captainpabst

I dislike blanket statements/terms. Heck, I haven't believed in god in a long time, but only recently have I claimed the term 'Atheist' for myself. Even that term, for some people, has connotations I wouldn't claim. I don't see any benefits to a term as broad and vague as 'bright', unless the purpose is to have another excuse to divide man from man.

GodfreyLife

Care to tell me what a brick wall and a range advantage represent in your analogy?

The bricks and distance are the elements of my attitude that render their thousand 'pistols' utterly ineffective. A positive term that describes me, however, and challenges their negative [and necessary] assumptions about my 'darkness,' is something that I expect to cause some extreme disquiet among them.


And impartial observers shake their heads, and conclude that atheism really is just another religious position, with its own self-appointed attitude of superiority. And the fundamentalists are the only ones who can win that battle.

I'm not concerned with impartial observers. I don't believe that there are a great number of waverers who risk being duped. On the contrary, there are a great number of duped who have doubts and a positive term for the opposing position can help those people immensely by digging through the prison of assertions that their decievers have built around them. The idea that atheists are evil is not uncommon. It was voiced to me only last year by someone who didn't believe that I was an atheist, because I'm a nice man. 'Bright' is a term that assails that assertion in the thoughts of the believers. It will reach some and be a great help in their escape, by giving them a more positive view of the scary place that they are heading for, outside of the security of dogma. The impartial are not my concern.

It's not impartial observers that are going to spend our tax on promoting religion or make laws that erode our freedoms. It is the Gullibles, aided by the constituency of the duped, who will benefit greatly from being challenged in their assumption that our position is dark, negative, destructive and evil.

I would hope that the reason I adopted an atheist viewpoint was because I had aspirations above being "no more unreasonable" than the people who believe that they ingest the reincarnated flesh of Superman every Sunday morning, or that God spends his infinite days patting them personally on the head and devising new ways to torture gays.

Nobody says you have to be a Bright. If you're not a Bright, you're not. The fundies know that you are an atheist and that means that, for them, you are dark. They say that I'm dark, too, but more and more, the meme will hunt them. I'm not dark. I'm a Bright.

Personally, I'm not playing a game; I'm simply living the way I have to, based on what I see and feel. Adopting a silly name that can stand as a shorthand for all the various things in which I believe, like "Chosen" or "Saved" or "Faeborn" or "Witch" or "Bright" is a deeply unappealing concept.

Then don't do it. I can see the political advantage in challenging the prevalent memes, but it's only my opinion; it only applies to me.


PROTIP: just becase a group of people who oppose your views act like assholes isn't licence for you to stoop to their level. You are in no position to grant or deny me licence to make my own judgements of what is 'their level' or to rise or stoop to it, should I see fit.


Besides, it's not even effective.

In my opinion, given that this is all like ten minutes old, that is a highly premature evaluation.

All the best,

GL

GodfreyLife

The problem is, the ones that are are making us look silly!

Like any of us ever need help doing that.

...

I prefer the term "Ingersollist" to describe myself.

Anyway, what's wrong with "freethinker"? Short, does the job, easy meaning.

Secular Jeff

The Random House College Dictionary, Revised Edition, copyright 1980 defines freethinker as: "n. a person who forms his opinions independently of authority or tradition, esp. in religious matters."

What's wrong with "freethinker"? Nothing except for the fact that many theists claim to be freethinkers. They interpret the definition differently than we do. I have talked to a number of theists that claim to be a freethinker. They have told me, "I am a freethinker. I formed my opinion all by myself."

Also, whereas we really focus on that "es. in religious matters" part of the definition, one doesn't have to be talking about religion to be a freethinker.

So when you really get down to the "brass tacks" we try to re-define freethinker like the Freedom From Religion Foundation has, to make it mean:

Jeff

Farren

From the site:

Bright -- as a noun (refreshing!)
Bright -- as a meme (hopeful!)
Bright -- as an umbrella term (definitive!)



Refreshing! Hopeful! Definitive! This looks like washing powder commercial material!

I mean, why don't we just call ourselves the Dorks and be done with it? I'm definitely with GunnerJ on this one, but anyone who wants to call themselves a bright is welcome to it.

...and I wonder if someone actually asked Richard Dawkins if he wanted to be thought of as a "bright"?

AquaVita

rofl

Maverick

Since we have two threads covering the "Brights" in SL&S and this one is getting a bit too argumentative for SL&S, I am going to move this one.

Maverick - SL&S Moderator

jig

Brilliant!

This is the kind of word we should be looking at if we want to pick a word to associate ourselves with. If we look at the homosexual community and even the black community, what they did was take a word with strong negative connotations, then identify themselves with it and show everyone else that they weren't bothered about the connotations at all. We have the terms 'gay' and 'queer' for homosexuals and 'negro' and 'nigger' for black people. And to a lesser extent, 'geeks' and 'nerds' for those of us that are.. well, geeks and nerds!

So, I think the best we could possibly do is probably to not be afraid to associate ourselves with words with negative connotations such as Atheist, but to keep on using them anyway.

The next best thing is to pick a word like Dork which at least has some humour behind it unlike Bright.

Dork Power!

ju'iblex

so does that make me a gay bright geek wog?