Dawkins to Give Award to anti-Science Maher

Posted on October 1, 2009
Filed Under Sideblog | 4 Comments

Great post up at Respectful Insolence about Richard Dawkins giving an award to Bill Maher. Maher is pretty anti-science in a slew of ways but primarily in his anti-vaccine rants. What’s annoying is that Dawkins would probably refuse grants from say the Templeton Foundation because of the religious connection and encourage others to do the same. But with Maher’s outright anti-science there’s a big double standard. (Maher, btw, is a great example of anti-science on the left)

Related posts:

  1. God and Science Collide
  2. Anti-Science in the Left
  3. Dawkins vs. Harry Potter
  4. Interesting Science as Religion Take
  5. Intelligent Design @ Mormon Organon
  6. Science Blogging

Comments

4 Responses to “Dawkins to Give Award to anti-Science Maher”

Evidence that Dawkins’ first love is not science, but anti-religion. Pathetic.

One of the comments in the comment section really was quite good.

However, he is not receiving the “Award For Exposing Religious Nonsense in a Movie”, he is receiving the “Richard Dawkins Award”, the criteria for which include (as I find it stated online):

who through writings, media, the arts, film, and/or the stage advocates increased scientific knowledge;

Bill Maher clearly from his many statements regarding medical and health matters (anti-vaccine advocate, HIV/AIDS denialist, cancer treatment, etc.) is NOT advocating “increased scientific knowledge”. Quite the opposite. His failure to use critical thinking skills and examine all the evidence in a rational and methodical manner totally disqualifies him IF the criteria for the Richard Dawkins Award printed above is correct.

Personally I think people get too worked up about Dawkin’s evangelical atheism. I mean Mormons send missionaries out, Evangelicals evangelize, and so forth. It’s a bit of a double standard to complain he pushes his view of religion. I disagree with him and sometimes his reasoning. But then I can say the same about many discussions of religion in a proselytizing context.

As a science popularizer Dawkins is quite good and has some excellent books.

What I tend to worry about though is that the New Atheist approach to convincing people about evolution gets a few converted to atheism but ends up entrenching many more into an anti-science stance. So that’s what bothers me since I think we need citizens to have a more positive view of science and scientific problem solving.

I agree that people shouldn’t get worked up about the proselyting efforts of atheists. It really is no different, and they should have every right to push forward what they find works for them, and expect to work for others.

On a related note the point of inquiry podcast with Chris Hedges is pretty good. It’s rather funny because DJ Grothe from POI comes across with an counter attack style very similar to the religious side of things he usually castigates – I just don’t believe it because I don’t see it.

I’m more mixed on that podcast Chris. There have been some I’ve loved and others where there just wasn’t a lot of content. But then it is one of my regularly subscribed to podcasts. Of course my favorite atheist will always be Penn Juliet. He’s hilarious and has thought through his views quite well. He used to have a radio show/podcast that sadly got cancelled after a year.

Leave a Reply