Cumbria Humanist Group
Promoting a Positive Caring Outlook for the Non-Religious
Death & Dying from the Humanist Perspective
St John’s Hospice, Lancaster. Wednesday, 9 June 2010.
What is Humanism?
Humanism is the belief that we can live good
lives without religious or superstitious beliefs.
Humanism encompasses atheism and
agnosticism – but it is an active and ethical
philosophy far greater than these negative
responses to religion.
Humanists make sense of the world using
reason, science, experience and shared human
values.
Humanists take responsibility for our actions
and work with others for the common good.
What Humanists believe.
Humanists believe in individual rights and freedoms, but
believe that individual responsibility, social cooperation and
mutual respect are just as important.
Humanists believe that people can and will continue to find
solutions to the world's problems, so that quality of life can
be improved for everyone.
Humanists are positive – gaining inspiration from our lives,
art and culture, and a rich natural world.
Humanists believe that we have only one life – it is our
responsibility to make it a good life, and to live it to the full.
Non–Religious Population in the UK.
Census 2001.
Single question only.
(although 2 in Scotland – upbringing and current).
78% / 16% religious / non-religious
(Including almost 400.000 Jedi, thus giving the Star
Wars cult the status of a religion!)
Guardian / ICM Poll 2006.
Dedicated detailed survey.
33% / 66% religious / non-religious
Non-Religious Viewpoints.
To identify the range of members’ beliefs and convictions: from our
recent membership survey.
(Please tick as many as apply.)
1. I am primarily a humanist. I have no religious
belief and I see humanism as replacing this in defining
my social, moral and ethical code.
2. I define my values by my political and philosophical
convictions and, while I accept identity as a humanist, I
do not need this label to define my values.
3. I have no religious belief: I believe that religion is
harmful and we should fight to oppose it.
4. I have no religious belief, but I have no objection to
those who do believe, so long as this remains personal
and plays no role in government or state services. So I
am primarily a secularist.
Non-Religious Identities.
Humanist :
replace discarded faith with
Humanist ID.
Non-Religious :
accept humanist label but
don’t need it.
Atheist :
has become identified as aggressively
anti-religion and so rejected by some.
(‘A-noelist’, ‘a-faerist’ ? No!)
Secular : tolerant of faiths but separated from
government and state services. French ‘laicité’.
Common Values.
Tolerance or Militant Atheism?
The ‘Golden Rule’:
“Treat others as you would want them to treat you.”
Human Values, common to all (most!) faiths and none.
(BBC Radio Cumbria)
Bertrand Russell, John Collins and Bruce Kent in CND.
David Jenkins, David Shepherd, Derek Warlock, Richard
Harries – the clergy who challenged Thatcherism in the
1980s.
Quakers – pacifism, internationalism.
The History of Humanism.
Classical Ancient Humanism.
Greek and Roman philosophers – Democritus, Epicurus,
Lucretius. Rationalism, science.
Similar early movements in India (within Hindu, Buddhist
and Jaina schools?) and China – Confucius.
During the Dark Ages, this was suppressed in Europe by
the increasing political power of the Christian Church,
(Roger Bacon) but continued to progress in the Middle and
Far East in India and China and also in pre-and postIslamic Arabian civilisations.
Science and maths. Arabic numerals – as we use now.
Algebra. Zero ‘invented’ in India – revolutionised maths
from the Roman numerals system.
Reformation, Renaissance & Enlightenment
(C15 to C18) Erasmus, Luther, Calvin, Knox. Church of
England established. Capernicus, Galileo, Newton (Royal
Society) Harvey, David Hume (Scottish Enlightenment)
and Benjamin Franklin (US founding father and scientist).
(Renaissance of Rationalism, but religion still has a major role.)
Some were threatened with prosecution for atheism so
called themselves ‘deists’. Deism accepted a divine
creator but rejected any subsequent providential role for
the god.
17th Century. Some Protestants and Puritans associated
with ‘left wing’ politics – Levellers and Diggers during the
Commonwealth – Gerrard Winstanley.
Modern Secular Humanism.
19th Century ‘Freethinkers’.
Charles Bradlaugh – first atheist MP, founder of NSS in 1858.
Refused to take the oath and wasn’t allowed to affirm so
could not take his seat in Parliament for several years
George Holyoake coined the word ‘secularism’ in 1846 and
founded the London Secular Society.
Various ethical and secular societies were founded during the
late C19.
Rationalist Press Association. The Freethinker magazine.
Rationalist Association. New Humanist Magazine.
Union of Ethical Societies founded in 1896 and became BHA in
1967. (Harold Blackham)
Modern Humanism.
Science, Philosophy & Culture generally. . .
