WATCH: Don’t Trust Your Conscience

Dennis Prager, founder of PragerU, suggests that relying on the saying “let your conscience be your guide” can do more harm than good. Although this phrase is commonly used, throughout history, the conscience was not regarded as a sufficient guide for moral behavior, and instead, God and religious values were considered essential for people to act morally. Prager argues that the current belief that a conscience is all we need to act morally is a peculiarity of modern secular society.

In his argument, Prager compares this belief to the idea that gender is a social construct or that all cultures are of equal value. He asserts that none of these beliefs is more irrational than the notion that the conscience can replace God and religion as a producer of moral behavior. Prager notes that people have a way of rationalizing their own actions and intuitions, which can lead them to justifying everything from murder to genocide on moral grounds.

Appeals to conscience are insufficient in public debates, especially on morally loaded topics such as abortion or transgender surgeries. This is because opponents from all perspectives are working on their own diametrically opposed moral intuitions, leading to opposing viewpoints.

So how should one be morally guided? Prager argues that truth, courage, God, and reason are essential for building a conscience. He suggests that a person’s conscience must be developed and trained before it can be trusted. God without reason can lead to fanaticism, and reason without God can lead to the death of reason.

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