Bright Ideas

Today's L.A. Times, as typical of Monday editions--especially those during summer months--was bereft of major news (coming after the International Day of Rest). Instead there were several articles reflecting the cultural wars that are going on not just in Red State/Blue State America but throughout the world.

The topics were the usual suspects. An old conservative and a young liberal were joining forces to compel federal legislatures to reconsider the medical marijuana laws, railing against all the congressmen who refuse to acknowledge the mountains of evidence of THC's efficacy in alleviating symptoms. Spain observed the first official gay marriage ceremony (and shockingly, all the heterosexual marriages in Iberia did not instantly crumble as a result of this insult). Most interesting to me, though, was the Column One feature about the struggles atheists are having to keep their voices heard and their heads attached during this era of theocratic cultural conservatism.

What all three issues have in common is the current sway of ignorance over reality, intolerance over reason, superstition over naturalism. It's really a sad state of affairs that says nothing favorable about so-called civilization, which is apparently still in the infancy of its awareness. In the case of atheists, the situation is especially dire. They are perhaps hated even more than gays, for simply not buying into the sanctioned mind set of religious mythology. To suggest that there may not be a Supreme Being is so threatening to the mental comfort of the masses that it is widely considered a social illness. Atheists like Madalyn Murray O'Hare, sort of an Anti-Saint, bravely declare their principles of ethical living for the sake of ethical living, rather than for afterlife reward, and are routinely marginalized, or in her case, murdered. As were Jews in Auschwitz, young women in Salem, Tutsis in Rwanda, Protestants in Spain, Christians in Rome, Gentiles in Judah, yada yada yada.

What a species! Maybe those aliens in "War of the Worlds" had the right idea.

Meanwhile the atheists have come slowly to realize that part of their problem is linguistic. The words "atheist" and "godless" are both inflammatory and menacing to the "believers." So a cadre of academic atheists, led by a professor from Oxford, have suggested minting meaning for a new word--a "meme"--from an otherwise neutral word, to designate a class of people in a less jarring way. A typical successful "meme" is gay, which borrowed an adjective that had countless other synonyms and applied it to a trait of sexual orientation. The atheist are trying to establish the meme "bright" as a common term applying to anyone whose world view is naturalistic, rather than supernaturally based. There is even a website for these folks, The-Brights.net. I have subscribed to this site to support the rights of freethinkers and rational people, even if the battle is pretty desperate. The aim of The Brights is not to convert the Believers to non-belief, only to stand up for their rights not to subscribe to irrational mythology.

I do like the meme "bright" because it is more aptly descriptive than "gay." Since there are certainly homosexual men and women who are unhappy, there is conflict between the current and original meanings of the word "gay." But if someone is brave and thoughtful enough to distinguish between the rational view of a naturalist universe vs. the tyranny of theistic superstition, I think that "bright" applies to that person in every sense of the word, old or new. And there is now a renewed significance to the phrase, "Any bright ideas?"