A conscientious objection
by Roger Trigg, Spiked:
Why does conscience matter? We all have different preferences, likes and dislikes, and they may say something about us. Stands, though, made on grounds of conscience, seem to be in an altogether different category. Conscientious objectors in time of war may, at great personal cost and against the judgement of those around them, refuse to fight. Not simply because they find the thought of killing distasteful. They also believe it to be utterly wrong, whatever the circumstances. Such a conscientious stand is not a judgement about a government’s policy. To be a matter of conscience, it must be moral judgement, drawing on beliefs about the nature of the world and the place of humans in it. Conscientious refusals to do something will always be connected with serious issues that go to the heart of what we believe about human life.
Why should we respect those who refuse to go with the majority? Should not there be one law for everyone, with no exceptions? Otherwise, people can pick and choose which laws to observe, and society would sink into chaos. This, though, ignores the process by which we in society come to agree on the standards by which we live. Democracy is only necessary as a system because we are continually faced with disagreement. We need to decide how to live together, and to do that we have to draw on the many differing conceptions of the common good that arise. That is all the more true in a pluralist society, like ours, where there can be basic disagreement about the nature of human beings, and, in particular, whether this world is all there is, or whether humans should be answerable to some transcendent reality. Religions give different visions of how we should live and what our priorities should be. They disagree about what is true, and are not just reflecting the subjective whims of individuals.
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