Secular humanism has been remarkably effective at dismantling religious metaphysics. It has been far less willing to ask what it owes the people who must live without them. For many secular humanists, this omission feels reasonable. If a belief is false, arbitrary or harmful, then exposing it should be enough. Truth, after all, is a moral good which respects the dignity and rationality of human beings. But this confidence rests on an assumption that deserves closer scrutiny: that removing belief is ethically sufficient, regardless of the psychological and moral weight that belief had been carrying. It is here that humanism encounters an unresolved moral responsibility—one that critique alone cannot discharge. Dignity, Purpose, and the Human Condition Human dignity is inherent. It does not depend on status, achievement, belief or obedience. But lived dignity—the experience of oneself as a moral agent—does not exist in abstraction. It must be enacted. And enactment requires orientation. Human beings cannot live a dignified life without a sense of purpose that renders their actions meaningfully directed—not because their worth must be …