Cumbria Humanist Group

Death & Dying from the Humanist Perspective

Promoting a Positive Caring Outlook for the Non-Religious

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 post-Islamic 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 hospitaland 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 howthe 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 canLearn 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 shouldall 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.