From Abracadabra to Zombies
reader comments: brights
Bright? Too fraught with innuendo and baggage. Skeptic. That's it. Definition not fully understood by the public in general but still concise and accurate and has a long and honorable history. Atheist? Takes too much hubris on my part to go against the thinking of so many minds down through history. Agnostic. Says all that needs to be said without getting into anybody's face.
Regards, Robert H. Galloway
Mr. Galloway seems to think that Atheism an uncomfortable hubris [?] because of it's bald-faced denial of what so many minds have sincerely thought. He seems to have provisionally forgotten that skepticism entails that we learned from the (abundant) errors of history. Is the claim that we have surpassed error truly arrogant? Quite the contrary, it is out of thankfulness that I explicitly call myself an Atheist. I am not chained agnostically to the hoards of delusions and miscalculations of my predecessors, neither really sure nor deeply doubtful. "A student repays a teacher badly if he remains for ever a student." -Nietzsche
Regards, Timothy Zak
8 Nov 2003
Whilst I admit to being both atheistic and of a generally sceptical turn
of mind, I find it hard to think of myself as "an anything", let alone a
"Bright". To the admittedly slightly askew Australian mind, the concept of
a "Bright" conjurers up the image of some children's fantasy figure which
is half fairy from the bottom of the garden and half toothpaste
commercial. I appreciate the well meaning logic behind the proposal, but I
remain to be convinced of the benefit of placing a somewhat warm and fuzzy
tag on a fairly broad group of people. Tags seem always to have become a
handle for prejudice. Perhaps the best response to tags lies in the now
aging Paul Hogan movie where he is asked "Are you Gay", to which the reply
is, "Yeah, pretty happy most of the time". Perhaps we all take ourselves a
bit too seriously mate?
Regards, Greg Wildie
8 Nov 2003
Frankly, I'd rather not get mooned.
Ian Johnson
brights
