These are the standard objections to argument #15 on the list provided here...
First - here is the structure of the argument...
1 There is one moral absolute for everyone: never disobey your own conscience.
2 Conscience can only get such an absolute authority from one of four possibilities.
2a From something less than me (nature). But It is impossible to be absolutely obligated by something less than me—for example, by animal instinct or practical need for material survival. So this is not an option.
2b From me (individual). But it is impossible to obligate myself absolutely. I do not have the right to demand absolute obedience from anyone, even myself. And even if I did, I could choose to ignore the demand. So this is not an option.
2c From others equal to me (society). But society cannot obligate me. My equals have no right to impose their values on me. Even a million human beings do not make a relative into an absolute. Society is not God. So this is not an option.
2d From something above me (God). The only source of absolute moral obligation left is something superior to me. This binds my will, morally, with rightful demands for complete obedience.
3 This source of absolute moral obligation which is superior to me must be God, or something like God
4 Conscience is thus explainable only as the voice of God in the soul. The Ten Commandments are ten divine footprints in our psychic sand.
Problems with the argument
The definition of "conscious" seems to have been contrived in order to arrive at the desired conclusion. The formal definition of conscience is completely different to any description in this argument:
"The part of the mind that makes you aware of your actions as being either morally right or wrong. A feeling that something you have done is morally wrong"
Premise 2b is dismissed when in fact this provides a logical explanation of conscious. The conscience is a collection of mental processes which provides us with the emotional feeling of what is right and wrong. Therefore your conscious cannot tell you to disobey itself. It is impossible for you to think it’s moral to disobey your conscience since it’s your conscience which decides what’s moral in the first place.
The use of the word "absolute" is not explained. The assumption of absoluteness is made, and a further assumption says that one’s conscience has "absolute moral authority". Obviously, every human being is compelled to be aware of his or her conscious, because it's a mental process. But how does the concept of "absoluteness" relate to this? What supports the assumption that conscience gets an "abolsute moral authority"?
Premise 2d states that "The only source of absolute moral obligation left is something superior to me" and it is stated this must be God. But what does "me" mean? If the source of absolute moral obligation is our conscience, and our conscience is part of us, then the source of the so-called "absolute moral obligation" is not "something superior to me" - unless we are assuming that our mental processes are superior to us - which doesn't make sense, as our mental processes are us.
Premise 3 assumes that something greater than us "must be God, or something like God". This is an unsupported assumption. There could be a whole range of things greater than us but less than God. In fact, if God is infinitely great, there must be an infinite number of things on the scale of greatness between us and God.
The religious context does not make logical sense if we follow the argument. Religions provide many obligations, some of which do not make sense to certain groups of believers. There are approximately 40,000 denominations within Christianity alone, and matters of conscious vary among believers. Issues such as abortion, gay marriage, euthanasia, stem-cell research, birth control, pacifism, capital punishment and so on, which are all matters of conscious, are sources of disagreement among Christians. This provides evidence that there is no absolute morality but rather we have a shared and evolving moral instinct which each individual judges according to what their conscious tells them.
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