Brights movement logo

[ciphergoth]

Have you heard of the Brights movement?

The Brights movement is the 2003 brainchild of two American atheists who felt that atheism had an unfairly poor reputation, especially in the USA. They proposed that part of the problem was the dry, academic sound of the word "atheist" itself, and proposed that a new word was needed, taking as their example the triumph of the proud, celebratory word "gay" over its medicalising predecessor, "homosexual". The word that they proposed was "bright" as in "I am a bright".

This bold move has been embraced by many atheists all over the world, and received the enthusiastic support of, among others, philosopher Daniel C Dennett and biologist Richard Dawkins.

I am as I'm sure you know sympathetic to the aims of this movement, but I don't think the logo (pictured above) is quite right, so I have taken the step of making my own proposal for a new logo which better reflects their new choice of name.

Comments

[valkyriekaren.livejournal.com]

.. thereby pandering to the other stereotype of atheists as patronising, self-satisfied gits.

*sigh*

If you want to 'reclaim' words, why not call yourselves "the godless" or "heathens"? As far as I'm aware calling someone 'bright' was never perjorative.

(the other problem for me is that my mother's maiden name is Bright. So to me, "The Brights" is how I address christmas cards to my cousins.)

[ciphergoth.livejournal.com]

.. thereby pandering to the other stereotype of atheists as patronising, self-satisfied gits.

...which, for the avoidance of doubt, is roughly what I was trying to say in pictoral form.

[valkyriekaren.livejournal.com]

Well, yes, which was charming, and perfectly got across what I'd been wanting to say about them for a while.

[simont]

why not call yourselves "the godless"

Or, by analogy with "child", how about "god-free"? :-)

[wwhyte.livejournal.com]

I have to say I like "god-free".

[aegidian]

Godfree FTW.

[lizw.livejournal.com]

That's brilliant.

[purplerabbits.livejournal.com]

Busy day at work then ;-)

Personally I go for "godless", which I noticed the BBC using today...

[drdoug.livejournal.com]

*laughs* Thank ghods for that - for a moment before I clicked through the cut I was worried there.

[hairyears.livejournal.com]

I can't help subtitling it: And the sound of His triumph was heard throughout the hills.

[boxcat.livejournal.com]

I would have expected something more along the lines of "Blowing the Last Trump for theists".

[kaet.livejournal.com]

hee!

[simm42.livejournal.com]

Denialists always seemed a good description...

Angst-theists also seems to work well given the emo nature of many that choose this belief (I'll admit I fitted into that category in my early teens - later becoming a more moderate agnostic for several years)

Not to mention the reaction you can get from them by pointing out that by taking a position on the existance of god without proof to the positive or the negative (not to mention the logical falacy of it - ie in an infinite universe the non existance of something can never be proven) is itself a religious position...

You can have them spitting sparks enough to light a BBQ on a wet english summer afternoon

[ciphergoth.livejournal.com]

tee-hee! You've made a slight error there ... or possibly more than one.

Atheism is the lack of belief in God; there's a subtlety there for you to pick up if you like. In some ways, it's odd to have a word for such a thing; we don't talk about "agoblinists".

You confidently assume that the Universe is infinite - are you privy to something today's astronomers don't know?

I am glad that the atheists you meet are passionate about their position; I do not desire a state in which the best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity.

[simm42.livejournal.com]

Definitely not an assumption I'd be willing to make - I simply state the assumption for that piece of logic - I'll let you know if the universe is infinite or not when if someone reaches the end of it (as an extention wouldn't that make it impossible to prove the universe is infinite and only possible to prove it is finite?), then to prove the non existance of something you must first prove the universe is finite.

As far as I was aware the original meaning of the atheist was believing that there is not a god, 'a' inferring the opposite and 'theist' one who believes in a deity/deities. Agnostic being one that does not hold an opinion either way without proof to the positive or the negative, the work being derived from not knowing.

I've never come across the term agoblinist before... Though google throws up some interesting references.

I suspect people of both positions apply atheist to themselves - at least those I have met - as you say its a very subtle difference.

Not believing in a god vs believing there is not a god

The first as you say is not a religous position, the second is.

But then if you are the former and not the latter, does that not fit the definition of agnostic?

Words shift in meaning over time and it can be very hard to find original meanings within common usage, but if the common usage of the word has changed then doesn't the meaning of the word itself also change?

[ciphergoth.livejournal.com]

I think we might have a more productive argument if you could familiarize yourself with at least the basics of the philosophy of atheism and agnosticism. One good introduction is here:

http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/mathew/intro.html

but you can find lots of other resources just by Googling for "atheism".

In particular, the above describes what "agnostic" actually means, which is not what you think it means.

"Agoblinist", as I said, is not a word; that's my point. We don't need a word for "person who doesn't believe in goblins", because that's practically everybody. Nor do non-goblin-believers have to put up with a lot of nonsense about "how can you prove goblins don't exist - have you looked everywhere in the Universe?".

If you're going to get into a philosophical argument then being vague about what words mean is not going to help.

Finally, the question of whether the Universe is finite or infinite will not be settled by trying to explore to the edge, not least because our best theories posit that if the universe is finite, it is finite but has no boundary. It will be settled by finding out more about the unknowns in the Friedmann equations. Again, if you're going to bring up the shape of the Universe in arguments perhaps you should find out a few things about it first.

[palmer1984.livejournal.com]

This is pretty damn harsh!

[Got here because simont posted a link to it!]

[ciphergoth.livejournal.com]

Re-read his opening post and tell me if you still think my response is too strong. Such a potent mixture of condescension and ignorance invites the harshest put-down I can muster!

[alexmc.livejournal.com]

LOL

buttbomb

[ablueskyboy.livejournal.com]

Speaking as someone who's just about had it with religious nuts, I was expecting more of a lightbulb design in the shape of the upper-right corner of Euro, ahem, with those white stripes pouring out of its head. Butt, this will doo just fin, in the end, I guess.

I have my own beliefs, which include the idea that such beliefs are personal and should never ever be a corporation, an organization, hunger for money, famous for burning people to death over a misprint, edited to ostrocize and use as a weapon of hate, a fist of power, pretext for war, Phelps comes instantly to mind here. And, I resent people who try to "change my ways" to be "saved" etc.

So, I don't see this as an athiest symobl nor as a mock on athiests, but rather a mock on those who mock others for being different or even heratics.

I went to English Public School. When this one lady took over the "assembly" time, it went from a place of fun-social-learning to a place of church and only her church. We sat in rows and made way for her queenlyness to walk up and down. She was like the witch in Narnia. We went from a massive classrom to a mass of midevil sheep in rows pondering on the next meal out of bordom. And, I felt sad for the kids on our base who were Jewish or others. One could get out of a speeding ticket easier than this, when people start taking religion so seriously that they think they are religion, like Phelps's Family of Hatred. Its people like that who give reason to not conform, to put an ass on.

No offense.

Re: buttbomb

[ciphergoth.livejournal.com]

I identify as an evangelistic atheist, and I think that there are good arguments that trying to box belief away as "personal" isn't going to work out. But no matter how strongly I argue my case, I'm not going to start trying to imply that theists are all dim; they're not. Like Hitchens, I find the proposed name "Brights" cringe-making.