Beyond Humanism?

Robert Griffiths argues that humanist ethics has significant limitations.

- Robert Griffiths

There are many people who do not believe in gods in any sense. Some are fervent atheists, but there are also very uninterested atheists too, non-believers who just aren’t that bothered about religion. Such people are just as uninterested in campaigns of the kind conducted by the New Atheists or the New Humanists as they are in discussions promoting the existence of God, or of gods. They just do not want to talk about God at all. They have moved beyond that discourse, perhaps to the most atheistic place there is – the place where the gods are simply forgotten. Such people are sometimes now called ‘apatheists’, and there is evidence that their number is growing, particularly among the young. Apatheists have no interest in philosophical discussions about the existence of God, in the same way that they have no interest in arguments about whether the young Arthur drew the sword from the stone. They have accepted the New Atheist arguments and moved on, or have moved on for reasons of their own. By contrast, the humanists (who are also increasing in number) have not moved on.