From the issue dated August 8, 2003
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Let There Be Brights?Two California educators recently came up with the term "bright" to describe people whose worldview is naturalistic, free of supernatural and mystical elements, and whose ethics and actions are based on that worldview. Not incidentally, the word makes them all seem exceptionally smart. As Daniel C. Dennett, a philosopher and self-described bright, puts it, "We brights don't believe in ghosts or elves or the Easter Bunny -- or God." Saying the brights are marginalized, the founders hope to unite atheists, agnostics, and other freethinkers under their umbrella (http://www.the-brights.net). Is this the start of a movement, or just the pouring of old wine into new wineskins?Jennifer Hecht, assistant professor of history at Nassau Community College and author of Doubt: A History (Harper Collins, forthcoming): In general, this is a very good thing, because we need to switch the ways we talk about doubt and faith and religion. The fact that some people who have names that can get them immediately in The New York Times are coming out and saying that this is how they feel is a good thing for the culture. "Bright" is a nice word because of the connection to the Enlightenment -- it's a matter of illumination and the Enlightenment principles of equality and experimental science. But it's got to raise people's defenses. I don't think the people who've advanced that really mind. How should we live? Is there such a thing as transcendence? Should we use feeling and experience as a way of finding out about the real? These are philosophical questions that are good for human beings to roll around. I don't care about knowing the truth in the end, but I think it should be part of our world. Terms like "naturalist" and "rationalist" tend to be more certain that there is no transcendence, that there is nothing to religion. For me, the brights do come down on the side of certainty. I like these guys, and I think they are brave, but there would be another way to do it, which is to talk about how doubters have put forward answers to these kinds of questions. *** Stanley Hauerwas, professor of theological ethics at Duke University's Divinity School and author of Dispatches From the Front: Theological Engagements With the Secular (Duke University Press, 1994): Several years ago, Alasdair MacIntyre pointed out that one of the characteristics of modernity is that Christianity and Christian theologians are giving atheists less and less in which to disbelieve, and that puts them in a real bind. Atheism just isn't interesting. The really interesting forms of atheism today are not someone denying that God exists in the face of such terrible suffering, but it's the shrug of the shoulders -- it just doesn't make any difference one way or the other. I take it that the brights are people who want to take that shrug of the shoulders and think it's more important than in fact it is, so therefore I regard it as kind of pathetic rather than interesting. Quite frankly, I find the kinds of things that Dennett is saying to be remarkably stupid for such a smart man. He says that what we brights represent is the denial of all supernatural explanations -- well, when did he get the idea that Christianity and Judaism are about supernaturalism? That has very little to do with classical Christian convictions. God isn't supernatural; that makes God into a metaphysical object that has been the heart of Christian theology to deny. The whole point of Christian theology is that you don't know. This is about God, and you think you're going to understand God? One of the things that has happened is that the secular has just become so theologically stupid. The brights just don't know dip about classical Christian theology. As a result, they think that what they got taught in Sunday school or what they picked up in conversation has something to do with Christianity. It never occurs to them that we are looking at a 2,000-year-old tradition, and it takes a hell of a lot of study to even begin to think you know what you're talking about, and yet they think that they can sound off because they're pretty sure it's about supernaturalism. Give me a break. *** Timothy K. Beal, professor of religion at Case Western Reserve University and author of Religion and Its Monsters (Routledge, 2002): The bright movement represents itself in religious term -- so long as your definition of religion doesn't require a god or some other supernatural dimension. As we all know, religious identity is often created or at least strengthened by experiences of marginalization and oppression -- perhaps even more by self-representations of a group as oppressed or marginalized. Many assume definitions of "religion" emphasize "belief" in some kind of divinity. Yet that's a definition of religion with clear Christian origins. There are religions -- forms of Buddhism, for example -- that have no gods or spirit worlds. The brights also have an evangelical tone in some of their calls to unity under this identity. By making this point, I don't mean to criticize or undermine the bright movement. Indeed, I don't think this irony is lost on the movement's leaders. They correctly see religious identity as a highly effective social identity for political agency and civic involvement. http://chronicle.com Section: The Chronicle Review Volume 49, Issue 48, Page B4
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Copyright © 2003 by The Chronicle of Higher Education