Can there be sub-categories, like, say, semi-Bright, quasi-Bright, Bright-ish , on the Bright side, etc...?

Very interesting piece, Dean. Interesting meme, interesting semantic move. To be realistic, I don't imagine this campaign is going to get very far off the ground. But there is something appealing about the sheer streamlined simplicity of it.

Of course, you know me, I've long since gone over to the Dark Side. :)

Personally, Paul, I think the author is a dolt.

I suppose at least part of it is I am sick of people hijacking perfectly good words for their own political agenda.

There are perfectly good terms that already apply to that approach: materialist, rationalist, and nominalist are three of them.

But noooOOOooo, we have to re-invent ourselves with new, improved words(tm).

Sorry. Feeling grouchy this morning.

I saw this the other day; I *think* I'm pretty Bright in my political thought and method of expression, but I have an inner spiritual life. I can't say that my worldview is completely free of "metaphysical" thought or superstition. It'll be interesting to see how far this meme spreads!

Sorry, in this article, like nearly op-ed I've read by Richard Dawkins, he comes off as an arrogant, sanctimonious, moralizing bastard.

And you complain about Drudge or Andrew Sullivan thinking that they're better than other people. Mr. Dawkins just seems to exude that in everything I read by him.

Aha!

Ith linked to this, then my friend Bob pointed it out to me in horror. I read it, thought it almost sounded tongue in cheek, and found it amusing. It makes a good point about how we get conditioned and these things happen.

So frankly I didn't see why they were so offended. Makes it interesting that you are the opposite.

Jay, am I part of the "they" you're referring to?

I may be misreading your comment, so want to double check before I reply.

If Dawkins wants to present arguments for his worldview, that's fine. But it's not intellectually honest to associate a word with positive associations ("bright") with a topic it has nothing to do with. It is if the religious people adopted the word "honorable" to mean "belief in God," and went around saying "I'm an honorable."

And the worldview itself seems strangely limiting. What if the many-worlds interpretation of quantum theory were to be true? Would it be reasonable to say that the alternative universes do not exist simply because (if) we cannot "observe and measure" them?

"Bright," huh? I suppose that DOES sound better than "cynical"... Or, how about "Smokeandmirror?"

Nice PR campaign, though. Maybe a guest shot on Larry King is in order.

This is no more than petty positioning, pathetic in the extreme. Think about it. Those who are naturalistic are "bright," then what does that make people who are *not* naturalistic? Dim.

No better than pro-life or pro-choice leads to anti-life or anti-choice as the alternative. In fact, it's worse because it has no logical connection with anything other than arrogant self-perception. At least pro-life and pro-choice have a basis in the arguments of those who hold those positions.

According to the movement's definition (emphasis added), "A naturalistic worldview is absent any presumption of forces or entities beyond what can be observed/measured."

The key word for me is "presumption", which relates to the proverbial "leap of faith". Just b/c a person doesn't presume that "forces" play a role in the world does not mean that person is opposed to such a possibility. "Show me and I'll change my mind."

I don't know who "The Brights" proponents are, or what their backgrounds are, but some of the comments above seem a bit extreme. In this context, the word "Bright" is a noun, not an adjective. Can you separate the idea from the word? If so, would your comments be the same?

Great post, Dean. Interesting comments, too.

So if a Bright's "worldview is absent any presumption of forces or entities beyond what can be observed/measured," I'm curious just how you observe or measure the laws of logic, or mathematics, for that matter.

Yet, a part of me is singing inside and thinking, "Yes. Yes yes yes. This is me. This is me!"

How can that be observed or measured? Even by you, Dean. Please to be enlightening me, yes? Remember, I'm a Dim, so please type s-l-o-w-l-y and use minuscule words so that I may apprehend your response without excessive arduousness.

MAN! You people get stirred up easy.

Either that, or Dawkins has hit on a basic truth, because if it was just a SILLY notion, you wouldn't be attacking it so hard.

(And I am niether a "Bright" nor a "dim".)

I have nothing against atheists. Most of my good friends are atheists.

But atheists in America can call themselves "brights" when they stop stealing Christian morality and ignoring their own inability to support it, then looking down on those of us who actually can.

Be consistent and don't pretend that it matters what you do to a deterministic mass of cells. Be inconsistent and act like a human being. I don't care. But don't get all self-righteous and superior because you're being inconsistent, and call those of us who are actually consistent stupid for it.

Do we really need more devicive language?

And this guy is a moron anyway. "Gay" as an adjective is used -- even by many homosexuals -- as a very derogatory term. "That shirt is gay" is an insult.

And let's not get into the stupidity of this moron claiming that parents shouldn't teach their children anything.

MAN! You people get stirred up easy.
Either that, or Dawkins has hit on a basic truth, because if it was just a SILLY notion, you wouldn't be attacking it so hard.

No, I've listened to enough atheist/humanist local-host radio shows to know that these people are entirely smug about the superiority of their worldview over any alternative. (Maybe they should be called the Smugs) Read the rest of the web site. Consider the Raving Atheist and the theological debate between he and Clubbeaux that spilled over into the rest of the blogosphere.

If Dawkins has hit on a basic truth, it is this: language should be defended against such craven abuse.

case in point:

http://www.advicegoddess.com/goddessblog.html

I saw the link on Glenn's blog and took a look, but I couldn't help thinking of Florence King's granny, who used to see somebody doing something silly and holler, "Brilliant, but not too bright!"

Seems to me therefore if "a bright" is an atheist, it doesn't necessarily follow that a believer is "a dim."

But atheists in America can call themselves "brights" when they stop stealing Christian morality and ignoring their own inability to support it, then looking down on those of us who actually can.

I'm interested to hear what you mean by this sentence. Are you claiming that Christians can support "their" morality?

I doubt Dawkins is being tongue-in-cheek, because he so very rarely is in anything else he writes, especially these op-eds. (He usually likes to rant about how George W. Bush is obviously an idiot.)

I actually didn't look at the byline at first, started reading, thought to myself "What a pompous ass! I bet it's Richard Dawkins!" and looked up to find my suspicions confirmed.

Dawkins manages to combine all the irritating personality traits and moralisms of the worst fundamentalist, except that he's an atheist/secular humanist. Almost anything he's written only further convinces me that he wouldn't be something I'd like to meet or be friends with. He just comes off as a jerk.

I guess give =n the overall context of the word "Bright" in relation to this article. I'd probably b considered a "Lte-Bight".

With all the good colors :)

U always manage to keep it interesting Dean. LOL

Are you claiming that Christians can support "their" morality?

