Abstract

As the decades passed, and the ‘humanists’ of the sixteenth century receded into history, they were increasingly seen as being not just students of pre‐Christian cultures but advocates for those cultures. Many of the values associated with this humanism can be held and are held by people as part of a wider assortment of beliefs and values, some of which beliefs and values may be religious. There may also be people who self‐identify as ‘Christian’ (or ‘Sikh’, ‘Muslim’, ‘Jewish’, or whatever) for ethnic or political reasons but who have humanist convictions and no religious beliefs. Many traditional accounts of the origin of human morality have it that morality came to us from outside ourselves. Plainly, belief in theistic religions like Christianity or Islam is incompatible with a humanist view: the ability of the God to interfere at will with nature fatally disrupts the assumptions of naturalism.