“Adaptation to climate change is not a new subject. Throughout history, societies, their organizations and their different activities have shown a strong capacity for adaptation to changes in environmental and climate conditions… However, the rate of change in climate, which has recently been observed and the rate of change projected for the future, strongly overcomes to any change speed observed by humanity in the past, which calls for a special and urgent awareness of decision makers to consider these new, changing and uncertain conditions.”

What may prove most promising in moving from meaningful analysis to timely implementation?  Brights who value and rely on facts and scientific evidence will recognize that there is more and more need for policy-relevant knowledge to be brought to bear on the circumstance, and definite urgency as regards political actions across the globe.

Here at Brights Central we have again started another round of evolution poster disseminations. The outcome of our renewed efforts is that additional tens of thousands of high school students will be able to acquire from their schooling a richly exacting naturalistic understanding of life.  (Far less need for supernatural explanations when “it all makes sense through science”!)

This project is a major effort of the constituency and Kelly’s favorite work at BC, in part because the Earth and Life: changes over time instructional resource so pleases the science teachers who receive it, and they tend to say so. 

It’s so nice to be back once more in our “distribution mode”– carefully rolling up and packing each 5 ½ foot wide poster along with brief guidance for its classroom use, and mailing the combination out to teacher applicants.

The Brights have the exclusive privilege of supplying this unique educational resource to experienced teachers who are motivated to teach about evolution! (All must apply to receive the poster.) The image combines physical and biological on a timeline that aids teachers visually illustrating components of evolutionary change.

The poster printing takes place with funding by individual Brights and in cooperation with an accommodating local printer (with whom BC negotiated a per-copy cost far below competitors. We are pleased that we have obtained another high quality printing and are hopeful that Brights will continue their support. The limiting factor on distribution has now shifted once again to funding postage for the mailings.  If you haven’t yet contributed, please think about helping us to keep these going out the door.

The Brights’ vision, as it is stated on the website, is a civic and egalitarian one: a world in which persons like ourselves - who have a naturalistic worldview – are accepted as full participants in our societies.

This ideal holds that “brights of all stripes” should be recognized as civic equals to fellow citizens. Whatever labels or designations brights may prefer to use to characterize themselves and their worldview, they should not be stifled or civically marginalized as a consequence.

There is no further elaboration of what such an egalitarian vision might actually entail. There is no attempt to create a manifesto statement for “the Brights”. (Nor will there be.) Although some “statements” have at times been suggested to BC, Principle 1 of the Brights movement makes quite clear that we are a constituency of individuals. Among brights who enroll in the online constituency from all over the world, there could be many specifics of the civic vision and many diverse actions taken by Brights who are working toward their interpretation of the suggested openness, visibility, engagement, and participation that would make sense to them within their cultural context.

Most recently the UK’s National Secular Society, in advance of a coming general election, has formulated and posted its vision to advance freedom, fairness, and equal citizenship. Their eleven-item manifesto for a freer, fairer society was set forth in hopes of advancing incorporation into political party platforms. In sum, the formulation is one of reducing the privilege given to religion in that society.

Most Brights are also secularists and would perhaps find these fresh secularist vision statements worthy of their consideration as guidance for their own local or national actions. Many Brights, of course, maintain ties to religious communities (while keeping a personal worldview free of supernatural). They too, however, are likely to approve of the secularists’ drive toward withdrawing undue privileging given to religion in public matters.

Professor Caroline Mala Corbin recently emailed Brights Central to point us to her paper at the Alabama Law Review, saying: “I thought perhaps this essay on the U.S. Supreme Court's Establishment Clause jurisprudence and Christian nationalism might interest you.”

The legal paper is entitled “The Supreme Court’s Facilitation of White Christian Nationalism” and is rife with legal citations showing how Christian nationalism has wended its way into Supreme Court decisions, resulting in the Court having weakened the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment Establishment Clause. That’s the clause in the Bill of Rights’ First Amendment that, by forbidding “establishment” of religion, was meant to ensure a civic equality for citizens across all faiths or none.

Dr. Futrell at BC, in thanking Ms. Corbin and promising to read her article, wrote: “I’m no legal expert whatsoever, but over the time of my life, it seems that the Establishment Clause is increasingly weakened/ignored at all judicial and civic levels.” Ms. Corbin right away emailed a reply: “Unfortunately, you are spot on: with each Supreme Court decision on the religion clauses, the separation of church and state gets weaker and weaker.” 

The Court’s decisions favoring Christian nationalism are paving the way for antagonistic public policy effectively turning non-Christians into second-class citizens. That is, the consequences of such decisions can lead not merely to symbolic exclusion from the community and nation, but may eventually result in actual exclusion.

Using such computational methods, the study of interest looks to compare the ability of powerful animistic gods to punish transgressions versus allowance for a range of supernatural punishments.

The former type (e.g., like the monotheistic deity of today’s Christianity and Islam) are prominent religions today, but the latter type (e.g., those imperfect localized ancestral spirits and the inanimate processes like karma) remain and are found globally, throughout ethnic and world religions.

Is one or the other type a greater driver of social complexity, enabling believers to build the kind of complex societies that define modern humanity?

The results of this study may surprise you.