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 | | From: | Jessie Gamache | | Subject: | Atheism and its meaning | | Date: | Fri, 08 Oct 2004 05:45:47 -0500 |
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 | I reread all the material from Sept 27 to Oct 1. and I didn't get any
satisfactory answers. As I've said I just discovered the site on the
word "Brights" and you guys definately didn't take the time to check it
out or you wouldn't of gone into all the explanations why Bright was a
bad term. Everything you said was covered by the the people that
invented the term.
No wonder people say this site is dead or words to that effect.
An idea should be questioned, don't you think? After it is researched
first before it is condemned. Jessie
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| | From: | Ron Peterson | | Subject: | Re: Atheism and its meaning | | Date: | Fri, 08 Oct 2004 09:25:27 -0500 |
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| Jessie Gamache wrote:
> An idea should be questioned, don't you think? After it is researched
> first before it is condemned.
There was considerable discussion on the issue.
Remember that the smartest people in the universe didn't look up the
meaning of mensa in Spanish.
--
Ron
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| | From: | Ronn_Hammonn | | Subject: | Re: Atheism and its meaning | | Date: | Fri, 08 Oct 2004 16:43:27 -0500 |
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| Ron Peterson wrote:
>
> Jessie Gamache wrote:
>
> > An idea should be questioned, don't you think? After it is researched
> > first before it is condemned.
>
> There was considerable discussion on the issue.
>
> Remember that the smartest people in the universe didn't look up the
> meaning of mensa in Spanish.
>
Or, maybe they did. ;-)
--
Ronn_Hammonn
Remove the "y" from ".nyet", when present, to reach me.
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| | From: | Ron Peterson | | Subject: | Re: Atheism and its meaning | | Date: | Sat, 09 Oct 2004 23:16:30 -0500 |
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| Ronn_Hammonn wrote:
> Ron Peterson wrote:
>> Remember that the smartest people in the universe didn't look up the
>> meaning of mensa in Spanish.
> Or, maybe they did. ;-)
I just received an annual report from some company that on the cover
page put "The power of brightness".
Maybe it would help to refer to atheists/humanists with some derogatory
term so that it would become an in thing like 'bad'.
--
Ron
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| | From: | Kirk Job-Sluder | | Subject: | Re: Atheism and its meaning | | Date: | Fri, 08 Oct 2004 08:46:22 -0500 |
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| On 2004-10-08, Jessie Gamache wrote:
> I reread all the material from Sept 27 to Oct 1. and I didn't get any
> satisfactory answers. As I've said I just discovered the site on the
> word "Brights" and you guys definately didn't take the time to check it
> out or you wouldn't of gone into all the explanations why Bright was a
> bad term. Everything you said was covered by the the people that
> invented the term.
In regards to this, I must politely disagree. I am probably as well
informed about the term as anybody, having read both the web site, and
much of the debate about the term engaged by proponents and oponents in
journals such as _The Humanist_ and _Free Inquiry_
The first problem with their proposal is that they seem to be heavily
invested into what I find to be an extremely flawed theory of cultural
diffusion and social change. Memetics has some serious problems. The
fact that evolution can be described in terms of information theory,
does not mean that the behavior of all forms of information can be
described using the tools developed around the specific behavior of
genes. Memetics makes some critical assumptions about the nature of
information in a cultural context that I find to be naive given what we
know about social behavior and even just human cognition and memory.
Evolutionary theory works because genes are relatively conservative in
their mutation rate. However, we know from research in cognitive
psychology that meaning is not conservative. Memory is not an act of
replaying events, but a combination of recreation and outright
fabrication. As a result, meaning changes from minute to minute
depending on context. Meaning in social contexts is highly dependent on
context.
Secondly, as someone who has been in the trenches of the rights
movement, their analogy to "" is extremely flawed, primarily because
they ignore (or just gloss over) the complexities surrounding "."
"Gay" is not universally beloved among homoual and biual people.
