From Your God is Too Small, regarding viewing God as a resident policeman...
"To many people conscience is almost all that they have by way of knowledge of God. It is this which impels them to shoulder the irksome duty and choose the harder path."
"Yet to make conscience into God is a highly dangerous thing to do. For one thing, conscience is by no means an infallible guide; and for another it is extremely unlikely that we shall ever be moved to worship, love, and serve a nagging inner voice that at worst spoils our pleasure and at best keeps us rather negatively on the path of virtue."
"Conscience can be so easily perverted or morbidly developed in the sensitive person, and so easily ignored and silenced by the insensitive, that it makes a very unsatisfactory god."
"Unless there is a God by whom 'right' and 'wrong' can be reliably assessed, moral judgments can be no more than opinion, influenced by upbringing, training, and propaganda."
"Surely neither the hectically over-developed nor the falsely-trained, nor the moribund conscience can ever be regarded as God, or even part of Him. For if it is, God can be made to appear to the sensitive an over-exacting tyrant, and to the insensitive a comfortable accommodating 'Voice Within' which would never interfere with a man's pleasure."
"To many people conscience is almost all that they have by way of knowledge of God. It is this which impels them to shoulder the irksome duty and choose the harder path."
"Yet to make conscience into God is a highly dangerous thing to do. For one thing, conscience is by no means an infallible guide; and for another it is extremely unlikely that we shall ever be moved to worship, love, and serve a nagging inner voice that at worst spoils our pleasure and at best keeps us rather negatively on the path of virtue."
"Conscience can be so easily perverted or morbidly developed in the sensitive person, and so easily ignored and silenced by the insensitive, that it makes a very unsatisfactory god."
"Unless there is a God by whom 'right' and 'wrong' can be reliably assessed, moral judgments can be no more than opinion, influenced by upbringing, training, and propaganda."
"Surely neither the hectically over-developed nor the falsely-trained, nor the moribund conscience can ever be regarded as God, or even part of Him. For if it is, God can be made to appear to the sensitive an over-exacting tyrant, and to the insensitive a comfortable accommodating 'Voice Within' which would never interfere with a man's pleasure."
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