Tom Sawyer

I have to say that Brights is a silly-sounding term. While I agree with what the people who came up with this are trying to do, that's just not the right word for it.

First off, it does make us sound like a cult and the similarities to the Scientology term "Clears" is enough to give me the heebee-jeebees. I hear the term and the image that comes to my head is a bunch of shaved-head peole chanting. Any term that we use to describe ourselves shouldn't make everyone else start to snicker.

Second, it is condescending to those who aren't Brights. It implies they are stupid and that we are better than them. Don't tell me that the people who came up with this term didn't realize that and one of their reasons for adopting it wasn't the subtle barb at all the believers. The word is just too divisive and their trying to give it another arbitrary definition doesn't change what it actually means, which is exactly what they wanted it to mean.

Third, it just sounds really stupid. I may have mentioned that already, but it just plain sucks as a term.

enfant terrible

I endorse the idea of "Brights". Here are some reasons:

1. It is good PR. A monosyllabic name is a valuable asset. Most people's attention span doesn't extend beyond one syllable. Atheist, agnostic, antisocial, anathematic, arachnophobic, it's all the same to them. They'd probably tend to put "anabaptist" in the same category (Ah those godless traffic-stoppers in horse carriages!).

2. It is historically accurate. It is essentially the idea of the Enlightment. The only other historical reference we might claim has already been taken: Rennaisance ("born again").

3. It is statistically accurate. Non-believers are, on average, smarter than believers. Why is it wrong to admit this fact? Why is it worse than calling people "White" or "Black" or "Caucasian" or "African-American" or "Indian" or "Native American", not one of which are accurate in any conceivabe sense of the word?

4. It is silly to worry about being condescending. We are not refering to religious people as "the Dumbs"; we are just referring to ourselves as "the Brights". Most groups do this, and many do a lot more against "others":

Religious groups:

Islam means "obedience, submission (to God)", very much the same what "piety" means to Christians. So it "implies" that non-muslims are not pious or not humble.

Jews consider themselves God's chosen people. That implies others are not.

Christianity obviously means belief in, or following of, the Christ (or Messiah). It then implies that others (including Jews) do not believe in the Messiah.

Orthodox means "celebriting right", implying that others are celebrating wrong.

Baptists follow the original ritual of adult baptism, implying that other Christians are not really baptized, and thus not really Christians.

Even the name Methodism may imply that other denominations are methodically wrong.

How about Ecumenism? It means "of the whole world", yet it really refers only to Christians or, at best, all Abrahamic religions.

Doesn't the name Humanist imply that others are not humanists? But most religious people consider themselves humanists...

Every agnostic who asserts that agnostics are not atheists seems to imply that atheists claim "knowledge" (gnosis) of gods' nonexistence, which is generally wrong.

Other groups:

Almost every nation is proud of something it has and others don't (or so they think). Hardly necessary to list examples.

How about "Grand Old Party"? Obviously implies the other is not so grand.

How about "Pro-Life" movement? Implies the opponents are "Pro-Death".

"Moral Majority" is far, far more condescending to "others" yet few people really challenge them on those grounds.

Do Socialists imply that others are antisocial? Libertarians that others are against (or without) liberty? Democrats that others are non-democratic?

ex-preacher

Also, does the word "gay" imply that all heterosexuals are unhappy?

viscousmemories

Well then, somebody better tell the Christians, Muslims, Republicans, Democrats, Catholics, Baptists, Lutherans, Methodists, Jehovah’s Witnesses and Scientologists (just to name a few) that they’ll need to do some sprucing up of their moniker if they every want to move from obscurity to the mainstream.
Not so, actually. A historically accurate term to use for modern-day adherents to a worldview spawned by the Enlightenment would be “Enlightened”. Besides, even if you take the word “bright” literally (which you can’t, actually, because the proponents of it have made it quite clear that they are promoting a new meaning for an old word, not applying an old word to a new meaning) it doesn’t mean the same as enlightened. Bright describes a quality of light, whereas enlightenment indicates the introduction of light. By your reasoning, they should be promoting the word "light" as a noun instead. As in: You are a light.
I assume you’re only joking, but if not… can you refer me to the studies that prove that non-believers are smarter than believers? And what exactly is inaccurate about calling an American whose ancestors were born in Africa an African-American?
That’s an absurd argument. If we’re demonstrably smarter than the members of the groups you cite, why would we want to emulate them?

vm

Edited to fix an obscene spelling error.

copernicus

Your own post endorses my point, and here is why. All pejoratives can be put in contexts where they don't offend. You define that context in the above passage. Outside that very specific context, the word is highly offensive.

I disagree. You'll have to be more specific in terms of what you think the "answer" was. Otherwise, I stand by my comments.

It would be too strong to say that they can never be reclaimed, but they usually can't. In linguistics, we have borrowed the label Gresham's Law to describe the phenomenon where "bad" usage drives out the "good". Hence, we don't use words like "ass" and "cock" to describe animals anymore. The same general rule applies, albeit less obviously, to the names of stigmatized social groups.