Jerry, I don't know Chris or his thoughts on this, but Christians can--and do--support their morality through Scripture. The point is that we have a lawgiver behind our moral law (not that we're debating God's existence here, or the authenticity of Scripture) and therefore we have a moral foundation beyond our mere assertions. Are you claiming that Christian morality is insupportable?

Well, this strikes me as one of the worst ideas in some time.

Aren't we conservatives supposed to be lamenting the use of subcategories and various terms (i.e. hyphenated Americans, gays) to lump people into groups for political purposes?

AAACK!

Until I read this, I probably would've qualified as bright. Oh, I'm sorry...I meant Bright(TM). What a pile of horse-shit. Love to chat more, but I've got to go study up on my Greek Orthodoxy so I can 'dark' myself.

A Bright is not necessarily an atheist, although some are atheists.

A Bright is not saying he is smarter than others. Cleverness doesn't enter into it. There may be some very stupid Brights.

It's a positive, umbrella term. There's nothing particularly arrogant about it--although like all people, some Brights are arrogant. :-)

Most of these criticisms are answered quite effectively here:

FAQ on Bright criticism

I for one am not interested in being limited by a label like "atheist," because I am not one, and nasty women like Madelaine Murray O'Hare gave the term negative connotations I don't like. Agnostic is closer to my view, although it's very limiting and describes an ambivalence I don't feel. I actually dislike the so-called "freethinkers" since so many of them are religious bigots, although I share some of their views. I am indeed a skeptic, although that word carries emotional baggage that many people don't like.

What's to be upset about? It's a less limiting word than all of the above to describe those of us with a naturalistic worldview, who are skeptical of claims of the supernatural.

Again, claims about arrogance and whatnot are answered here:

FAQ on Bright criticism.

I'd like a positive word to describe my worldview: I'm not a bigot, I'm not an atheist. I am agnostic about God, but not about everything because I believe things like astrology, voodoo, witchcraft, and satanic powers are all nonsense, and I loathe flim-flam artists like John Edward and Uri Geller. I don't believe in ESP and such because decades of research have failed to prove it, and because for decades people like Randi have been offering huge rewards for anyone who could find evidence for it -- although, again, I'm open to being proven wrong if evidence can be found for any of it.

I'm not closed-minded, I don't think I'm better or smarter than anyone else. I like the idea that there's a positive, less limiting word than what's gone before to describe people like me: we who have a naturalistic worldview.

Jerry, I don't know Chris or his thoughts on this, but Christians can--and do--support their morality through Scripture.

I'm aware of this, having been raised a Christian, but I have trouble considering such an argument from authority to be "support." To me, "support" means something more than "someone else gave it to me," regardless of who that other is.

At the very least I object to the notion that this kind of support somehow trumps the philosophy and reasoning with which many atheists support their morality.

I also object to the idea that joining a church somehow gives you more of a right to certain moral precepts than others who are not members of that church. Surely if it's good for Christians to hold certain moral principles, it is also good for non-Christians to hold the same principles regardless of how they arrived at them.

Nope, I ain't too Bright...still a Southern Taoist I'm afraid.

: )

I agree with the poster who called use of the term "bright" intellectually dishonest. If you are an atheist, come out and say so. If agnostic, deistic, whatever, say that. If you don't like the way others who call themselves atheists act, work to change that conception. Say "I'm an atheist, but I don't believe x or agree with y person's actions."

From what I understand (and correct me if I'm wrong), the term 'atheist' is itself misleading, and a better term would be 'antitheist', since atheists take a definite position against belief in a God, while agnostics would be better known as atheists, taking no position: although agnostic (without knowledge) works there too.

Myself, I'm a Calvinist, which I assume brings all sorts of bad associations with witch-burnings and fundamentalism and narrow-mindedness and whatnot. But instead of co-opting other words, I prefer to seek to change the popular image of a Christian in the tradition of John Calvin. I suggest atheists do the same.

Arrogant? Not at all! We just prefer to focus on reality!

Riiiight. No arrogance there.

Sorry, Dean. This site, for all its frantic handwaving to the contrary, comes across as garden variety arrogance of the type I'm well-accustomed to encountering from net-atheists.

Present company excluded, of course, I hasten to add.

From the FAQ:

What arrogance? This word has a different meaning. Can people "break free" from the old and carve out the new territory? We will see.

Oh puh-leeease. This is almost as ridiculous as the previous post that says "It's a noun now, therefore it has no connection to the adjective meaning." Gimme a break. If your intentions to give new meaning to a word were pure, why couldn't you pick something random like "armoire" or "corrugated" that wouldn't get in people's way?

The name choice is obviously an attempt to artificially generate goodwill, and this disclaimer is more arrogant than commandeering "bright" in the first place.

Addendum: If this is all a big joke, consider me completely taken in. It'd be a relief to me if it were a joke.

Jerry,

From the perspective of one who thinks that people are a deterministic mass of atoms, differentiate a person from a chimpanzee from a table from a rock. Do it without appealing to you feeling like it.

You can't. The best that you can accomplish in moral justification, other than taking your moral precepts randomly because, well, you can't help doing whatever you happened to have done anyway, is utilitarianism. Strict utilitarianism.

Welcome to a world in which retarted people are killed off for fertilizer and children can be turned into same by their parents at will. Without Christians and such folks around who actually believe in souls and such, you've got absolutely no way to justify the rights of children. They can't fight back. Ergo you have no reason (absent other adults creating one through force of law) not to kill the little rugrats if you want to.

"God, who is greater and wiser than me, told me to" is a justification. "I feel like it" or "I want you to" is not.

But your fundamental problem is that if you don't want to treat people as things, you can't come up with a good reason to. You believe that people are things.

Note: if you yourself aren't a materialist/mechanistic atheist, you also aren't a "bright".

Not that a "bright" would do a particularly good job of defining what they mean by "natural" and "super-natural". But why let a little thing like sense get in the way of a highly insulting self-congratulatory name when you just believe that you're nothing but random collisions of atoms that couldn't have happened any other way anyway?

And please don't give me any arguments about being deterministic but not having enough information so you have to act like you're not anyway. I've heard them in great detail before (not that there can be much), and inconsistency is not a virtue.

Send me a postcard when you reach Jonestown.

I just want to clear something up. "Brights" are, by definition, materialist, and Christians (and other religions) are not? Either I misunderstand this statement people keep making, or you are all using extremely narrow-minded views. Also, what the hell is wrong with using the word "bright"? Do we not call judges "your honour"?

As for support for your morality, saying "it's against the law" is just as good as saying "it's against the bible".

