Humanism is Focused on the Needs of Humanity

We maintain that human values make sense only in the context of human life. A supposed nonhumanlike existence after death cannot, then, be included as part of the environment in which our values must operate. The here-and-now physical world of our senses is the world that is relevant for our ethical concerns, our goals, and our aspirations. We therefore place our values wholly within this context. Were we to do otherwise—to place our values in the wider context of a merely hoped-for extension of the reality we know—^we might find ourselves either foregoing our real interests in the pursuit of imaginary ones or trying to relate human needs here to a very different set of nonhuman needs elsewhere. We will not sacrifice the ethical good life here unless it can be demonstrated that there is another life elsewhere that necessitates a shift in our attention and that this other life bears some relation and commonality with this one.

Pursuit of values attached to another world or supernatural phenomena pull us away from real human needs.