"Brights"

[Orrex]

Poll question: "Brights"

on edit: I'm atheist, by the way, so ask this as a person who might nominally qualify as a "Bright."

[beam me up scottie]

1. You already know my opinion on this subject.

It's like renaming feminists "Mensuckians" or something similar.

[charlie]

11. I've said it before

I can handle any reaction to my being an atheist -- indifference, delight, bafflement, derision, whatever. But condescending mirth is one I'm not interested in enduring. Calling myself a Bright would be like calling myself a member the League of Officious Dorks.

[beam me up scottie]

14. Yeah, it's too close to "Indigo" children for me.

I may be special, but I'm not that special. :D

[Silent3]

29. Somehow I'd missed out on "indigo children"...

...so I googled the phrase. It's whole new steaming mound of New Age horseshit to explore!

Back on topic... "Brights"? Bleeecchh! I'll happily call myself an atheist, a rational thinker, or godless heathen scum. :) That is, of course, if I feel any need to call myself anything in particular at all, which I don't very often.

"Labels? We don't need no steenkeen labels!"

[beam me up scottie]

33. Argh. Sorry about that.

I wish I had missed out on them.

We need a smilie that's holding its nose...

[EstimatedProphet]

2. I would vote, but I have absolutely no idea what you're talking about

[cosmik debris]

3. start here

http://www.the-brights.net/

[EstimatedProphet]

5. OK...

The site does seem to be heavy into patting themselves on the back. However, after having spent the last few days with my fundie sister, I think they may have a point, because fundies sure aren't bringing a lot to the table as far as civic responsibility.

[cosmik debris]

6. There are other sites out there if you want to google

I just wanted to get you started. That is not the only side to the story, but I'm not in a mood to preach to you. If you want knowledge on this subject, I'm sure you can find it.

[EstimatedProphet]

8. Yes. I'll check into it.

[Dorian Gray]

27. Me too!

No clue, but it's fun to read make stuff up in my head! ;)

[stopbush]

4. As much as it's a pain in the ass to be described as a "not"

I'm afraid we're stuck with atheist. The whole brights thing smacks of self importance and academia.

Maybe we should come up with a few "a" terms to describe our religious friends. Christians could become "aMuslim,"
Jews, "aChristians."

[beam me up scottie]

7. We're the default position.

Unfortunately, many believers don't understand that, so, yes, we're stuck with being "nots" if we want to use terms that everyone understands.

[Warpy]

13. Most of us (50s survivors) were brought up in at least nominally

religious households where god supplanted Santa Claus sometime during our preschool years. Those of us who realized we didn't believe in god any more than we did old Santa and were honest enough to say it had an understandable tendency to pat ourselves on the back for having the wit to kick through the bullshit, see through the lies, and whatever else we claimed credit for when we were a lot younger.

That's where this "bright" nonsense is coming from.

Of course, the flip side is all the religious types patting themselves on the back for being in tune with the world that exists beyond toasters and rocks.

Alan W. Watts had an interesting commentary on two philosophical mindsets here, he called them "prickles and goo." The "prickle" people were the ones who saw the universe as an empty place filled with occasional pieces of stuff. The "goo" people saw the universe as a spiritual miasma, every square nanometer chock full of soul, grace, phlogiston, whatever.

The truth lies somewhere between, as discoveries of matter, energy, dark matter, dark energy have started to show us. However, we are still stuck with those two mindsets. Calling one "bright" begs the question of what to call the other one, and the alternatives are not flattering.

I say we drop the whole thing. I'm perfectly happy with "atheist." Since there's just a lack of belief based on a lack of evidence, a "not" word describes me perfectly.

[beam me up scottie]

15. "begs the question of what to call the other one"

Well said, Warpy!

I hate having to call myself anything with respect to religion, but atheist is as close as one could get when describing my absence of faith.

[charlie]

16. Yeah, atheist suits me

For one thing, it's merely descriptive, a practical name, not one that makes me sound like a self-besotted twit.

[eallen]

9. Despite being an atheist, I voted the second choice.

I just can't think of a context where I would use that term.

[Orrex]

12. I concur

It's a poorly-selected meme IMO because it automatically implies that someone who is not atheist is "not-Bright," aka "dim" aka "dumb."

Sure, "Bright" can mean "positive," but in a rhetorically charged environment, I can only hear it as an attempt at preemptive snarkiness.

[valerief]

10. Bright is what laundry detergents make clothes. Yuk, yuk, yuk. nt

[bperci108]

17. Smugness is just as disgusting in an Atheist as it is in a Fundie.

:puke:


As Denis Leary said: "....pull that bus over to the side of the Pretentiousness Turnpike, pal!"

