Modern secular rationalists of the world, unite!

(and be slightly more pushy than you were before, though still taking care not to offend anyone, of course)

From The Bright Stuff, by Daniel C. Dennett.

The time has come for us brights to come out of the closet. What is a bright? A bright is a person with a naturalist as opposed to a supernaturalist world view. We brights don't believe in ghosts or elves or the Easter Bunny — or God. We disagree about many things, and hold a variety of views about morality, politics and the meaning of life, but we share a disbelief in black magic — and life after death.

The term "bright" is a recent coinage by two brights in Sacramento, Calif., who thought our social group — which has a history stretching back to the Enlightenment, if not before — could stand an image-buffing and that a fresh name might help. Don't confuse the noun with the adjective: "I'm a bright" is not a boast but a proud avowal of an inquisitive world view.

You may well be a bright. If not, you certainly deal with brights daily. That's because we are all around you: we're doctors, nurses, police officers, schoolteachers, crossing guards and men and women serving in the military. We are your sons and daughters, your brothers and sisters. Our colleges and universities teem with brights. Among scientists, we are a commanding majority.

Wanting to preserve and transmit a great culture, we even teach Sunday school and Hebrew classes. Many of the nation's clergy members are closet brights, I suspect. We are, in fact, the moral backbone of the nation: brights take their civic duties seriously precisely because they don't trust God to save humanity from its follies.
...
A 2002 survey by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life suggests that 27 million Americans are atheist or agnostic or have no religious preference. That figure may well be too low, since many nonbelievers are reluctant to admit that their religious
observance is more a civic or social duty than a religious one — more a matter of protective coloration than conviction. Most brights don't play the "aggressive atheist" role. We don't want to turn every conversation into a debate about religion, and we don't want to offend our friends and neighbors, and so we maintain a diplomatic silence.

But the price is political impotence. Politicians don't think they even have to pay us lip service, and leaders who wouldn't be caught dead making religious or ethnic slurs don't hesitate to disparage the "godless" among us.

From the White House down, bright-bashing is seen as a low-risk vote-getter. And, of course, the assault isn't only rhetorical: the Bush administration has advocated changes in government rules and policies to increase the role of religious organizations in daily life, a serious subversion of the Constitution. It is time to halt this erosion and to take a stand: the United States is not a religious state, it is a secular state that tolerates all religions and — yes — all manner of
nonreligious ethical beliefs as well.
....
I am neither gay nor African-American, but nobody can use a slur against blacks or homosexuals in my hearing and get away with it. Whatever your theology, you can firmly object when you hear family or friends sneer at atheists or agnostics or other godless folk.

And you can ask your political candidates these questions: Would you vote for an otherwise qualified candidate for public office who was a bright? Would you support a nominee for the Supreme Court who was a bright? Do you think brights should be allowed to be high school teachers? Or chiefs of police?

Let's get America's candidates thinking about how to respond to a swelling chorus of brights. With any luck, we'll soon hear some squirming politician trying to get off the hot seat with the feeble comment that "some of my best friends are brights."

Here’s a gift for the cynical theists on the Duck. This essay by Daniel Dennett is taken from http://www.the-brights.net/.

The ‘Brights’ are a movement – though a polite, weekend hobby sort of movement rather than a dynamic revolution, as far as I can tell – to promote a more positive view of secularism. Their number include such luminaries as Stephen Pinker (whose book The Language Instinct incidentally, is one of the most thought-provoking I’ve ever read – highly recommended); the inevitable Richard Dawkins, and, bizarrely, the TV magicians Penn and Teller.

Now, I can understand where these people are coming from in one respect.

Like the Brights, I do occasionally get weary of having to respect other people’s religious views, which frequently strike me as utterly insane, and of forcing myself to keep my mouth shut for fear of offending in dinner table discussions, while they can be as rude as they like to non-believers and their supposed lack of ‘soul’ or ‘deeper understanding of mystery’.

And also like the Brights, I don’t really like the term ‘atheist’. There are two reasons for this:

Firstly, I don’t believe in lots of things, but I don’t label myself by reference to that disbelief. I don’t call myself an “a-ghostist” or an “a-Santa Clausist”. Essentially, in day-to-day life, my lack of a theological conviction simply doesn’t impinge on my consciousness very much, so I don’t see why this absence, which I don’t miss in any way, should form part of my ‘identity’.

Secondly, and possibly more importantly for the Brights, are the negative connotations that pop into the heads of many people when they hear the word ‘atheist’. Do a word-association with ‘atheist’ and you might get things like “rebel”, “diabolical” “evil genius”, or “communist”. Some prefer the term “humanist” because the word associations are more touchy-feely. So I can see why these fellows might want to spread the name ‘bright’ as an alternative.

‘Bright’ is not a purely negative term in the way that “atheist” is. ‘Brights’ don’t believe in God or the supernatural, but they do believe in lots of other things. So they prefer to be characterised by what they do believe, rather than what they are sceptical about.

So I do have some sympathy for the idea.

But in another way, I find it ever so slightly cringeworthy.

Maybe there are so many ‘brights’ (including a lot of dim ones) in Britain that it’s not really an issue in the way it is in the States.

Maybe I instinctively distrust labels and movements, and find this one a little worthy and over-zealous. It has a slight tang of the earnest schoolboy setting up his own ‘Society for Clever People – No Girls Allowed.’

Or maybe I’m just not much of a joiner.