Dean: Ok, that means you aren't a materialist. :) Perhaps a nominalist, then?

Can you honestly say that you are "nonreligious" or "uninterested in religion?" I'm not sure about the latter, considering some of the articles I've seen you put up.

I notice they tend to harp on certain concepts such as "free of the supernatural and mystical", or "beyond the faith community". Please note that they make a point of specifiying "nonreligious".

That is to say, no one believing in God, Jehova, Allah, or Budda need apply.

Please note that most of the classifications are anti-religion: "skeptic", "rationalist", "atheist", and so on. If you go out and check out some of the magazines that hew to these worldviews, they are nearly universally anti-religion. I used to get their subscription folders in the mail. That's one of the reasons I dropped my subscription to Skeptical Inquirer (besides laziness): a fair number of contributors had turned into religion-bashers.

Now you, Dean, know I'm agnostic, but I'll point that out for everyone else. But I can't stand self-proclaimed "rationalists" jumping on religion at every opportunity any more than I can stand fundamentalists jumping on science (or the scientific approach). That's why I became irked with SI: you cannot falsify the basic tenets of Judaism, Christianity, or Islam using the scientific method. It is impossible to test (for example) whether Jesus "really" was the Son of God, or not. Therefore, within the framework of science, the question is meaningless. This principle is one that many "rationalists" overlook, or ignore.

I also find their rebuttal you linked to rather weak. They are arrogant, but not because of the immediate implications of the word bright. They are arrogant because they are trying to twist the English language around to change people's thinking. I am sure you have no use for euphimisms such as "differently abled"; so why use "bright" instead of "athiest" or "skeptic?"

Simple: when most folks hear terms like that they have a good idea of what's coming at them already. What the "brights" are trying to dodge are the negative connotations that "skeptic", "atheist", or "rationalist" evoke. (By the way, what the heck is an "igtheist?") So they replace those terms with one that is less specific, and that already carries some very positive connotations. If they really wanted a simple, one-syllable word, why not use (say) "toad", or "snake?" Those are short words that can be used as "umbrellas", too: "Oh, no, when we say 'toad', we mean 'naturalistic worldview',", and certainly "toad" has "naturalistic" connotations that "bright" doesn't! You can't get much more naturalistic than a toad. :)

They already have an umbrella term: "religion-bashers."

Again, I point out that their worldview emphasizes "free of supernatural or mystical deities!" Is your worldview, Dean, "free" of God? If so, then your worldview is atheist by definition. An agnostic does not claim that God does not exist. He or she may claim that one cannot know God, or be sure whether God exists, but that's the point: they aren't sure. All of the other sects mentioned in the "bright" home page are certain that God does not exist.

I also say they are arrogant because they are certain God does not exist. Me? I don't claim to know everything, but I am sure that the world is a big, complex, funny place and that we've barely started to understand it.

So I have to say my strongest objection is their perversion of the English language. Despite their ingenuous attempt to co-opt the evolution of English, this is not evolution: it is an advertising campaign to change people's minds: Madison Avenue tries to convince truck buyers that Ford is better than Dodge in the same way that these people would like to convince the general populace that "bright" is better than "atheist", "skeptic", or "rationalist"; it's new and improved! Yeah...

I like "corrugated." Perhaps I should start a separate site that aims to name people by that name. Why? It is something that those of us who are not so bright can get a handle on. Corrugated has less baggage than the term "bright."

And since when is a FAQ necessarily indicative of real motives? I'm sure the KKK web sites have FAQs that say they don't adhere to racism (wait, I'm getting weird flashbacks here).

I tend to agree with Casey Thompkins "subversion of the English language" arguments. Someone or some group has an agenda or purpose that won't survive under the terms that have negative connotation. Not that subverting the English language hasn't been tried before for political or social purposes. How about:

Peace Activist(I have Rachel Corrie in mind)
Anti-Abortion
Pro-Abortion
Pro-Life
Pro-Choice
Radical Liberal
Extremist Consertive

While you're at it you may address me as "Supreme Commander", and you'll be correct too, since it meets my definition of the term.

:)

Rodney Dill

Nice discussions. Some very good points. Now can we all get on with our lives?!? Dean, I still think you are an atheist but not willing to say so. I think many so called agnostics are actually atheists but the ugly connotation associated with atheism and O'Hare not to mention the stigma of being "Un-American" if you even hint at the fact that you are an atheist. Therefore, it seems easy to fall back on the lesser disurbing term of agnostic. "Oh, you're agnostic? Well, at least you're not an atheist."
Indeed, communism and atheism historically have gone hand in hand, at least during the 20th century, and I sure as shit don't want to be lumped in with the damn communists.

Similarly, most Americans identify themselves as being "Christian" because it is part of our tradition and culture. At the same time, I don't want to be thought of as a Christian because I am an American. And anyone with half a melon who reads the New Testament and believes it, certainly cannot reconcile the teachings of Christ with modern capitalism.

I guess if you define an atheist as "one who believes there is no God," then I am an atheist. I simply prefer to think of myself as Tim, son, husband, father, brother, friend, soldier, occassional jackass, and one day, I will die and that's it. Worm chow.

Sorry, God never was, isn't now, and never will be. It doesn't matter how many vacation bible schools you attended or how many Hail Mary's you pray, you are talking to the existential hand. It would be nice to believe the fairy tale, and certainly, the teaching of Jesus can have a positive impact in our world, myths often help strengthen a society's social structure and bonding.

As the old southern saying goes, "everybody wants to go to heaven, but no one wants to die."

Live dammit,

Tim the Soldier

I am so utterly delighted by all this discussion.

It tells me that this meme is almost certainly going to catch on.

By the way, Tim: No, I am not an atheist. Not just because so many atheists are assholes, although an awful lot of them are. No, Tim, it's because you are CERTAIN there is no God, and you draw some kind of perverse, obviously religiously-based, security out of your CERTAINTY that there is no God.

At a certain level, atheists like you are really cowards, Tim, because you crave the same certainty that the most blind followers of Jerry Falwell do. Not interested, thanks! But I'll still consider you a fellow Bright, and still hope you're coming to the Wretched Hive!

Max: As regards "we conservatives" -- who's we, paleface? I'm a liberal, where have you been all this time?

Bright is the new gay, people. Pass the meme on, for we are everywhere!

By the way, in re: "subversion of the English language"--oh get over yourselves you silly people! Neologisms are not "perversions" unless there's a cloaked agenda behind it.

