Science Friction_ Where the Known Meets the Unknown - Michael Shermer [24]
Even National Public Radio—one of the last liberal bastions left on the airwaves and long supportive of the ACLU and other secular causes—aired a critical commentary. On September 4, 2002, NPR’s Steven Waldman asked, “Are atheists and agnostics smarter than everyone else?” and answered with the already oft-quoted antonym: “I’m not sure what the image buffers were aiming for, but the name ‘The Brights’ succinctly conveys the sense that this group thinks it’s more intelligent than everyone else. The rest of us would be The Dims,’ I suppose.” Waldman admits, “Our political culture has increasingly marginalized atheists, agnostics, and secular humanists—whether it’s ten commandments in the courtroom, or a president who invokes god continuously,” and that “any rationalist would be perfectly justified in thinking society views them as second class citizens whose views are not worthy.” Indeed. But then he sets up a straw-man argument by claiming that brights have asserted “that people who believe in god or the supernatural are just not as, well, bright.” To my knowledge no bright has made such an assertion, and if they did they would be wrong since survey data show (as Waldman notes) that over half of all Americans with postgraduate degrees believe in the devil, Hell, miracles, the afterlife, the virgin birth, and the resurrection. As I have demonstrated elsewhere (Why People Believe Weird Things), smart people believe weird things because they are better at rationalizing beliefs they arrived at for nonsmart (psychological and emotional) reasons.
Dinesh D’Souza, in an October 6, 2002, Wall Street journal editorial, began by noting that our movement claims a heritage dating back to the Enlightenment, then argued that our fundamental belief in the power of science and reason to encompass all knowledge about the world was thoroughly debunked by the German Enlightenment philosopher Immanuel Kant, who demonstrated that no system of human knowledge could be complete, and thus there will always be epistemological limits beyond which such entities as God might exist. That is, of course, possible, and no scientist or skeptic ever claimed that science is omnipotent or omniscient. But the possibility that the divine may exist in some realm beyond the reaches of science by no means proves that it does, and D’Souza offers no enlightenment, as it were, on this front.
For my part I wrote a new ending to my book, The Science of Good and Evil, and an opinion editorial based on that section, in which I said: “Bright is a good word. It means ‘cheerful and lively’ ‘showing an ability to think, learn, or respond quickly,’ and ‘reflecting or giving off strong light.’ Brights are cheerful thinkers who reflect the light of liberty and tolerance for all, both brights and non-brights. It is time for brights, like other minorities in our country, to stand up and be counted, either literally at www. thebrights.net, or figuratively the next time a politician kowtows to the religious right with a gratuitous slam against those of us who do not believe in God or are nonreligious. Just as it is no longer okay to woman-bash or gay-bash, it is now unacceptable to bright-bash. Saying so may not make it so, but all social movements begin with the word. The word is bright.”
Study 1: Unsolicited Feedback on “Brights”
At the behest of my publisher I decided to hold off submitting my opinion editorial until my book The Science of Good and Evil arrived in stores in February 2004. Instead, I “came out” to the 25,000 readers of our electronic e-Skeptic newsletter. To my astonishment I received hundreds of e-mails, the vast majority of which were emphatically negative about the term. Most strongly indicated that under no circumstances