Emile Durkheim

• his general idea was conscience as sanctions or social conditioning
• as a sociologist, Durkheim viewed conscience in terms of social conditioning
• he saw god as a projection of society's powers and a useful tool in reinforcing the social demands made by the individual's conscience
• he developed the idea of a collective conscience: an act is bad because it opposes the views of society and of the common conscience
• he also saw conscience as a survival mechanism. people sticking to shared moral values leads to society becoming stronger
• His idea doesn't account for the conscience of people who throughout history challenged their social groups from outside.

  e.g. the old testament prophets in the eight century BCE, Jesus in the first century and archbishop Oscar Romero in the twentieth century