I didn't mean to launch a name game yesterday with my remarks about Daniel Dennett and the "brights" label, but that's what seems to have happened. More than fifty comments came in, many of them suggesting various ways in which atheists ought to be relabled: "humanist," "freethinker," and many others, including some amusing ones like "Godless Smartboys" (which, it was quickly pointed out, excludes female atheists). What was missing to all of this excitement, of course, was anything other than a gut feeling as to what would work, and what wouldn't work, from a public relations standpoint. Everyone had an opinion, no one had any data. That's perfectly fine for comments on a blog, but it certainly won't do in the realm of serious political strategy.
And that's what mystifies me so much about the "brights" label, which was prominently launched on the op-ed page of the New York TImes. Although it had originated elsewhere, the term's use was advocated by two men who love science--Richard Dawkins and Daniel Dennett--but who, on this matter, seem not to have applied the requisite amount of critical thinking. Let's say it plainly: The "brights" label backfires dramatically, reinforcing negative stereotypes about atheists (that they think they're smarter than everyone else, than all the "dims").
"Bright" defenders can holler all they want that this wasn't what they intended, but intentions don't matter when you're playing the frame game. What matters is how your "frame" works on the minds of an audience, and here, the frame "bright" was obviously doomed from the start.
I emphasize all of this, incidentally, for a reason. The defenders of science are, in my view, getting their clocks cleaned right now in the political arena. Atheists, meanwhile, are a political nonentity. We're talking about very smart people here, but when it comes to politics, they don't have a clue. And if there's any hope of this situation ever changing, I think we have to realize that mere cerebral intelligence doesn't cut it--you really have to have strategic intelligence as well.
The "brights" episode, for me, demonstrates a clear case in which intellectual brilliance was combined with some serious strategic ineptitude.