Fact is that there are tens of millions of Americans with NO RELIGION, and it's not because we're HOSTILE TO RELIGION, not because we're STUPID, not because we're UNEDUCATED, not because we're just waiting for JESUS TO COME INTO OUR HEARTS, and not because we're TOO COWARDLY TO SAY THERE IS NO GOD.

Is "RAM" a perversion of the English language? How about "Nanotechnology?" What if I use the word "neat" to describe something fun and novel? Is that a perversion? If I say something is "awesome" that I think is fabulously wonderful, is that a perversion?

Let me (in a friendly way) just say this: Get over your silly-ass selves--a neologism is not a perversion!

Oh, this is so funny. The very controversy it's sparking tells me there's a VERY good chance this is going to catch on!

By the way, if Lysander is a Lite-Bright, I'm thinking that "Raving Atheist" chucklehead (I'm referring to that weblogger who calls himself "Raving Atheist"--I won't link him because I don't want to give him the traffic) ought to have someone tell him that too might Brightness can blind you. ;-)

"At a certain level, atheists like you are really cowards, Tim, because you crave the same certainty that the most blind followers of Jerry Falwell do. Not interested, thanks! "

Gotta disagree with you pal. People like me don't crave certainty, we only connect the dots and conclude, as other freethinkers have done in the past. In fact, I would have to say that this is anything but cowardly. I don't want to be an atheist. I WANT to believe there is a God, a heaven, and justice for the "righteous"..but it just ain't so. While my hypocricy knows no bounds...I'm sure I am the only atheist in attendance at the Sierra Vista United Methodist Church almost every sunday. And no, I don't push my lack of belief with other believers. (only on your site) That being said...I am a bright, but not a very bright bright.

Tim the Soldier

From the perspective of one who thinks that people are a deterministic mass of atoms, differentiate a person from a chimpanzee from a table from a rock. Do it without appealing to you feeling like it.

Simple. I just look around. Some of the objects I see have things in common with me and I call them people. Other things I call animals because they move by themselves, but don't quite seem to have the communication skills that people do. Of course one can argue for solipsism, but at some point, you have to trust your senses: there is a world out there filled with all kinds of things and you can find out things about it. That has worked out pretty well so far for science, after all, and it seems a reasonable place to start.

You can't. The best that you can accomplish in moral justification, other than taking your moral precepts randomly because, well, you can't help doing whatever you happened to have done anyway, is utilitarianism. Strict utilitarianism.

Well, only if you lack imagination, or have never had a basic philosophy course. Believe me, people have been thinking about the meaning of life since before Jesus came along, and a good amount of the thinking they've done afterward doesn't necessarily require him either.

Welcome to a world in which retarted people are killed off for fertilizer and children can be turned into same by their parents at will.

Here's how an atheist would reason through it. "Would I like to live in a world where everyone is free to kill retarded people and children at will? No, it would be a profoundly unpleasant place to live, especially if I were a child, or had children, or if I were thought to be retarded, which might well eventually happen as I get older. Such a world is clearly to be avoided; therefore, I will not commit such acts."

It's called the Categorical Imperative: "live as though your every act were to become an immutable law of the universe." Immanuel Kant -- I've probably not quoted him exactly (not least because he wrote in German). Many moral dilemmas can be resolved using this tool alone.

Without Christians and such folks around who actually believe in souls and such, you've got absolutely no way to justify the rights of children.

Without the secular ideas of the Enlightenment, you wouldn't have the Constitutionally-guaranteed right to practice the religion of your choice, so even if your assertion were true, which it is definitely not, I guess we'd probably be even.

SFT,

"This is almost as ridiculous as the previous post that says 'It's a noun now, therefore it has no connection to the adjective meaning.' Gimme a break," says you.

I feel the need to clarify, since you were referring to my ridiculous comment. I'm not defending the Bright guys, just pointing out a simple fact. Read the original comment. I didn't create the meme, so how do I know what the intent was?

I was hoping to get some response comments about the merits of the "idea" (naturalistic worldview) as opposed to the "word" (Bright). Looks like Dean and Tim took care of that in their recent comments.

Dean, my outlook mirrors your's, but I don't have any desire to tag my beliefs in order to create a collective identity (not implying you do, that's just how I see it). In the context of this discussion I consider myself a Bright, but I would never want that label applied to me; I'm fine w/ agnostic...w/ a little "a".

"Here's how an atheist would reason through it. 'Would I like to live in a world where everyone is free to kill retarded people and children at will?...'"

Congratulations. You've just managed to pretend that argument by whim is justification with a straight face.

It's somewhat ironic that you have the gall to imply intellectual superiority to me ("only if you lack imagination, or have never had a basic philosophy course."). There's a good chance that I'm not going to bother coming back here, and frankly you're probably better off if you don't think through your own position and realize its ugly consequences. It's better to be inconsistently right than consistently wrong. But I can't help leaving this quote:

"A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices."
-- William James

Todd,

My apologies. I interpreted your questions to be more rhetorical than they actually were, and I was too lazy at the time to reread the comment thoroughly before I cited it. My bad. :)

Why do I hate this "new" usage of the term "bright"? It has nothing to do with the latest agenda of people like Dawkins to stick it to the Xtians, or whatever his damage is this month. It has nothing to do with anyone's views on reality, mine included. (My theory is we are all really dead and this is the afterlife. We are all doomed to this hell of mediocrity for all eternity! This really is as good as it gets, baby! Bwahahaaha!)

Ahe. Anyway, I hate it because all my life "bright" has been used to describe a child that was really average-to-mediocre in everything he or she did, but was a simpering little suck-up -- I mean, was clean, neat, had good social skills, and always turned their homework assignments in on time. And then there is the sound of the word, which I loathe when it is used to describe people thusly. I just envisage all these people saying to each other "I'm a Bright!" "My daughter is a Bright child!" with the big jaw-stretching grimace-y smile that this word makes the lips and teeth do, and I just want to do violence to someone.

(For some reason, phrases such as "bright light" don't bother me.)

It's somewhat ironic that you have the gall to imply intellectual superiority to me ("only if you lack imagination, or have never had a basic philosophy course.").

Well, you basically implied I was (or would be, if I were "honest" enough to admit that there is no morality without religion) in favor of allowing people to kill babies and the retarded; I think my implication is rather mild in comparison to that.

I find it somewhat ironic that you have the gall to complain that I have merely implied that you might be able to do with a wee bit more education. Being called ignorant is nearly as bad as being called a murderer, any day.

"A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices."
-- William James

I couldn't have come up with better parting words toward you myself.

A warning: If you pat yourself on the back too hard, you'll dislocate your arm.