[cosmik debris]

18. I would prefer the name "Huh?"

When someone asks about my religion I say: Huh?

When someone asks if I believe in god I say: Huh?

When someone asks about my soul I say: Huh?

I'll admit it is not as polite as "I beg your pardon" but it works splendidly as a rhetorical device to make them keep talking while I look for the exit.

[Warpy]

19. I've got a better one

I'm a bad Buddhist, so when some fundy asks me, "Are you SAVED?" I reply, "No, I'm recycled."

Since I have arthritis, I need extra time to make my escape and that one provides it.

[cosmik debris]

24. I can see how that works for you

But another delightful advantage to mine is that you can say Huh? a little louder each time leading the speaker to believe that you are slightly deaf. So the speaker raises the volume after each Huh? Soon they are shouting at you and you can just shrug your shoulders and walk away. It works wonderfully in a public place.

[Warpy]

26. I'll have to give it a try

because sometimes they don't ask the magic question.

Thanks.

[toddaa]

20. What's wrong with Godless Heathen Scum?

A term of endearment bestowed upon me by an old drinking buddy ages ago. Catchy, self deprecating, and slightly rebellious without being offensive. It's got it all.

[Lilith Velkor]

35. Hey, as long as you don't mind sharing a category with pagans

...welcome! :toast:

[catbert836]

21. The latter

Although the word "atheist" was indeed started as a purjorative term, and still has much of the same meaning to many theists, atheist is going to stick with us for a while. What needs to be done is changing the meaning of the term- much like we need to change the meaning of the word "liberal" rather than replace it with something inoffensive, just because Limbaugh and O'Reilly will use it as an insulting term. No matter what atheists are called, there'll still be bigots out there who use it as an insult.

[wryter2000]

22. Where's...

Huge Mistake

Big PR Blunder

Insulting as All Hell

Dumb, Dumber, Dumbest

[Orrex]

23. Good suggestions

But I've learned that no one reads beyond the third poll-entry, if they even read that far.

I wish that they had put the issue to a vote during one of the weekly meetings of the Worldwide Church of Atheists. But no.

[wryter2000]

25. I always read polls to the bottom

That's where the funny options are. :evilgrin:

[Az]

28. I have a friend that insists on supporting this nonsense

I keep telling her that it basically places us above others. Oooh look at us we're bright. She replies that it is balanced out by us calling the believers "Supers" ... as in supernatural. Yeah... that'll work..... sigh

[Silent3]

30. And what happens if some of us atheists...

...want to be known as the "superbrights", not because of any belief in the supernatural, but because we're just so f*cking smart that the understated appellation "brights" hardly cuts it? :evilgrin:

[Zhade]

31. Not fond of it, too subtle.

:D

Seriously, though, it seems arrogant.

I prefer freethinker.

:evilgrin:

[varkam]

32. On one hand

I'd like to see a term other than "atheist" come into the popular nomenclature such as freethinker. I think it might also be useful if the chosen term didn't insinuate diminished mental capacity of the out-group. For example, if you're not a "bright" then you're dull; if you're not a freethinker, then your thoughts are constrained by a larger paradigm.

On the other hand, I think it's a good start to move away from the atheist moniker. I don't identify myself as a non-dentist or a non-astrologist, why should I identify myself as a non-theist?

That's a rhetorical question, by the way.

[NAO]

34. You don't understand it if you don't know the rationale

Brights is an attempt to do what homosexuals did for the word "gay". Gay is a word that used to mean simply "happy" but now it means homosexual. People who are not gay are not "glum".

In the same way, people who are not brights are not "dumb" or "dim". I wish they had chosen a more neutral word, but for what it's for, it's pretty good.

[dave_p]

36. a bit yuk...

OK, I can see the gay parallel, and it reminds me of Dawkins's call for atheists to "come out".

But damn, it still sounds like I've been taken over by some bloody pixie.

I prefer "Thinkers". That's what we need to really piss the rest off. :D

[NMMNG]

37. "Brights"

Basically a term for people who don't have the cajones to just call themselves atheists.

[nemo137]

38. It always struck me as being somewhat analogous to those xtians

who refer to them selves as "saved" and ask other if they are "saved." It sets my teeth on edge. "I am saved by the blood of the lamb" is not an attitude that lends itself to doing justice or loving mercy. Same with Bright; it makes it look like the person considers themself as a source of enlightenment, not as someone willing to meet another human being on an honest, one-to-one level.