Does Humanism help with Ethical Issues?

I often describe Humanism as Atheism with Ethics, so I suppose the answer has to be "Yes" - but it needs some qualifying.

The BHA web site says that "We take responsibility for our actions and base our ethics on the goals of human welfare, happiness and fulfillment. We seek to make the best of the one life we have by creating meaning and purpose for ourselves, individually and together."  That sounds like a form of Utilitarianism or Consequentialism, which is the way I do ethics too.  What course of action will bring the best result for everyone?

But how does that help?  If you're the kind of person who wants to do the right thing, what ever that is, then most of the time what you actually do is rely on instincts, sometimes called conscience.  You don't think about things, you just know what to do for the best.

Sometimes it doesn't work like that.  There are cases when you do have to think, perhaps hard and long, and perhaps in the company of other people.  Of course, when we do consult others, we usually consult like minded people.  There would be no point in discussing whether it was my duty to disclose my friend's affair to her husband with an out-and-out hedonist.  But again it usually boils down to what we think, on balance, is the best thing all round.  We rarely if ever consult books of ethics.  We might go to a religious authority if we are a member of a religion, and he or she might give us advice, but most people would then weigh that advice and then do what they personally thought right anyway. 

If, for example, a member of your family, let's say a child of yours, behaved in a way that was not acceptable to your religion, you might ask an elder of some kind what you should do.  He might then tell you that the scriptures tell you that what God requires you to do is to stone them to death.  But we don't actually do that these days, so the right thing to do is to cast them out and have nothing to do with them until they repent.  Well, you might follow that advice, but my hunch is that rather a lot of parents would find another way.  And notice that the elder didn't apply the scripture either.  His conscience would not approve of stoning to death, so he found another solution.  That's normal.

And then sometimes you get a really difficult problem, like the case of the conjoined twins known as Jodie and Mary.  The parents were of one view, the doctors of another.  They went to court.  The court sought the advice of the Archbishop of Westminster, (the parents were Catholics).  His advice ignored the teaching of St Thomas Aquinas probably because it didn't accord with the Archbishop's conscience exactly as in my illustration above.  The judgement summed up many possible views, conflated some, ignored others, including the Archbishop they had consulted, and gave a judgement that the judges thought, for various reasons, was the best possible outcome for one of the twins.  And us?  Those of us who followed the case were probably of the same opinion after the judgement as we were before it.

So in answer to the question "Does Humanism help with ethics?" I have to come back with another question: "Does anything help with ethics?"  What seems to help most is having other, probably like-minded, people to discuss an issue with you, who will help you to clarify it.  And then you do the best you can, living with your human limitations and at least confident that having done the best you can there is no supreme being to answer to.

There are several interesting discussions of the Jodie & Mary case on the Internet.  If you wanted to follow it up, two links to start with are this one from Spiked and this one from The Guardian.