C19. Charles Darwin, Alfred Russel Wallace, Thomas
Huxley, Mark Twain, Oscar Wilde (and many more . . . )
C20. George Bernard Shaw, Jacob Bronowski, Bertrand
Russell, George Orwell, John-Paul Sartre, Jonathan
Miller, David Attenborough, Richard Dawkins, Steve
Jones, Colin Blakemore, Polly Toynbee, Raymond Tallis,
Steven Rose, Stephen Pinker, A C Grayling, Lewis
Wolpert, Laurie Taylor, Julian Baggini, Lisa Jardine,
Dave Allen, Linda Smith, Douglas Adams, Terry
Pratchett, Ben Goldacre, Lucy Mangan, Simon Singh,
Evan Harris, Bob Marshall-Andrews . . .
(Historic role of humour and satire in ‘challenging’ religion.)
Historic Roles of Religion?
To explain the unknown.
Divine creator – before any alternative scientific explanation.
To define society’s moral standards.
Thou shalt / Thou shalt not. Promise and Threat.
(Compare with ‘Golden Rule’ – human values shared by all faiths
and none – learnt from experience and observation.)
To establish rituals around life events.
Development of ‘culture’ – music, stories, pictures. Fables and
parables to enforce creation myths, social mores – as above.
Political control.
Pre-Enlightenment Christian Church – Political Power.
Colonial activity and proselytizing – social provision conditional
upon conversion.
Arnold Toynbee in “A Study of History” (1934-54) : The first role
of any society is to establish its own religion.”
Evolutionary Role of Culture?
As we moved from hunter-gathering to settled
farming, socialisation probably led to art,
music, dancing, language and story-telling. (Or
vice versa?) Asking questions would lead to
creation myths and embryonic religions. Such
activities would sustain and advance society,
although they would also lead to differences and
‘tribalism’. (Plus ça change . . . !)
Such cultural advances would lead to philosophy
and early scientific theories.
Social Evolution.
An ethical / moral society is more likely to be a
stable society. We learn the most successful
behaviour by reasoning from experience and
observation.
Richard Dawkins (The Selfish Gene 1976) –
‘memes’ – units of cultural transmission, cf.
‘genes’ – units of physical inheritance.
(Dubious ‘Social Darwinism’ in 1980s – ‘girls pink and boys
blue’! In early C20 this was also used to support eugenic
prejudices – survival of the ‘fittest’ re-interpreted!)
Spirituality.
People of faith often find it hard to understand how
non-religious people can experience ‘spirituality’.
Animus – Latin for ‘spirit’ (hence ‘animation’) but also
‘mind’, ‘soul’, ‘reason’, ‘consciousness’, ‘thought’,
‘imagination’, ‘feelings’, ‘intellect’.
Emotional response to a beloved person, music,
poetry, art, landscape etc. No incompatibility with lack
of supernatural beliefs. It may (must?) have a
neurological origin but that does not diminish its
significance.
Human emotion. Doesn’t require an immortal soul
or any supernatural component.
Changing Attitudes to Death.
Historically, with infectious diseases and other
causes, death was a common experience for all.
With improved sanitation and health care over
the last century, most people die in hospital
and death has been ‘professionalised’.
Recent attitudes are changing. Death is
increasingly perceived as the final act of Life, to
be shared with loved ones. The Hospice
movement with its palliative care provides
support for this attitude.
Rituals of Dying and Death.
Humanism does not formalise rituals.
Rituals can provide comfort for the dying
person and the bereaved? Need to take care
that they do not prevail over these emotions.
Can also protect the dignity of the dying
person – historic role?
Humanist Funeral / Commemoration is
personal and celebrates the Life.
Humanist Funerals and Memorials:
To Celebrate a Life.
A humanist funeral is increasingly common
for those who neither lived according to
religious practices, nor accepted religious
views of life or death.
A humanist funeral or memorial ceremony
recognises no ‘after-life’, but instead
celebrates the LIFE of the person who has
died.
Often the dying person will be involved in
planning their own memorial.
BBC Radio 3
“ A Good Death.”
(The Essay, broadcast April 2009)
Series in which writers and
thinkers ponder the art of dying
and confront taboos around
death.
Episode 1. Mary Beard, professor of classics at
Cambridge University, explains how the Romans and
Greeks approached death and asks whether scenes of
showmanship, famous last words and stoical endings
really can help us when we come to face our own
inevitable demise.
Episode 2. Writer Beryl Bainbridge looks back at how
the notion of death has overshadowed her own life,
from her wartime childhood to a brush with death as
an adult, and reveals her hopes and expectations
for her own demise.
Episode 3. Baroness Mary Warnock looks at what we can
Learn from the Romantic poets when it comes to dying well
and warns that our obsession with living – almost at all
costs – can have disastrous consequences.
Episode 4. Rabbi Julia Neuberger, reflecting on her own
work with the dying, looks as how those of different faiths,
or no faith at all, approach death and asks why we should
all be planning for the kind of death we want.
Episode 5. Thomas Lynch, celebrated poet and
working undertaker, looks at the art of dying
through his own writing, reflecting on why death
has remained such a constant theme in his work,
and on why he sees little reason to fear death itself.