As an atheist who believes that religion, on balance, creates more evil than good, I was interested in ‘The Brights’. A Bright is defined as someone whose “worldview is free of supernatural and mystical elements”, and the word is designed to sound more positive than atheist. I signed up, but now I am having second thoughts.
Being an atheist who rejects supernatural religious belief does not answer the fact that the principal crimes of the twentieth century, Stalinism, the Khmer Rouge and Nazism, were secular. What they all have in common with religion is a code based upon belief – ideology.
A ‘ brights’ naturalist worldview would reject God and the Tooth Fairy. An anti-ideological, ‘adaptivist’, worldview would reject religious doctrine and Stalinism.
I still think a naturalist wordview is also healthy, but I can live with the Tooth Fairy.