Personally, I like the name "Infidels" better, but some may object to its negative connotations. Also, those of us on Internet Infidels have a built-in bias in favor of that name, whereas the rest of the world does not. A goal of the "Bright" movement is to describe "metaphysical materialists" in a positive way, but it's really hard to come up with a catchy name for "metaphysical materialist". Either we come off sounding like negative nabobs or carebears or irrelevant elitists.

Sorry, but I don't see how the "Bright" thing prevents us from doing that. If you've got a better idea, I'm quite willing to entertain it. Either the "Bright" label will fizzle or it won't. I see no reason to think of it as harmful or somehow preventing us from doing a different, better thing.

I didn't. You are too immersed in negative definitions. Look at the home page of Internet Infidels. You will see that our goal is "to defend and promote a nontheistic worldview which holds that the natural world is all that there is, a closed system in no need of supernatural explanation and sufficient unto itself." In other words, you are already a member of an internet group that fits the positive description of "Bright" perfectly. Religion does not define what a Bright is. You might just as well try to define religionists as people who reject the notion that the natural world is a closed system in no need of supernatural explanation.

Some forms of Buddhism are said to be almost atheistic, but I'm not sure that they can reach that bar. Most Buddhists are clearly theists. Religion tends not to attract many followers unless it adds the ingredients of animism and/or anthropomorphism. As for the others, all you are saying is that religious language can be used to describe some organizations of nonbelievers. Religion is defined as belief in supernatural or divine powers.

GunnerJ

It was meant to imply that heterosexuals were less licentious than homosexuals, this was why it was used as a slur. Then it was reclaimed by gay people in order to subvert the perjorative use of it. This is different from how the Bright advocates are trying to take a word not used pejoritively, a word with established connotations, and give it a new one while disregarding the inevitable misinterpretations, such as "do 'Brights' think the're smarter than non-Brights?". Thus, your comparison is hollow.

Really, this has all been dealt with earlier in this thread, where were you?

Toto

You can listen to this radio show on the Brights online:

http://kcrw.com/cgi-bin/ram_wrap.cgi...rights_and_the

featuring Dennet and Rabbi Lapin (the house Orthodox Jew associated with the Moral Majority)

Lapin sneers at atheists who claim discrimination as cry-babies and says that religious people are discriminated against in academia because there are so few on college faculties. Then he says that maybe atheists can't get elected because the public thinks that they are not trustworthy, and that's democracy.

GunnerJ

What horsepucky. The "context" is a group of people for whom the word "nigger" has traditionally been used as an insult. If the word had not been subverted and reclaimed, why would they use it among themselves to refer to each other? How could a white rapper refer to black people as "niggers" without being called a racist? It is irrelevent whether or not most people "can" use the term in this way, that some people, specifically the people "nigger" was meant to deride, can shows reclaimation of the term.

Tell you what, maybe you should just tell me what you think the word "reclaimed" means, as it applies to words with negative connotations. It seems you have a completely different one than I do; your definition seems to preclude a group of people taking an insult for said group and using it to refer to members of the group in a perfectly acceptable manner. This seems a little odd to me.

Have you bothered to read the whole thread? The comparisons of Bright to gay have been disected and dispenced with heartily, and the history of the word gay as an insult that was subverted by the people it was meant to belittle was demonstrated quite nicely.

Really? It's just that you said "Words carry baggage, and you can't just 'reclaim' them." This seems to imply to me that you don't believe reclaimation of a word to be possible. Have I missed something? If you want to retract your demonstratably incorrect assertion, by all means, just do so.

copernicus

GunnerJ, I admire your tenacity, but the racial slur "nigger" has not been "reclaimed" in any sense of the word that was used by ViscousMemories or myself. The word "gay" lacks pejorative connotation whether you are rapping or not. The same cannot be said for what we call "the N-word" in polite conversation. I advise you to use that word sparingly and with great caution, although you are beginning to strike me as someone who does not take advice well.

Perhaps it wouldn't seem so odd to you if you gave it a little more thought. In any case, I'm content to let matters stand where they are. Let's try to "reclaim" the topic of the thread.

GunnerJ, calm down. I'm not trying to insult you. If you have specific arguments that you think refute what I said, you'll either have to restate them or give me a specific location in the thread. There has been quite a meandering discussion on the subject. The word "gay" was applied openly by homosexuals to describe themselves, but it did not come into common usage in general American English as a non-pejorative for homosexuals until the "Gay Liberation" movement of the late sixties. And even then, it came to be accepted only through the regular linguistic process of euphemistic substitution. That was long after the pejorative sense of "gay" had become obsolete in common usage. If you have evidence to the contrary, then cite a source. Mine is the 2nd Unabridged Edition of the Random House Dictionary and the 2nd Edition of the Oxford English Dictionary.

I see no reason to retract it. What you seemed to have missed was my explanation of the linguistic sense of Gresham's Law. Perhaps you can do some research on the subject. I would suggest a search of the archives at http://www.linguistlist.org. The reason that you can't just 'reclaim' pejorative words usually, is that people just refuse to use them in polite company. When "gay" was being "reclaimed" in the late 60's, it had lost its pejorative connotation.

Rusting Car Bumper

Actually "gay" still is used with a pejorative connotation. Adolescents refer to something "Gay" in the negative as in "He's so gay" or "That was a gay movie."

DC