The Conscience

     Everyone has one but many have learned to ignore theirs. I'm referring to the conscious. Science, generally, ignores what cannot be seen as non-existent, but if psychology is truly a science, but it is not, they acknowledge that which cannot be seen. In that they do, psychology falls into the field of religion: "The service and worship of God or the supernatural" (Merriam-Webster Dictionary).Of course, psychology does not propagate the notion of a god, but does the supernatural or things unseen. Since faith is trusting in things unseen, it follows that psychology is a religion because it requires faith.
     The conscious is taken to be a natural process of making decisions according to one's own morality. No one knows what the conscience is, but most agree that people have a conscience because they have experienced it. Some believe that the conscience is an instinct, some a process, others a stage in moral development, and for others that it is merely the knowledge of good and evil, which is something that the soul acquires. To be blunt, no one truly knows what the conscience is, but to operationalize that unknown entity, psychologists attempt to measure it by emotions and behaviors. Regardless, because the conscience is not material, it is unseen.
     The Judeo-Christian religion points toward the first, or original sin, as the time when the conscience was acquired from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, Other religions have their own versions, but many acknowledge the concept of an unseen existence whose purpose is decision-making according to people's moral codes. Religions come from the idea that moral codes are from the respective gods, or even the lack of a god. The latter is humanism - the ethical code of human beings coming from the critical thinking of individuals.
     Ironically, that is the religious viewpoint as well. Religions acknowledge another god. Humanism makes man a god because he is the one who does the critical thinking, notwithstanding that cognition must have had an origin outside oneself!  The original of critical thinking was the origin of the conscience, and came from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, which was endowment with critical thinking, that religionists call the "conscience."
     The psychological viewpoint that the conscience is instinctual somewhat agrees with the religionists version, which it should, because psychology is inevitably another religion. Why so? It is the study of the soul! The human soul is from the doctrine of God. The apostle Paul understood that philosophy, the precursor to psychology, had an "unknown god" (Acts 17:23) that they do not attribute to JHWH (God).
     In Christianity, the conscience came into existence with the new knowledge of acquired from the Tree of Knowledge. Before that, Adam and Eve had been innocent as they were both created in the image of God (Gen 1:27) and that everything about them was "good" (Gen 1:31). Being created in the image of God, mankind needed a vessel for God's Holy Spirit. Only mankind was endowed with a soul; the animal kingdom are without souls.
     God's Holy Spirit existed in the void because he was without beginning nor end (Rev 22:13) because God Is Existence (Exod 3:14). Likewise, the container for the human existence was always there: "He (God) hath chosen us in him before the foundation of the world' (Ephes 1:4). Thus, something about mankind existed before creation! Maybe it was our potential, but whatever it is, theologians call it the "soul" and psychologists the "psyche" - Latin for the soul. I look at the human soul as the container for God's Holy Spirit because he placed His Spirit within us before the creation as he already loved us so!
     It appears from the scriptural standpoint that the human soul pre-existed the creation of our bodies. I had my soul before I was created (born) and even as Adam was created. Adam received his body immediately, and much later I received mine. Jesus, I believe, referred to his soul as a cup (Mat 26:39). A cup would also be symbolic of our soul. (It is also proposed that Jesus's "cup" was his purpose. It can be both. We'll save that for another day.)
     Mankind, before the original sin, was good. The Tree of  Knowledge provided evil in their body of knowledge. Good was created, but the knowledge of evil was acquired. It was acquired from the Serpent (Devil, Lucifer, Satan).  After acquisition, evil became genetic (Rom 5:12), and as such is now instinctual and is acted out emotionally and behaviorally, and of course spiritually.
     Immediately upon the first sin, Adam and Eve judged themselves guilty. It would seem that since the forbidden tree was also for the knowledge of "good", that although Satan endowed them with evil, God had endowed them with the knowledge of good or discernment at the same time. Hence, the origin of moral and immoral codes which requires a conscience. I think of the conscience as the relief valve for the soul. When iniquity builds up in stress against goodness, guilt ensues. The conscience to regain spiritual and emotional healthiness  requires relief. Only obedience to the moral code provides that relief. For Christians, that is doing God's will just as back in Paradise, "Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven" (Mat 6:10).
    Mankind's happiness depends on their will harmonizing with God's will. The conscience measures the disharmony and attempts to correct it. Pleasure is the blockage in the moral code which makes man's will in disharmony with God's. The pleasure principle from both psychology and Christianity, came from the Tree of Knowledge, short-circuits the conscience, and too much will disengage it. Psychology calls that "psychotic" and Christianity "reprobate" (Rom 1:29).
    I have written on the human "will" before. That is a human faculty which again exists but cannot be measured, although it can be observed in the behaviors of people.