You might find the New Age loons trying to rehijack the term. It has the connotations they want as well the ability to point to the same Enemy.

Yeah, to actually weigh in on the topic of the thread, I don't like this "bright" thing at all.

Heeh!

People often try to come up with a simple noun to describe themselves. If they make one up out of whole cloth, it sounds stupid: "gloops" or "pforts" or "girfts" or somesuch. That rarely works. Otherwise, they choose something that has its roots in another word: "blacks" or "hispanics" or "gypsies."

Or, they can take another word, like "gay" or "babe," and apply new meaninges to it.

"Brights: People who prefer naturalistic worldviews to supernatural ones."

What's so arrogant about that?

Are people who prefer the supernatural "darks?" An odd connotation, that. Does that mean that heterosexuals are "gloomies?" I think not.

Language does change, people. Labels are simply labels, after all. :-)

I WANT to believe there is a God, a heaven, and justice for the "righteous"..but it just ain't so.

Can you prove that? I don't think you can.

While my hypocricy knows no bounds...I'm sure I am the only atheist in attendance at the Sierra Vista United Methodist Church almost every sunday.

Pshaw, you're not an atheist. You may WANT to be an atheist, but you're not there yet.

And you don't really want to be an atheist as such, what you really want is to be CERTAIN. You want to make the leap of faith, to KNOW, without having to see proof. But you can't convince yourself one way or the other.

What you are, lad, is an agnostic, and a seeker of truth.

Maybe someday I'll tell you what it is. (Or maybe you'll get there before me, you're on the track.)

(Hint: What God you worship, and how, is less important than the fact of worship itself, preferably in groups.)

Mainly I don't like being pinned down with a single label. %)

There might be a God or Gods, or some other mystical being responsible for existence. Or there might not be, and the universe might be a self-regulating system operating according to certain fundamental laws about time, space, matter, energy, and what have you.

There is no scientific evidence that holds up to even cursory scrutiny to suggest that there is a God. There is plenty of scientific evidence that fails to prove that there is no God, but you can't prove a negative.

I can't prove there's no God; and neither can anyone else. There simply isn't any evidence, to support it. Thus, I'm an atheist. I do not believe in the existence of God, based on the current evidence available.

Does that mean my mind couldn't be changed? Of course not. But as a skeptic, I need evidence -- something tangible, something reproducible, something rational -- and there isn't any.

People think that atheist contend that there simply could not possibly be a God. This is untrue, certainly in my case. I will only believe what can be demonstrated, and I will withhold belief in those things that can not be demonstrated.

If you need a book to tell you that murder and theft is wrong, then I'd be happy to engage you in a discussion re: explanations of the non-divine variety.

I don't owe Christianity a thing in terms of my morality. The mores that Christianity preaches can be found in plenty of other religions -- all just competing mystical allegories painted over common sense.

Dean, I like you, and I like your blog. I come here often, and I seldom fail to enjoy what I read. Please, please: preserve your integrity and your humility. Do not adopt the posture or the pretensions of a community which can no more prove its convictions than its opposition can.

I am a very senior software engineer in the real-time field. I hold three degrees, including a doctorate in astrophysics. My IQ has been measured at over 200. How dare anyone call himself "bright" to distinguish himself from me, simply because I'm a believing Christian?

Albert Einstein was devout. So have many other luminaries of the sciences been. For Dawkins to elevate himself in the way his use of the word "bright" suggests is intellectual hubris of the highest order.

You don't believe in God? Fine. That's your prerogative. Please don't adopt as your label a term which implies that your non-belief marks you as smarter than the average bear. It would be conceited at the very least.

Maybe it's my age or my worldview. I'm having trouble wrapping my head around 'bright'. All my life, bright meant somebody who was pretty smart, dim meant somebody dumber'n a bag of hammers. All my life I've dealt with religious folks who were pretty bright as well as those who were dimbulbs. I've seen those who would take the new 'Bright' noun who bear the intellectual capacity of the average fencepost as well as those so smart it's scarey.
Me? I think that folks are gonna fight about it for awhile and then, sometime soon, this whole meme will lie there like cowflop in a pasture.

I am the living, breathing, walking personification of what's being described as a "bright". I read the FAQ - that's me they're talking about...

Except that I'm cringing now as I type this. Calling oneself a "bright" is maddeningly self-congratulatory and - yes - arrogant. Don't see how you can take it any other way.

Sorry.

Note: I've taken the responses of Jerry Kindall (put in ital) to Chris, while removing Chris's original posting, so some of Jerry's references will be gone; scroll up for the context.

Simple. I just look around. Some of the objects I see have things in common with me and I call them people. Other things I call animals because they move by themselves, but don't quite seem to have the communication skills that people do. Of course one can argue for solipsism, but at some point, you have to trust your senses: there is a world out there filled with all kinds of things and you can find out things about it. That has worked out pretty well so far for science, after all, and it seems a reasonable place to start.

OK, so far we agree. Science & the scientific method can and do teach us about what the universe actually is like.

Here's how an atheist would reason through it. "Would I like to live in a world where everyone is free to kill retarded people and children at will? No, it would be a profoundly unpleasant place to live, especially if I were a child, or had children, or if I were thought to be retarded, which might well eventually happen as I get older. Such a world is clearly to be avoided; therefore, I will not commit such acts."

But now you've skipped from the way things are to the way things ought to be. If there isn't any moral authority to appeal to, how can you say "Such a world is clearly to be avoided"?

It's called the Categorical Imperative: "live as though your every act were to become an immutable law of the universe." Immanuel Kant -- I've probably not quoted him exactly (not least because he wrote in German). Many moral dilemmas can be resolved using this tool alone.

But why is this law moral? What gives it its morality? Because you, or Kant, or Thomas Jefferson or whoever says it? You accept it because it's a good idea. But what makes it a good idea?

Without the secular ideas of the Enlightenment, you wouldn't have the Constitutionally-guaranteed right to practice the religion of your choice, so even if your assertion were true, which it is definitely not, I guess we'd probably be even.

Ah, yes. How many of the Founding Fathers were, indeed, not orthodox Christians? I'm genuinely curious, and in any case I believe the philosophical underpinnings of the Enlightenment were at least deistic, if not overtly Christian; the logic of classical liberalism is based on the idea that rights come not from the King or the State, but "that [all men] are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights...". Correct me if I'm wrong.

