“Morality is the herd-instinct in the individual...”
~Friedrich NietzscheWhen questioned about the basis for our morality, I'm sure most of us could come up with a perfectly coherent and reasoned argument for why we believe what we believe (for we all believe in ‘something’, even if it is only ourselves...) and why we behave as we do. We all have a moral code - those things that we consider ‘right’ and those that we consider ‘wrong’ - regardless whether or not mine is not quite the same as the next person’s. Of course, I’m sure that most of us agree on things like murder, lying, adultery, violence, slander, cheating etc... So I suppose you could say that, on the fundamentals, most people are superficially more or less the same
in belief.
But
in justification...?
This is where that dirty little word,
“Circumstance”, comes into play. You see, however attractive our argument and demonstrable our reasoning, we cannot escape from the implication that the reality of circumstance brings to bear on our morality. If I have an atheistic worldview then, however well-reasoned and thought-out my morality is, it cannot escape from the fact that a world without a God is a world dictated by circumstance. In other words, if the material world is all there is, then the only law that governs our actions ultimately is the law of
survival. The rule is, basically, survive or ‘be survived’. Under this worldview, whatever cosmetic dressings are added to the argument, the only reason for a morality that espouses ‘good’ principles such as truth, justice and peace is the fact that these things enable us to live in a society that is more conducive to our individual and/or corporate survival. In our experience, we have seen that these values do indeed lead to an increased chance of survival and so having good morals is good sense for most people. We could draw a link, then, between a decent standard of education and ‘good’ moral values held within a society (decadence notwithstanding). But this does not change the fact that its only BASIS, if it is held within a worldview that rejects God, is that it is beneficial for survival.
Do you see what this means? It means that if I have good morals and believe in just principles, then the only reason for this is ultimately
circumstance. The circumstances of my life have dictated that I have been brought up in privileged surroundings and have witnessed the benefits these principles bring to one’s survival or at the very least that I have had access to a good education which has informed me of this greater chance of survival.
So, these values are not good ‘in and of themselves’. Circumstance has led me to view them as ‘good things’ based on their usefulness to my survival.Take the flip-side of this. Say that I was born into adverse circumstances and I was consequently unaware of the benefits and increased chance of survival in a society where good values are upheld. If the only thing I was witnessing was how greed and injustice were rewarded then wouldn’t I be led to believe that ‘this is the best way to live to ensure my survival’? It’s a dog-eat-dog world y’know... Whatever anyone else might say about these good values being better, I would still have never seen them helping anyone in my own context. Circumstance, therefore, dictates my morals in both contexts, whether privileged or not. All of a sudden, Nietzsche’s cynical and seemingly far-fetched words (quoted at the beginning) are beginning to sound a lot more like the way things actually are...
Where does this leave us? If that part of us that we had always considered to be the one/main thing that sets us apart from the animals is
now revealed as being the result of the most basic animal instincts within us...?
Surely morality is just an illusion??Well, if you are finding something within you reacting against this suggestion (and I do hope so), then you have just demonstrated to yourself, in some ungraspable but very real way, that morality is - or should be - derived from something greater than ourselves. It is no ‘proof’ for the existence of God, but whoever said that God’s existence needed to be proved in the first place? When we know something to be true, something for which we have seen the evidence our whole lives - such as the love of our mother - then it is not something that needs to be (or can be) proved, it just needs to be accepted, because it IS true. The discomfort that we feel when confronted with that one little word, “circumstance”, should remind us that, all our lives, we have always ‘known’ that morality is something that we humans share, NOT because we are animals and have developed a ‘herd-instinct’, but because there
are values greater than ourselves, values whose source could only be a person. And a person who is not only greater than us but
better than us.
While I see the usefulness of arguments that attempt to demonstrate the existence of God, I do not believe that they will convince anyone conclusively because ultimately this is not something that can be ‘proved’. It is, however, something that we have seen, something that we see everyday (and something that one event in history should have convinced us is something we can believe beyond any reasonable doubt. This event was the appearance on this planet of the God-Man, Jesus of Nazareth, who demonstrated that he was the Christ of God and Lord of Creation and every man through the things he said and did).
An examination of ‘morality’ (through the filter of Nietzsche and circumstance) is just one of the many ‘pointers’, like the deeds of a mother that speak of her love, that reassure us that God
is both
real and
good and that
we are part of the evidence that points to this truth.
