Brights?

Richard Dawkins is trying to form some sort of movement to get atheists or non-theists called ‘brights’. His explanation:

A triumph of consciousness-raising has been the homosexual hijacking of the word “gay”. I used to mourn the loss of gay in (what I still think of as) its true sense. But on the bright side (wait for it) gay has inspired a new imitator, which is the climax of this article. Gay is succinct, uplifting, positive: an “up” word, where homosexual is a down word, and queer, faggot and pooftah are insults. Those of us who subscribe to no religion; those of us whose view of the universe is natural rather than supernatural; those of us who rejoice in the real and scorn the false comfort of the unreal, we need a word of our own, a word like “gay”. You can say “I am an atheist” but at best it sounds stuffy (like “I am a homosexual”) and at worst it inflames prejudice (like “I am a homosexual”).

Paul Geisert and Mynga Futrell, of Sacramento, California, have set out to coin a new word, a new “gay”. Like gay, it should be a noun hijacked from an adjective, with its original meaning changed but not too much. Like gay, it should be catchy: a potentially prolific meme. Like gay, it should be positive, warm, cheerful, bright.

Bright? Yes, bright. Bright is the word, the new noun

I don’t know whether he was off his rocker when he wrote this. I mean, I’m pretty smug about my scientific materialism too, but this sort of campaign makes us non-theists look like dweebs, really. But if you’re interested, here is the website. I wouldn’t mind getting into this for networking purposes and I don’t even disagree with the outreach objectives, but why such a smug name? It makes us look like … Christian evangelists.