How to Become a Bright

A "bright" is a person who has a naturalistic worldview, one free of supernatural and mystical elements. A bright is not necessarily an atheist or agnostic, and not all atheists or agnostics are brights. The term bright is meant as a description of a person's outlook on life, not a statement of intelligence-those who aren't brights aren't considered dim! If you are a bright, let yourself be counted.

Instructions

1. Determine your worldview. If you believe in phenomena that can't be scientifically demonstrated to exist such as prayer, ESP, feng shui or out-of-body experiences, then you are not a bright. This doesn't mean that you can't believe in a deity, but it must be a deity that doesn't intervene in human affairs through miracles or events that defy the laws of physics.

2. Visit the Brights-Net website to research the brights movement and read quotes by brights.

3. Register as a bright. Your name and address will not be shared with anyone. Registering allows those who compile statistics about brights to count the number of registered brights living in each postal code (in the U.S., Great Britain and Canada) or country.

4. Support the movement by printing flyers to pass out, adding a banner to your website or volunteering to coordinate a local constituency.

5. Participate in the discussion forums to help make other brights feel welcome and talk about how to be a bright among supers (the term used by brights to refer to those who believe in supernatural things).

Tips & Warnings

• If you want help in determining what you actually believe in and whether your worldview is naturalistic, try the Belief-O-Matic quiz at Beliefnet.com.

• Avoid debates about terminology such as what constitutes an atheist or whether agnostics are just unwilling to commit to their nonbelief; these arguments are never productive. One of the goals of the brights movement is to introduce an umbrella term that doesn't define people by what they don't believe in.