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Phil Plait, the creator of Bad Astronomy, is an astronomer, lecturer, and author. After ten years working on Hubble Space Telescope and six more working on astronomy education, he struck out on his own as a writer. He has written two books, dozens of magazine articles, and 12 bazillion blog articles. He is a skeptic, and fights misuses of science as well as praising the wonder of real science.
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January 11th, 2008 at 11:33 am
I like Randi’s debunking of pseudoscience. I don’t like his signing on to Daniel Dennett’s ridiculous and offensive classification of atheists as “brights,” with the obvious implication that theists are “dims.” In my experience, bright people don’t have to go around telling others that they’re bright.
January 11th, 2008 at 11:56 am
@Barton – that wasn’t the intent of the term.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brights_movement
January 11th, 2008 at 12:44 pm
I still remember this Randi column from back in 2002, where he got you mixed up with The Skeptic’s Dictionary’s Bob Carroll:
http://www.randi.org/jr/110802.html
January 11th, 2008 at 12:49 pm
Jim — sure it was. It’s an imputation of lower intelligence to anyone who disagrees with them. The logic of an eight-year-old — something he doesn’t like or disagrees with is “stupid.”
January 11th, 2008 at 1:02 pm
Responding to Barton Paul Levenson,
Should we get rid of the term “The Enlightenment”?
I also dont feel much affinity towards calling myself a ‘bright’ but I do realize that the manner of implication was not (although it could be taken as such – granted) to mean “smart” versus “stupid”.
January 11th, 2008 at 2:48 pm
> Jim — sure it was.
Well it’s good you know their intentions better than they do.
January 11th, 2008 at 3:51 pm
Re: Brights
In practical terms, the intended meaning is less important than the meaning that will be taken up (and propagated) by opponents, and on that score, Barton’s point seems precisely correct.
“Bright”: the noun comes from the obvious adjective. Why WOULDN’T the antonym come from the corresponding adjective, and hence “Dim”?
Arguably what is needed is not a new noun, but a new verb. If you ask me if I believe that the universe is 13.7Gyo, I can’t say yes. I can explain my “no” answer by inquiring in turn whether you believe in oxygen, or in the floor, or (if you chose to ask me while at 30000ft) in Bernoulli’s Principle.
My mental stance on these topics is not that of belief. I either have knowledge of a particular field, or I don’t, and in no field is my knowledge either complete or final. I don’t do blissful certainty.
I admit I don’t have a suitable candidate verb. “I hold that….” “I understand that…”, “the consensus appears to be that….”
“I science that?”
In that case, obviously I would science that the universe is 13.7Gyo.
Ronan
January 11th, 2008 at 4:16 pm
Barton Paul Levenson – Not all atheists are brights. A bright is a person with a naturalistic worldview. Therefore, an atheist who believes in astrology is – by definition – not a bright.
January 13th, 2008 at 5:16 am
Mikhail Bragoria posts:
[[A bright is a person with a naturalistic worldview. ]]
Sorry, I don’t accept your (actually, Daniel Dennett’s) definition. In addition to being inaccurate, I think it’s arrogant and offensive.
January 13th, 2008 at 1:47 pm
The term “bright” is dumb, divisive, and likely to make things harder, not easier, on skeptics.
My thoughts on this are clear, and on record.
January 15th, 2008 at 6:05 am
BA — thanks for your post. I’m sorry if I seem to be overly sensitive to this stuff. Been running into a lot of it recently.
-BPL