ABSTRACT
People who have no particular religious faith nevertheless want to express something spiritual at the time of a death of a loved one. For some of these people, humanism will not do either – too spare, too dry, too rational. However, for others it is exactly what they want – a human centred, grief acknowledging, next world denying way of coping with death. This chapter deals both with the traditional humanist view and the more modern approaches. The traditional form of humanism has its origins with the Greek philosophers such as Protagoras, Democritus and Epicurus. Humanists are either true atheists or agnostics. Many modern humanists are also utilitarians, believing that society should aim for the greatest happiness of the greatest number of people. Humanists are usually easy to care for in the spiritual sense – precisely because of their lack of formal belief and their reliance on human support.
