Brights Movement

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Richard Dawkins is listed as an enthusiastic Bright by the Brights Movement website.

The Brights Movement was started in 2003 by Paul Geisert and Mynga Futrell in 2003 in order to assist in the advocacy of a naturalistic worldview. The Brights movement had a media campaign and was announced in Wired magazine (by evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins), Free Inquiry (by Richard Dawkins), and on the New York Times op-ed page (by evolutionary biologist Daniel Dennett). However, according to a 2004 Skeptical Enquirer article the movement was a misguided attempt to promote atheism and the "Brights label reinforced a longstanding stereotype. Atheists already have a terrible rap for being coldhearted rationalists who attend Mensa gatherings and dismiss religious believers as simple-minded fools."

Chris Mooney wrote in his Skeptical Enquirer article the following:

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..a recent attack on the Brights movement in The Wall Street Journal by the conservative thinker Dinesh D'Souza confirms my worst fears (D'Souza 2003). The article blithely ignores a key caveat that the Brights defenders have explicitly laid out-namely, that the label isn't meant to suggest that religious doubters are smarter than everyone else. But I actually think this misrepresentation ought to be blamed more on Dennett, Dawkins, and the original founders than on D'Souza--for reasons I will explain. In his original New York Times op-ed announcing the Brights label, Dennett wrote, "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." That's certainly nice in principle. But who did Dennett think he was kidding? How could anyone hear the label Bright and think anything but that atheists were claiming to be smarter than everyone else? As ABC Richard Dawkins News.com commentator John Allen Paulos remarked of the Brights campaign, "I don't think a degree in public relations is needed to expect that many people will construe the term as smug, ridiculous, and arrogant" (Paulos 2003).

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According to Mr. Mooney virtually all the feedback he has received regarding the Brights Movement from skeptics and atheists has been negative. Atheist author and columnist Christopher Hitchens expressed his "annoyance at Professor Dawkins and Daniel Dennett, for their cringe-making proposal that atheists should conceitedly nominate themselves to be called "brights". However, notable skeptics/atheists may still embrace the Brights Movement and are listed as "Enthusiastic Brights" at the Brights Movement website. Examples of individuals listed as Brights are notable skeptics/atheists such as Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Margaret Downy, James Randi, Mel Lipman, Bobbie Kirkhart, Herb Silverman, Michael Shermer, Matt Cherry, and Babu Gogineni. However, Michael Shermer may not be a "enthusiastic Bright" as he stated in 2003 the following: "However, when it became apparent to me that the vast majority of people most likely to fall under the "bright" rubric would not use the label, I became, well, skeptical that it would succeed. For the time being I continue calling myself a skeptic."