written for my newspaper internship

Monday night at Hennessy’s Bar and Grill in Carlsbad, a few men and women begin trickling in at the back patio around 7, shaking hands and trying to remember one another’s names. After too long of a debate, they decide to pull two small plastic tables together. Twenty minutes later there are 10 people around three tables and it doesn’t look like anyone else is coming. A man on the end passes out articles on scratch paper—politics, religion or science on one side, old multiplication worksheets or tips for preserving fruit on the other. No one looks too interested in reading just yet.

“Are we eating?” one wants to know. He doesn’t get a definitive answer, but orders the fish and chips anyway. A few others order something to eat or drink, and then, now that everyone’s here, it’s time for introductions again. It’s understandable that they don’t all know each other because they only meet once a month, and they can’t all make it every month.

This is a meeting of the Brights. Their common bond is that they are all atheists, or is that right? Technically, a Bright is someone who does not believe in anything supernatural. The Brights started in Sacramento in 2003 and have spread to almost 100 countries since then, but it sounds like the terminology is still being hashed out. The group around the tables launches into a discussion about the difference between atheist and agnostic, agnostic and ignostic, skeptic and secular humanist. From there they talk about religious texts, presidential canidates, faith and belief, corporations, morals and ethics, good books. But a lot of what they talk about is just how nice it is to be able to talk at all.

“I have a wife and two children, and they’re religious. Just for family harmony, I’m not going to go on and on,” says the man with the fish and chips. It’s a common sentiment, but some say it more strongly.

“We have family that are religious and we’ll go to Christmas and Thanksgiving with them, but we have friends and family members who have found out we were nonreligious and now they don’t want to hang out with us,” says Paul Wenger, 53. Paul has been the president of the San Diego Association for Rational Inquiry for 2 years. He’s got brochures in his car if anyone is interested, but he’s really just here to talk.

So is Eve Daniels, 70, a trained concert pianist with a master’s degree in human development who has met with the Brights off and on for the last 9 months.

“We all need to be able to talk. We all need to have a place where we know we can talk and what we say is valued, and that also allows us to hear ourselves, and you can say back to me what I’ve said, and the idea gets polished.”

Eve says this to Anne Adams, 68, a retired secretary and proud grandmother who once considered herself to be a Christian. She had difficulty pinpointing exactly when she changed her mind about religion.

“I’ve been what you would call a freethinker my whole life. I just didn’t know what to call it,” she says. “I miss being part of the church, you know, the closeness, the camaraderie, but not the other…” she waves her hand to sum it up. Anne says she hasn’t ruled out the existence of the supernatural, but that she does need to be true to herself about what she thinks.

“The thing of it is—we don’t know.”

That’s when the man with the handouts chimes in.

“I disagree, we know thoroughly.”

His name is Lambert Bertrand Halsema, but “Bert” is good enough.

“I’m a Buddhist, so I’m an atheist with a future,” he introduced himself earlier. Asked how old he is, he says he’s not old, he’s a classic. He moved from Florida to California when he joined the Merchant Marines 53 years ago, and he probably wasn’t young then.

Bert has a doctorate in cultural geography from the Nation Autonomous University in Mexico City, he keeps up on his reading, and he isn’t afraid to express his opinions. His t-shirt reads, “God needs no help starting holy wars. Keep church and state separate.”

They all have plenty to talk about, and the topics are as varied as the people around the tables. No one gets up to leave until 10:30, and even then, saying goodbye is a 30-minute process for some.