The Brights 2: Rhymes with Own

Posted on November 23, 2003 in Agnosticism

Call me a None.

This is what I have concluded that I am after reviewing the Brights controversy. The word sounds like the Latin name for the ninth (or seventh) day of the month when the moon waxed into its first quarter, but there is no intention of linking it to that. It simply means that I am one of the 14% who does not state a religion.

I must agree with those who object to the term “Bright” as pretentious. In the December issue of Free Inquiry, New York City freethought activist Arnell Dowret protests:

Imagine that, in order to promote a greater regard for those of Irish ancestry, it was proposed that Irish people stop calling themselves “Irish,” and instead substitute the word Lush. Instead of saying “I am Irish,” they would say “I’m a Lush!” No doubt the proponents of this audacious public relations coup might face the objection that Lush is a poor choice of word, as it could easily be misunderstood as reinforcing the existing negative stereotype of the Irish as alcohol abusers. “Oh, no!” Lush enthusiasasts would dismissively insist. “Not at all! When we say ‘I’m a Lush,’ it should be clear that we are referring to the bucolic beauty of the Irish landscape.”

The inanity of basing a public relations campaign on such a flawed premise is obvious. Yet somehow, many otherwise brilliant freethinkers have gotten enthused about a new self-description for atheists and naturalists that is, in my opinion, equally ill-advised….even a cursory overview of why average folks dislike atheists should steer us away from any proposed solution that smacks of intellectual elitism.

I have a hard time believing in the “neutrality” of the phrase “Bright” myself. For this reason, my eyes jumped when I saw the cover of the same issue of Free Inquiry: “Rise of the N0NES” said the cover, revealing that 14 percent of all Americans declared to compilers of CUNY’s American Religious Identification Survey that they had no religious identification.

The actual numbers that document this jump in the number of people who declare no ties with established religion betrays a different picture from the “Brights” might have hoped for:

Atheist	902,000	0.4
Agnostic	900,000	0.5
Humanist	49,000	0.0
Secular	53,000	0.0
No Religion	13,116,000	13.2
		14.1

In other words, all the jump means is that more people decline to affiliate with any organized religion.

Agnostic that I am, I remain heartened by this bold declaration. I feel that it indicates that many individuals are rejecting dogmatic religion for a personal spirituality. It’s good in that we are developing of a population of seekers after the truth, people who think about what they are told and keep their minds open. They are true “free-thinkers” in the sense that they have made up their own minds. Agnostic that I am, I also remain wary of the results. “Appreciable numbers of Nones…do not believe in a personal God but do think the Bible is divinely inspired” says sociologist Otis Dudley Duncan. This sort of atheism leads down many tracks. And what also needs to be asked is what exactly do these people mean by “divine”? Are we looking at something like Jung’s collective unconscious or a synonym for “wondrous”?

Even though these issues await clarification, I freely align myself with the Nones. They are the people who keep their minds and their hearts open, the true free-thinkers, always curious about the nature of existence and compassionately concerned for their fellow humans. Who would not want to join them?