An aside: Dean, thanks for your commitment to open, reasoned debate. This site is truly a place where liberals, conservatives, Christians and atheists are able to debate in a spirit of mutual respect. I think this is why the religious side is so vociferous about this 'bright' thing; it's just not like you to so celebrate a term that is at best hijacking a useful word for political purposes (Didn't Orwell speak to this?) and at worst seriously denigrating non-atheists. We know you're more 'fair and balanced' than this.

SFT,

No problem, civility rules.

Todd

People think that atheist contend that there simply could not possibly be a God.

Errrrr, not quite. Atheists are dead certain that there is no God. Atheists are SURE, they HAVE FAITH that there is no God.

If you are willing to believe that there is a God if someone shows you proof, and willing to believe there is no God if someone shows you proof, and mostly don't care either way, you're an agnostic.

Dean, I don't think the Bright meme will have the lifespan you apparently hope for. The definition is too strict to function as the umbrella Weltanschaaung it aspires to. For example, pure skepticism denies absolute knowledge, yet Brights must, by definition, be absolutely certain in their naturalism--"A Bright's ethics and actions are based on a naturalistic worldview". Of course, modern skepticism typically allows for dogmatism provided it's anti-religious. The same problem exists for agnostics such as yourself. The Bright web site certainly goes beyond your "prefers naturalistic to supernatural worldviews."

I don't think you're really a Bright. You're on the outside, gazing longingly at their certainty, but knowing--deep down in some unobservable, unmeasurable way--that reality is not quite that simplistic. If we take the American Heritage definition of naturalist philosophy, "that all phenomena can be explained in terms of natural causes and laws without attributing moral, spiritual, or supernatural significance to them," Dean's World is superfluous for a Bright. Moral significance rears its head in many of your posts (think Cuba, Armenian genocide, Iraq, etc, etc.). As a committed Bright with integrity, you now must remove all of those "Best of Dean Articles" because they merely squander bandwidth in the Bright worldview and are unjustifiable. 'Tis a pity, since I consider them worthwhile...

Jerry,

I'm aware of this, having been raised a Christian, but I have trouble considering such an argument from authority to be "support." To me, "support" means something more than "someone else gave it to me," regardless of who that other is.

So what does it mean? I'm sure you realize that Christian arguments are somewhat more sophisticated than "someone else gave it to me." See Notre Dame prof Alvin Plantinga's Warranted Christian Belief, for example.

At the very least I object to the notion that this kind of support somehow trumps the philosophy and reasoning with which many atheists support their morality.

I didn't make that counter-claim. I was merely pointing out how Christians support their morality, although I do believe we have a better grounding than atheists possess.

I also object to the idea that joining a church somehow gives you more of a right to certain moral precepts than others who are not members of that church.

I agree with you 100%. I don't think that joining a church in and of itself gives you anything more than joining any other social club.

Surely if it's good for Christians to hold certain moral principles, it is also good for non-Christians to hold the same principles regardless of how they arrived at them.

Sure. But that doesn't mean they have proper warrant for those principles. Even if they don't admit they borrowed the principles, I won't demand they abandon them, since I think moral principles help society function more smoothly, even if held for inadequate reasons.

But why is this law moral? What gives it its morality? Because you, or Kant, or Thomas Jefferson or whoever says it?

Well, it's more or less logically equivalent to a similar statement made by Jesus Christ and found in other many religions. If it's a good idea when Jesus Christ said it, then it's a good idea when someone else expresses it from a different perspective. Unless it's only a good idea because Jesus Christ had the authority that implied an "or else" at the end of "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you." But is it really moral to be good only because of the consequences if you don't? Is it okay if you "just follow orders" as long as the orders turn out to be good ones?

No, following the commandment is moral because it works. By "works" I mean it results in a better world for everyone, by the only measure that we have -- ourselves. Yes, this is essentially utilitarianism, but so is "Do unto others" if you take it without the "or else." And it's hardly "strict," as Chris argues. In fact it's rather nuanced and under no circumstances could it be used to, for example, justify infanticide. Only the most naive, superficial reading of such a principle would allow anything of the sort.

There is a significant difference between a moral system based on something like the Categorical Imperative and Judeo-Christian morality: in addition to the perfectly reasonable precepts like "do unto others," the Judeo-Christian tradition adds a hodgepodge of arbitrary commandments that have endured not because of their inherent value but because people believe God said them.

If there isn't any moral authority to appeal to, how can you say "Such a world is clearly to be avoided"?

Because I, and I daresay most people, would find it unpleasant. The fact that I don't believe there's a deity to tell me killing is wrong doesn't mean I suddenly am ambivalent to the value of my own life and by extension the value of the lives of others. Even if my life ends when I die, I still like it and want it to continue.

Basing moral precepts on religion isn't any different in the end. Absent any proof of the existence of a deity, religions must be assumed to be human inventions as much as any secular philosophy; it's merely that their origins are obscured by time and shrouded in mysticism. Religions endure because they benefit their followers and society at large -- they "work." (Those that don't are destroyed or forgotten.) In other words, if you adhere to a religion, you do so, consciously or not, for essentially the same reason that I adhere to my particular moral philosophy. You merely have an extra layer of stuff between yourself and your morality.

And, in general, I think there's nothing wrong with that; the extra baggage can be heavy, but there are some useful tools for living in there alongside that thing your aunt gave you that you don't know what it is. Sometimes the non-religious must derive or invent their own "tools" on the fly, and by nature they're not as time-tested as those provided by a 2,000-year-old religion. But the flip side of that is that some of us are used to making new "tools," and we generally understand how they work, whereas some religious people rely too much on the ones they already have without understanding them, and don't think enough about making new ones even when the ones they have don't quite fit the problem at hand. By my estimation, it comes out about even.

The more I think about it, the more I do like the term "bright." Religion has long used metaphors involving light to proclaim itself as a source of truth, and turnabout's fair play. But I still don't think I'll adopt it for myself, because what matters is not how much Truth you have but how good a life you live. Bragging about the former is bad public relations, and bragging about the latter is self-defeating.

Dean, you clearly didn't fully read Dawkins's article, if you don't admit that at least Dawkins intended it as a slight towards the believing.

Undoubtedly the link that you found is less arrogant and insulting than Dawkins. It would hard not to be.

Well, it's more or less logically equivalent to a similar statement made by Jesus Christ and found in other many religions. If it's a good idea when Jesus Christ said it, then it's a good idea when someone else expresses it from a different perspective. Unless it's only a good idea because Jesus Christ had the authority that implied an "or else" at the end of "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you." But is it really moral to be good only because of the consequences if you don't? Is it okay if you "just follow orders" as long as the orders turn out to be good ones?

