises both a critical and even a kind of judicial authority: you are obliged to do this, no matter how you feel about it.

Conscience is unconcerned with convenience or reputation, and it seems to operate most strongly when no one is looking. We can of course, reject the appeal of conscience, but if we do, we cannot help but pass judgement on ourselves using the very criteria supplied by conscience.

For Kant, conscience is a kind of noumenal voice that speaks to us directly from within ourselves, giving us a certainty that is unavailable to us from outer or phenomenal experience. This is a philosophical way to describe morality. But C.S. Lewis puts it this way: conscience is nothing other than the voice of God within our souls. It is the bridge that links the creature to the creator. Even the atheist hears this internal clarion call because even the atheist has morality at the core of his being.

I'll just leave it at that.
 
Hotttnickkk said:
Well many people think of conscience as a mere feeling or inclination. But conscience is not itself an inclination but rather an arbiter of inclinations, what Adam Smith once called the "impartial spectator" that gives us our highest sense of ourselves. When there is a strong inclination like the instinct for survival and a weak inclination like the instinct to help a stranger, conscience typically intervenes on the side of the weaker instinct. It uses no compulsion in urging us to follow its edicts, yet it exercises both a critical and even a kind of judicial authority: you are obliged to do this, no matter how you feel about it.

Conscience is unconcerned with convenience or reputation, and it seems to operate most strongly when no one is looking. We can of course, reject the appeal of conscience, but if we do, we cannot help but pass judgement on ourselves using the very criteria supplied by conscience.

For Kant, conscience is a kind of noumenal voice that speaks to us directly from within ourselves, giving us a certainty that is unavailable to us from outer or phenomenal experience. This is a philosophical way to describe morality. But C.S. Lewis puts it this way: conscience is nothing other than the voice of God within our souls. It is the bridge that links the creature to the creator. Even the atheist hears this internal clarion call because even the atheist has morality at the core of his being.

I'll just leave it at that.
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First of all.... What does this have to do with anything? You are saying we have conscience, which I am assuming you are interpreting as our sense of right and wrong (however you also make it say that it is independent of our consciousness). But you are once presupposing a speculative idea, of which is only one of many plausible explanations as to how we came to agreed upon morality. If you say that all moral principles originated and are given directly to individuals by god, then why do we see entirely different sets or morality in different cultures around the world? Why is cannibalism culturally accepted in some aboriginal tribes? Why is there a question on the morality of the death penalty or abortion? If all morality originated and is delivered from one source, how could core ethical principles differentiate between individuals. Morality comes down to natural rights and universalized maxims. We save the drowning child because every person has a right to life, and if we were in the same situation, we would want to be saved.


That bolded part is completely untrue. No one goes to a Internet cafe to look at child porn. The most despicable acts are confined to private places because conscience is so easily disregarded.
 
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