Secular humanism affirms that morality is grounded in human welfare rather than in divine command, that right and wrong are determined by their consequences for the flourishing, dignity, and suffering of sentient beings, discoverable through reason, empathy, and experience, and not by the decrees of a deity or the authority of scripture. On this view ethics is a human enterprise, answerable to the real needs and interests of people, and moral progress consists in extending care and justice more widely and reducing avoidable harm.
The clearest philosophical articulation of welfare-grounded ethics is utilitarianism, developed by Jeremy Bentham in An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation (1789) and refined by John Stuart Mill in Utilitarianism (1863), which holds that an action's rightness is determined by how far it increases happiness and reduces suffering for all affected, a criterion requiring no reference to divine command at all. Not all humanists are strict utilitarians, some favour a Kantian emphasis on rational respect for persons, others a virtue-ethical or pluralist approach, but the underlying humanist conviction that morality is answerable to human, and for many humanists also animal, welfare and flourishing rather than to revealed law unites these otherwise differing ethical frameworks under a common naturalistic premise.