I’m not arguing that this law is not moral. It sounds good to me, but I can back that up by saying it is consistent with the innate sense of right and wrong, placed in every man by his Creator. What I’m asking is, how do you justify saying such a law is good? What tells you the Golden Rule is a good, moral way to live one’s live, while “look out for Number One” is immoral?

No, following the commandment is moral because it works. By "works" I mean it results in a better world for everyone, by the only measure that we have -- ourselves. Yes, this is essentially utilitarianism, but so is "Do unto others" if you take it without the "or else." And it's hardly "strict," as Chris argues. In fact it's rather nuanced and under no circumstances could it be used to, for example, justify infanticide. Only the most naive, superficial reading of such a principle would allow anything of the sort.

If I understand rightly, this principle decides upon the morality of an action by asking “If everyone did this, what would the world be like? Would it be better or worse?” It’s a good question, but how do you discern what is better or worse? The only way I see besides theism is a calculating utilitarianism, and you reject that for its obvious shortcomings. My question stands: how do you know if something is good?

There is a significant difference between a moral system based on something like the Categorical Imperative and Judeo-Christian morality: in addition to the perfectly reasonable precepts like "do unto others," the Judeo-Christian tradition adds a hodgepodge of arbitrary commandments that have endured not because of their inherent value but because people believe God said them.

Really, the Biblical view of ethics is quite fair. Homosexuality, prostitution, adultery and fornication are proscribed, but that stems from our high view of marriage. I really can’t think of any laws that weren’t fair (some laws, especially in the Old Testament, were culturally relevant and are pretty cryptic to us now.) Not to say, of course, that I think our secular government has any right to ban many moral acts; but I think the Judeo-Christian tradition is eminently defensible.

Because I, and I daresay most people, would find it unpleasant. The fact that I don't believe there's a deity to tell me killing is wrong doesn't mean I suddenly am ambivalent to the value of my own life and by extension the value of the lives of others. Even if my life ends when I die, I still like it and want it to continue.

Is adultery immoral? The two persons engaging in it find it pleasant, and the spouses of the adulterers don’t know about the affair, so they are not harmed.

Basing moral precepts on religion isn't any different in the end. Absent any proof of the existence of a deity, religions must be assumed to be human inventions as much as any secular philosophy; it's merely that their origins are obscured by time and shrouded in mysticism. Religions endure because they benefit their followers and society at large -- they "work." (Those that don't are destroyed or forgotten.) In other words, if you adhere to a religion, you do so, consciously or not, for essentially the same reason that I adhere to my particular moral philosophy. You merely have an extra layer of stuff between yourself and your morality.

Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence… although I grant that your no-God hypothesis is possible.

And, in general, I think there's nothing wrong with that; the extra baggage can be heavy, but there are some useful tools for living in there alongside that thing your aunt gave you that you don't know what it is. Sometimes the non-religious must derive or invent their own "tools" on the fly, and by nature they're not as time-tested as those provided by a 2,000-year-old religion. But the flip side of that is that some of us are used to making new "tools," and we generally understand how they work, whereas some religious people rely too much on the ones they already have without understanding them, and don't think enough about making new ones even when the ones they have don't quite fit the problem at hand. By my estimation, it comes out about even.

Wholeheartedly agreed, except for that last line: I obviously think it’s better to be religious than not. Nevertheless, point taken.

The more I think about it, the more I do like the term "bright." Religion has long used metaphors involving light to proclaim itself as a source of truth, and turnabout's fair play. But I still don't think I'll adopt it for myself, because what matters is not how much Truth you have but how good a life you live. Bragging about the former is bad public relations, and bragging about the latter is self-defeating.

But religion uses light, illumination, etc. basically to mean more knowledge or wisdom: Jesus is the Light of the world because He brought us back to God, and therefore to greater understanding about spiritual reality. All it’s really saying is that Christianity is a better worldview than anything else, there’s nothing offensive in saying that you believe you’re right is there? The term ‘bright’ is referring to the person, however: saying that because I believe x, I am more bright than someone who believes y. It’s sort of an ad hominem in reverse, I suppose.

I can back [the Golden Rule] up by saying it is consistent with the innate sense of right and wrong, placed in every man by his Creator

I'll do my best to rein in my expressions of incredulity here, but let me just say that if you believe humans have an innate sense of right and wrong (from whatever source), you really should meet some bratty kids. Children can be viciously, short-sightedly selfish at times, and frequently engage in behavior that we might well call "evil" or at least "sinful" if an adult did the same thing. Even the Bible acknowledges that children must be taught write from wrong, saying "Train up a child in the way of he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it." There's plenty of advice on child-rearing in the Bible, which would be completely superfluous if we had an innate sense of right and wrong.

What tells you the Golden Rule is a good, moral way to live one?s live, while ?look out for Number One? is immoral?

It occurs to me that the idea I've been been circling around demonstrate, although I suppose I haven't directly come out and said it, is that the Golden Rule is the same thing as "looking out for Number One" -- just at a different timescale. Rather than seeking immediate gratification for myself only, I can gain even greater benefits by being part of a society that cooperates. By giving my surplus food to my hungry neighbor now, for instance, I increase the chance he'll remember me when I am in need. (And if I'm the hungry one first, he gives me his surplus for the same reason.) Although this seems "altruistic," it is nevertheless much to my selfish interest to participate in this scheme in order to gain a measure of security.

If everyone did this, what would the world be like? Would it be better or worse?? It?s a good question, but how do you discern what is better or worse? The only way I see besides theism is a calculating utilitarianism, and you reject that for its obvious shortcomings.

What I objected to was not so much utilitarianism, but the simplistic utilitarianism that looks only at the short-term interest of a small number of people. But in fact you don't always have to imagine whether the whole world would be "better" by some utilitarian standard. Often, answering the question by considering only what you would prefer works just as well. Sure, it's subjective -- but it works. You could conceivably build a society on the very principle, one in which most people behave in a way that most would consider basically "good," because for all their differences, people all have many selfish interests in common. They want to survive, they want to be safe, they want to be free. Get them to think long-term about obtaining these interests and you've got a civilization.

The point of something like the Categorical Imperative is not that it eliminates self-interest from moral decision-making, but rather that it harnesses self-interest to allow individuals to justify altruism and other "good" behavior. After all, the only motivation that ever really gets people to consistently do anything is their own self-interest. Even religion acknowledges this, providing various carrots and sticks to keep people on the strait and narrow.

Is adultery immoral? The two persons engaging in it find it pleasant, and the spouses of the adulterers don?t know about the affair, so they are not harmed.

