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Philosophy Bites

Richard Norman on Humanism

Philosophy Bites

Nigel Warburton

Education, Philosophy, Society & Culture

4.62K Ratings

🗓️ 27 January 2008

⏱️ 11 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

How can non-believers make sense of the world? How can there be morality without God? In this episode of Philosophy Bites philosopher Richard Norman explains how it is possible to lead a good life without religion.

Transcript

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0:00.0

This is philosophy bites with me David Edmonds and me Nigel Warburton.

0:07.0

Philosophy bites is available at W.

0:09.0

Philosophy bites.com.

0:11.0

Believers in God have on the the face of it, at least one advantage over non-believers.

0:16.8

They have a set of instructions about how to live, a code of values backed up by a reliable

0:21.4

authority. Their God has decreed the manner in which they ought to conduct themselves.

0:27.0

Non-believers then have to come up with an account of how they can make sense of the world.

0:32.0

What, in the absence of a God underpins morality, what can a good life

0:36.2

be for an atheist or an agnostic? These are precisely the sorts of questions that humanists grapple with.

0:42.5

Professor Richard Norman,

0:44.0

Emmeritus Professor Philosophy at the University of Kent,

0:47.0

is author of On Humanism.

0:49.5

Richard Norman, welcome to Philosophy Bites.

0:52.0

Thank you very much, very pleased to be here.

0:54.0

The topic we're going to talk about today is humanism. The obvious question to start with is, what is humanism?

1:01.0

Well I'll start with a simple definition.

1:03.8

Humanism is the belief in living a good life without religion.

1:08.0

So does that mean that somebody who's an agnostic who doesn't know

1:10.9

whether God exists or not could be a humanist?

1:13.0

Yes, typically humanists would be either atheists or agnostics and there's not a sharp divide between the two, roughly speaking,

1:20.0

an atheist is someone who believes that there is no God. An agnostic is someone who thinks

1:25.4

that it's impossible to decide whether there is a God or not. But in practice, both groups would

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