The Brights Movement
Archive: Skeptics & Atheists
I'd rather be called gay than homosexual (queer is fine, fag too, if you are a friend) but I'm not sure that the monosyllable has made my life better. Some years back I started calling myself an atheist instead of an agnostic. My skepticism is too strong to pretend to agnosticism's impartiality. Can't imagine calling myself a bright. It'll be interesting to see if it makes it from neologism to received English. Bright has a few influential backers like Richard Dawkins writing in Wired.
I am a bright. You are (quite probably) a bright. Most of the people I know are brights. The majority of scientists are brights. Presumably there are lots of closet brights in Congress, but they dare not come out. Notice from these examples that the word is a noun, not an adjective. We brights are not claiming to be bright (meaning clever, intelligent), any more than gays claim to be gay (meaning joyful, carefree). Whether there is a statistical tendency for brights (noun) to be bright (adjective) is a matter for research. I would dearly like to see such research undertaken, and I know the result I am betting on, but it is no part of the definition of the noun.
Religion Be Damned (via William of The daily trudge)
An earlier essay by Dawkins noted: Cheerful atheism
The Brights Movement website: The Brights' Net
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Feel free to share your feelings about The Brights Movement. Please stick to the theme of the entry. Disagreement is fine. Homophobia, racism, and kindred expressions of hatred will be deleted.
This site is one of my hobbies. I genuinely enjoy hearing from people and hate moderating or killing comments. Forthright disagreement is fine as long as it is civil.
My thanks,
Richard
1 · Elsewhere: Pansexual Sodomite Sep 23, 2003 7:21 AM
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