Are you a Bright?

It would seem that ethical humanists, aetheists and other descendants of the Enlightenment have some new company, known as "brights." This bit of news was recently reported by Daniel Dennett in the New York Times. [link]

According to Dennett, a bright is "a person with a naturalist as opposed to a supernaturalist world view. We brights don't believe in ghosts or elves or the Easter Bunny — or God. We disagree about many things, and hold a variety of views about morality, politics and the meaning of life, but we share a disbelief in black magic — and life after death."

Truth be told, until I saw Dennett's op-ed, I had never really considered the question of where I stand on the whole "God" thing. On the one hand, I have a deep and abiding respect for Jewish traditions (even when I don't practice them myself), and I believe in prayer as a communal experience, but those things aren't the same thing as believing in God. Similarly, I believe that the majesty of the cosmos and the beauty of complexity surely indicate some kind of higher force at work, but whether that is "God" at work I can't say. It would be just as easy for me to say that the universe is the product of a infinite number of single decisions whose confluence produces a coherent whole that unfolds at, and beyond, the limits of my puny powers to comprehend.

Delving further, I can't say with any assurance that I believe in the God of the Bible, or that the miracles of the Bible happened the way that the book suggests. Rather, I tend to discount the miracles as reflecting the limited worldview of the men (and women) who wrote down the stories. It's not likely that Abraham was hundreds of years old, or that Sarah gave birth when she was in her late eighties; more likely, they were simply older than was the norm, and their ages were exaggerated to make a point. Similarly, it seems to me simply not possible that Noah gathered every animal two-by-two, or that Moses parted the Red Sea, or that any of the other miracles took place exactly as described. Did each of them originate in some real fact or actual occurence? Sure. But that's a rationalist, non-Godly interpretation, which only begs the question: am I a bright?

The fact is, the traditional notion of God doesn't hold a significant place in my life. When the World Trade Center collapsed, many people turned to "God" through prayer for comfort. I didn't. When my mother was diagnosed with cancer, I didn't curse God, but didn't seek solace in God, either. For solace, I turned to my personal community of friends and confidants, and instead of prayer, I have sought knowledge.

I don't think this makes me an aetheist, however. Aetheists reject the concept of God; I merely don't know whether I believe in God or not. For example, I retain a sense of magnificent wonder at things I can't explain, and feel heartbreaking awe in the presence of natural beauty and splendor. And I allow for the possibility that my sense of wonder or awe may objectively be a belief in God, just described by another name. On the other hand, while I allow for the possibility that prayers may be heard by some supernatural force, I believe that the real power of prayer derives from the fact that it's a communal experience. It is hard to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with hundreds of people singing the Avinu Malkeinu (Our father, Our King) at the end of Yom Kippur and not be moved. But am I being moved closer to God? Or am I identifying with, and being comforted by, the shared expression of human frailty and recognition that our existence is fleeting? It seems to me that the power of the supplication has nothing to do with whom we are beseeching, and everything to do with admitting and coming to terms with the fact that I too will diminish.

Which leads me to the brights' lack of belief in life-after-death. Judaism has a concept Olam Ha'bah (the World to Come) and a belief that our souls live on after our bodies have died, but I don't know that I believe those notions. At the same time, I find myself conflicted: I find some psychic comfort in the funeral traditions that Judaism has developed to help ease the soul's transition from this world to the next, but even as I have observed these rituals being practiced, I have often wondered whether, beautiful as they are, the rituals aren't more about soothing the restive souls of the living than those of the dead.

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I have struggled mightily to devise a conclusion to this post, but haven't found an easy explanation or neat way to tie off the loose ends of my thoughts. I guess my principal observation is merely this: I have often defaulted to saying I believe in God because I don't fundamentally not believe in God, so none of the aetheist/secular humanist labels felt like they fit. I don't know that the bright label fits any better, but it did move me to consider the alternative categorization, so I thought it was worth mentioning here.