It is not sex outside of marriage per se that I would consider immoral -- it's breaking a promise that you made when you got married. Again, imagine a world in which no one could be trusted because no one kept their promises -- modern civilization, which most people will agree is generally a good thing, would become an entirely unworkable proposition. Whether anyone ever finds out that you broke your vow is irrelevant to whether you should keep it; each broken promise weakens the trust necessary to society. To bring it back to the Categorical Imperative, would I like to live in a world where I could not trust anyone? No, so I should not betray the trust others have placed in me, and I can be reasonably confident that others will use the same reasoning to conclude that it is in their interest to keep their agreements as well.

I also wanted to address this from a previous message, which I forgot in my last reply:

I believe the philosophical underpinnings of the Enlightenment were at least deistic, if not overtly Christian ... "[all men] are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights"

It may sound religious today, but it was certainly extremely secular by the standards of the time, a time in which most countries still had a monarch and an official state religion. The most important implication of that famous sentence from the Declaration of Independence is not the statement that our inalienable rights are endowed by a creator, but that we have any inalienable rights at all. The Declaration could have left out "by our Creator," and it would have remained just as shocking. The idea of inherent rights as such is not found in the Bible, nor is the idea of religious freedom, nor the separation of church and state. Secularism is a continuum, and people are of their time, but there is no doubt that the Enlightenment, which dared to posit that the Church was not the sole source of truth, was profoundly different from what had come before -- more focused on reason than on authority.

I wish I had the time to address some of your and others' points in more detail, but unfortunately I do not make my living writing comments on Weblogs. %)

It may sound religious today, but it was certainly extremely secular by the standards of the time, a time in which most countries still had a monarch and an official state religion.

The most important implication of that famous sentence from the Declaration of Independence is not the statement that our inalienable rights are endowed by a creator, but that we have any inalienable rights at all. The Declaration could have left out "by our Creator," and it would have remained just as shocking.

I don't think so. The author of the document clearly used the "by our Creator" as a basis for the assumption. Removing that phrase makes the assertion baseless, just so much humanistic air.

To position such a statement as "extremely secular by the standards of the time" is wrong. It may be more humanistic for the times, but not more secular. You might consider the ideals of the early anabaptists and others regarding the "priesthood of the believer." This theological construct basically says that each man is privileged (and responsible) for his/her own interactions with God. Such a concept clearly fits with the concept of "inalienable rights" as mentioned in the declaration.

The idea of inherent rights as such is not found in the Bible, nor is the idea of religious freedom, nor the separation of church and state.

1. Separation of church and state was first championed by Christian theologians. Christianity began as a religion outside official state recognition. There is nothing in the N.T. that supports a state religion. In fact, the N.T. treats religion and state as separate, cf. "render unto caesar ..." or in Acts "whether it is right to follow God or follow man..." The only imperative from the N.T. regarding the state seems to be that believers should, as much as it is possible, support the legitimate activities of the state.

Certainly, the OT ideal was not a separation, but the theocratic ideal never made it in practice, thus the emergence of kings in the historical narative.

Surely you wouldn't say that because the Bible doesn't explicitly mention such principles, that such principles do not flow from a full consideration of the text.

Indeed, the early baptists and anabaptists were very explicit in their support for separation of church and state, and made their case by referencing numerous biblical examples. They could have hardly made a convincing case if they did not find convincing support for it in the bible.

2. Regarding religious freedom, the entire concept of following God in the N.T., and arguably the O.T. is upon "free will," upon "choosing" whether you will worship YHWH or some other deity. In short, you - as a human being endowed with free will by the Creator - are free to make whatever choice you want to make.

You know, Dean, you pulled an Ara by dancing around my examples, don't you? :)

First: your examples of RAM and such are not the same as the "bright" business. Those examples came about through a natural process, as did words like "radar" and "sonar".

But, as I pointed out before, the "bright" advocates are pushing the equivalent of Madison Avenue ad campaign. They are trying to sell their point of view in order to make their worldview more palatable to the general populace.

Try reading some of the stuff in skeptic/rationalist/freethinking/atheist publications. They are 99% pure anti-religion. This position still gets under the skin of most folks in America, if not Western countries in general, so this way they can gain acceptance otherwise denied them.

This is why the National Socialist German Worker's Party didn't call itself the Militaristic Irrational Cult-fixated Jew Hater Party.

Yes, Dean, I know you aren't anti-religion. But most of those folks are. I have as much use for them as I do for (from another thread) Noam Chomsky, who is also a narrow-minded, dogmatic, arrogant jerk.

Some people have a sense of "empathy". It affects our moral judgements. I don't need a bible to tell me what to do.

I've been discussing the "bright" meme on several posts in my blog, the most recent posting being this one. The key point for me is to imagine how one would feel if "straight" were to be coined new today, as a non-ironic term for heterosexuals to describe themselves. Then it would be quite close in intention to "bright."

hmm. so whats it got to do with non-abrahamic faiths?

It all sort of reminds me of star-bellied sneetches, for some reason.

OK, Dean, I've given it a good bit of thought. Maybe Dawkins covers this point, maybe he doesn't, but my accomodation to your "bright"ness will probably look something like this:

I respect Dean and believe that he means nothing harmful in calling himself a "Bright," whatever Dawkins et al obviously mean by it.

By the same token, when I tell someone I'm a Christian, I expect not to have Pat Robertson thrown in my face.

That is all.

Albert Einstein wasn't "devout"
He didn't believe in a personal God
He didn't believe in Christianity of Judaism

http://www.infidels.org/library/historical/albert_einstein/index.shtml

As far as atheists/freethinkers - I do get sick of their leftists/socialists/marxists( they call it marxist libertarian!?) points of view. I have a feeling that some of these people want to "free" more people from religion, so they can increase their political strength -which in one form or another is anti-Bush, anti-conservative, anti-Christian right. Atleast Dawkins admitted that 9/11 had something to do with Islam, instead of looking for the "core" reasons.

The Golden Rule is only good if you happen to not be a masochist :)

Congratulation, Dean, for contributing and providing the open forum for this discussion. Those contributors who persist in the 'name calling' (jerk, snob, whatever) tickle me as they seem to be missing the case that 'they' are hijacking words and using them as an umbrella term. Isn't that the root of what we (I am a Bright) would like to do with the word 'Bright'? Hmmm. Further, regarding the debate, it is certainly reasonable for a group to collectively identify thier ideas using any terms they like. I like what I read in a previous post, civility rules. Religious zealots appear to have trouble with civility. Not too bright. Or Bright. And that's ok.