Many lesbian activists dislike the term because it implies male
homouality. In addition, " rights" did not happen because people
just decided one day to call themselves and "spread the meme." It
happened because homoual and biual men and women got sick and
tired of being a target for police and refused to shut up about it. The
word did not catalyze the movement as the brights seem to believe will
happen. The word came along for the ride. If Stonewall had happened in
the 1920s, we would be talking about Invert Rights rather than
rights.
The third problem is that we have a term that describes everything they
mean with "bright." It is a term that has a 90-year history, and
incorporates all of the diverse groups that they intend to put under the
bright umbrella. It's Humanist. The first Humanist manifesto was
developed as much by secular Unitarians as hardcore atheists. Humanist
as a term has a three-generation head-start in terms of recognition and
activism.
> No wonder people say this site is dead or words to that effect.
> An idea should be questioned, don't you think? After it is researched
> first before it is condemned. Jessie
Certainly, and my research suggests that the "bright" campaign is
misleading.
--
Kirk Job-Sluder
"The square-jawed homunculi of Tommy Hilfinger ads make every day an
existential holocaust." --Scary Go Round
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| | From: | Charles & Mambo | | Subject: | Re: Atheism and its meaning | | Date: | Mon, 11 Oct 2004 16:02:43 -0500 |
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| Jessie Gamache wrote:
> I reread all the material from Sept 27 to Oct 1. and I didn't get any
> satisfactory answers.
You get what you pay for.
> As I've said I just discovered the site on the
> word "Brights" and you guys definately didn't take the time to check it
> out or you wouldn't of gone into all the explanations why Bright was a
> bad term. Everything you said was covered by the the people that
> invented the term.
This "bright" stuff has been brought up and discussed before in this and in
other atheist ng's. There was life before you came along.
Furthermore, just because "everything... is covered" doesn't mean it is
correct, reasonable and satisfactory. After all, everything every atheist
ever says is also "covered" by religious textbooks, which doesn't mean
religions are true.
And finally, languages are fluid living concepts which are (or at least
should be) left to develop pretty much on their own. Trying to spoon-feed a
term in a typical marketing department advertising campaign sort of way is
fairly stupid, just because *some* people think that atheism has a negative
connotation. If you ask me, that's their fucking problem, so if they don't
like being called atheists, let them call themselves brights, lights or
whatever turns them on. I and many other atheists do not have a need to hide
our atheist position when asked.
> No wonder people say this site is dead or words to that effect.
> An idea should be questioned, don't you think? After it is researched
> first before it is condemned. Jessie
Like you researched before condemning the word "atheist": "Atheist is a
negative word even if one goes into detail about the meaning."
Bottom line is, this bright business is nothing but one more of those
politically correct terms from the deluded people who think that by
re-labeling "negative" words, their consequences are somehow removed. So we
end up with:
differently abled instead of handicapped
collateral damage instead of civilian casualties
"faith based" instead of religious
brights instead of atheists, etc.
--
Come down off the cross
We can use the wood
Tom Waits, Come On Up To The House
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| | From: | Ron Hammon | | Subject: | Re: Atheism and its meaning | | Date: | Fri, 08 Oct 2004 08:50:56 -0500 |
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| Jessie Gamache wrote:
>
> I reread all the material from Sept 27 to Oct 1. and I didn't get any
> satisfactory answers. As I've said I just discovered the site on the
> word "Brights" and you guys definately didn't take the time to check it
> out or you wouldn't of gone into all the explanations why Bright was a
> bad term. Everything you said was covered by the the people that
> invented the term.
> No wonder people say this site is dead or words to that effect.
> An idea should be questioned, don't you think? After it is researched
> first before it is condemned. Jessie
Look at it this way, what if I called you "shit"? Would you feel
compelled to "research" my take on the word before taking offense? I
have no obligation to spend my time researching the excuses of any group
of people calling themselves "brights". Maybe it is just an EXTREMELY
unfortunate choice of a word, and they mean to "light the way" or some
such. But, that isn't OUR problem, is it?
And, by the way, it isn't my task to provide you with "satisfactory
answers" either.
--
Ronn_Hammonn
Remove the "y" from ".nyet", when present, to reach me.
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