by John Allen Paulos
What do you call someone who is not religious? There are a lot of choices, but is there a need for a new name for such people? And, whatever they’re called, should not politicians more fully acknowledge them? The philosopher Daniel Dennett and others years ago pushed for the adoption of a new term to signify someone who holds a naturalistic (as opposed to a religious) worldview. They stressed the need for such a term by noting that so many million Americans are atheists, agnostics, or (the largest category) have no religion of preference. I say “so many” because estimating the number is difficult, although 75 million is often mentioned as an estimate.
Polls are a crude instrument for describing those professing so many varieties and degrees of human belief and disbelief. This is especially so with polls that rely on self‑reporting to measure the extent of possibly unpopular opinions. For this and other reasons the number of non-believers may be much higher than most people realize. This brings me to “Brights,” the problematic term that was proposed in 2003 as a way to refer to non‑religious people. The coinage is due to Paul Geisert and Mynga Futrell, who started an online group intended to further the influence of “Brights.”
On their site they wrote, “Currently the naturalistic worldview is insufficiently expressed within most cultures.” They stated “There is a great diversity of persons who have a naturalistic worldview. Under this broad umbrella, as Brights, these people can gain social and political influence in a society infused with supernaturalism.”
Looking back on this neologism, I don’t think a degree in public relations was needed to predict that many people would construe the term as smug, silly, and arrogant. It’s also simplistic and reductive. Any such attempt to categorize people’s beliefs should recognize that many people who nominally identify with this or that religion still have a naturalistic perspective, not a religious one. Obviously people’s attitudes may be a blend of sorts, something akin to non-binary, but in an epistemic sense and not a gendered one.
Defenders of the term noted that “Bright” should not be confused with “bright.” Just as “gay” now has an additional new meaning, quite distinct from its old one, the expectation of the founders was that “Bright” would as well. Obviously this didn’t happen although it’s still a convenient one-word designator.
The term has largely fizzled, but the number of people it was meant to designate has increased significantly in the 21st century. It should go without saying that there are in this country not only millions of Brights, but millions of religious people who are bright, just as there are very many of both who are not. And I assert, needlessly I hope, that “ethical” and “moral” apply to most people regardless of their religious beliefs or lack thereof.
Aside from the disqualifying connotations of the term “Brights,” the attempt to recognize this large group of irreligious Americans (irreligious is my word choice, although in this piece I’ll continue to use Brights) was and remains an important and welcome endeavor. One reason is that Brights exist in large numbers, and it’s always rational to acknowledge facts. Another reason is that they have interests that some sort of loosely defined organization might help further as well as vulnerabilities for which such an organization might offer a shield. It’s not uncommon, for example, to hear slurs and insults directed toward the irreligious. (My book, Irreligion – A Mathematician Explains Why the Arguments for God Just Don’t Add Up, elicited a good number of these. Happily, The Freedom From Religion Foundation and The American Humanist Association are two among several such worthy organizations that have been more successful than the Brights endeavor.)
The reluctance of Brights to announce themselves may be one factor, for example, in the increasingly overt flirtation between church and state in this country. There continues to be a strong bias against self-identified Brights in public life. Fewer than 1% of Congress self-identifies as Bright, the result of subtle biases being compounded at every stage in the election process. Nevertheless, I would bet that there is no shortage of closet Brights in both major political parties.
Since we’ll soon be coming up on the midterm elections, it’s reasonable to occasionally ask candidates for the House and Senate about their attitudes toward Brights (designated by whatever term they choose) as well as their attitudes toward other groups.
When voting we might note which candidates could be Brights? Which would evince anything like the free‑thinking of Thomas Jefferson or Abraham Lincoln? Which would put forward a Bright Supreme Court nominee? Which would support self‑avowed Brights in positions of authority in religious districts? Which of them would even include Brights in inclusive platitudes about Catholics, Protestants, Jews, and Muslims? Doing so might be good politics. Although they’re unorganized and relatively invisible, I’ll reiterate that Brights constitute a large group to whom politicians almost never appeal.
Whether called free thinkers, unbelievers, skeptics, atheists, agnostics, secular humanists, conviction‑lackers, or whatever, Brights have been around since the ancient Greeks and, in large numbers, since at least the Enlightenment (the Enbrightenment?). So even if “Brights” disappears completely and is replaced by a some other umbrella term or we continue to use a variety of terms, what won’t disappear, I hope, is people’s determination to quietly think for themselves and not be cowed by overbearing religious (or irreligious) zealots.
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John Allen Paulos is an emeritus Professor of Mathematics at Temple University and the author of Innumeracy and A Mathematician Reads the Newspaper. These and his other books are available here (https://johnallenpaulos.com/booksandreviews.html).
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