From: George Murphy (gmurphy@raex.com)
Date: Mon Jul 14 2003 - 09:58:01 EDT
Robert Schneider wrote:
>
> Actually, Dawkins and Dennett are using "bright" as a noun. In that respect
> it bears comparison to the word "gay." I'm not sure I agree with Denyse
> that the promotion of "gay" was the work of "the homosexual lobby," whatever
> that is. "Gay as an adjective (according to my _Webster's Word Histories_)
> appeared in homosexual literature as an adjective in the late 1950s and
> early 1960s, but slowly moved out of the subculture as homosexuals became
> more visible in society. It is true that some advocacy groups for
> homosexuals began to use the word in the titles of their organizations
> (perhaps the "lobbies" Denyse refers to), but the word spread of its own
> accord in mainstream literature and press. About the same time (50s and
> 60s), "gay" also began to be used as a noun, which is probably its most
> common usage now.
>
> This attempt to appropriate the word "bright" would insinuate that those of
> us who believe in God, the Sacred, a reality "deeper than Darwin," as John
> Haught put it, are "dumb" or "stupid" or otherwise less than intelligent.
> We all must be the yahoos in the pews. So, I am tempted to come out as a
> "bright" myself, and register with the organization that Dawkins provided a
> link for. "I'm a 'bright'," I'd write: "Summa cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa,
> Woodrow Wilson Fellow, published scholar, winner of two teaching
> awards--these are signs of "brightness," aren't they? And I also don't
> believe in the Easter Bunny--but I do believe in God." What would they do
> with that? Say that I wasn't "bright" enough, or "the right kind of
> 'bright',"?
The self-designation as "brights" by Dennett seems to me to have an air of
desperation about it. It suggests that they realize that they can't make a go of it if
they simply call themselves atheists. & it's a rather childish designation at that. As
far as substance goes, it's of a piece with Steven Weinberg calling religious believers
"enemies of science." (I wonder if he's ever told his co-winner of the Nobel Prize in
Physics, Abdus Salam, a devout Muslim, that he's an enemy of science.)
I think Dennett _et al_ make themselves look kind of silly by this designation
& that it would be a serious mistake to respond to it by saying "We're bright too."
Shalom,
George
George L. Murphy
gmurphy@raex.com
http://web.raex.com/~gmurphy/
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.4 : Mon Jul 14 2003 - 09:57:13 EDT