Brights

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Logo of the Brights

Brights is an international neo-atheist movement. Its members see themselves as individuals whose worldview is free from elements of the supernatural .

History and characteristics

The Atheist Alliance International held a conference in Florida in April 2003 at which the term bright was introduced. Paul Geisert and Mynga Futrell used the term “bright” (from English bright - bright, clear, cheerful, alert, intelligent) as a positive designation for people who represent a worldview that is free from the supernatural. They hope that the term will develop in a similar way to the term " gay " for homosexual . In the following months, the biologist Richard Dawkins published in the Guardian and the philosopher Daniel Dennett in the New York Times articles in which they referred to themselves as Brights and promoted the term.

Other representatives of the Brights are civil rights activist Margaret Downey , the magician James Randi , the psychologist Steven Pinker , the biochemist Richard John Roberts , the physicist Sheldon Glashow , the science journalist Michael Shermer , the doctor Henry Morgentaler , the physicist Jean Bricmont , the biologist and philosopher Massimo Pigliucci , the philosopher Michael Schmidt-Salomon and the physicist and epistemologist Gerhard Vollmer . The movement has more than 50,000 members worldwide.

The Brights have mainly set themselves three goals:

  1. To promote the social recognition of the naturalistic worldview.
  2. To draw public attention to the fact that people with such a worldview can influence important societal decisions.
  3. To move society to accept the full and equal participation of the Brights in social life.

criticism

Within the skeptic movement , the criticism focuses particularly on the self-description as "Bright": Chris Mooney believes that the self-description as "Bright" can be misunderstood to the effect that Brights thought they were smarter than their fellow men. This leads to the fact that the overwhelming majority of the mostly religious population is returning to the old cliché of the "arrogant atheists"; this cliché has already been burned into the consciousness of the majority. In his book Breaking the Spell , Daniel Dennett suggests to people who believe in the supernatural and who criticize the term Bright to use a similar positive connotation , and suggests Supers , which is supposed to be an abbreviation of the English word Supernaturalists .

The philosopher Peter Strasser criticizes the Brights from an agnostic point of view: he argues with Immanuel Kant that the values ​​of the Enlightenment, such as reason, freedom, and human dignity, could only be justified metaphysically . He finds the Brights' Bible reading naive; they would read the Bible like a fundamentalist would, literally. Strasser calls this "brute atheism".

literature

  • Florian Ossadnik: Spinoza and the "scientific atheism" of the 21st century. Ethical and political consequences of early enlightenment and contemporary criticism of religion . In: Ludwig Tavernier (Ed.): Studies In European Culture . tape 8 . VDG Weimar, Kromsdorf / Weimar 2011, ISBN 978-3-89739-705-7 (The volume explicitly deals with the movement. The “new atheism” appears to the author as a resumption of older atheist arguments that is essentially not expanded in terms of content).

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Anja Gladkich, Gert Pickel: Religion and Politics in United Germany . Ed .: Oliver Hidalgo. 1st edition. Springer Fachmedien, Wiesbaden 2013, ISBN 978-3-531-18344-2 , Political Atheism - The “new” atheism as a political project or image of empirical reality ?, p. 140 .
  2. ^ Richard Dawkins : The future looks bright. In: The Guardian . July 12, 2003, accessed October 27, 2017 .
  3. ^ Daniel Dennett: The Bright Stuff. In: The New York Times . July 12, 2003, accessed October 27, 2017 .
  4. ↑ Michael Shermer: Science Friction: Where the Known Meets the Unknown . Macmillan, 2010, ISBN 1-4299-0088-1 , pp. 20 .
  5. ↑ Enthusiastic Brights
  6. ↑ Bas Kast: Good without God . Tagesspiegel.de, May 24, 2007; accessed on March 9, 2015
  7. ^ Teemu Taira: Religion and Knowledge: Sociological Perspectives . Ed .: Mathew Guest, Elisabeth Arweck. Routledge, 2016, ISBN 1-317-06804-1 , New Atheism as Identity Politics.
  8. ↑ Naomi Zack: The Handy Philosophy Answer Book . Visible Ink Press, 2009, ISBN 1-57859-285-2 , pp. 424 .
  9. ↑ Not Too "Bright" article at the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry.
  10. ^ Andreas Malessa: Plea against a brutal atheism. Radiofeuilleton: Criticism. In: "Deutschlandradio Kultur". August 27, 2008, accessed April 18, 2011 (review of P-Strasser's book " Why Religion at All? The God Who Created Richard Dawkins ", ISBN 978-3-7705-4612-1 ).
  11. ↑ catalog. Spinoza and the "scientific atheism" of the 21st century. In: "VDG Kromsdorf / Weimar online". VDG Weimar, 2011, accessed on April 17, 2011 : “This work undertakes a critical comparison of the early Enlightenment criticism of religion by Baruch de Spinoza (1632-77) with the current“ new atheism ”that was promoted by the so-called“ Brights ”(R. Dawkins et al ) is used against the revealed religions. [...] It can be made clear that Spinoza can be considered a pioneer of Bright's criticism of religion in a comprehensive and in no way distant sense. In addition, the perception arises that the “new atheists” - despite their starting point with current scientific theories - are not actually formulating any new criticism of religion, but only those topoi of the Enlightenment orthodoxy of the 17th and 18th centuries and their ethical ones and political-philosophical implications vary - but without expanding them in terms of content. "