Rubenerd

It's that time of year again for people to cast their votes in the New Humanist magazine's Bad Faith award. Last year's winner was Sarah Palin, who'll win this time around?

Ladies and gentleman, the time has come. For months now, nominations have been pouring in for those most deserving of our prestigious Bad Faith Award, presented each year to the person deemed to have made the most outstanding contribution to the cause of unreason.

They have a whole page of deserving candidates, and to be truthful I almost voted for Tony Blair for his recent outburst against secular people, agnostics, atheists, humanists and all us other people who are responsible for all the ills in the world… of course!

Tony Blair: […] What’s probably earned Tony his nomination this year is a speech he made in October, in which he suggested that the major world religions should work together in the face of “an aggressive secular attack from without”.

Similar sentiment against atheists in particular also made Cormac Murphy O'Connor a close call:

Cormac Murphy O’Connor: As he prepared to make way for Vincent Nichols as Archbishop of Westminster, the former head of the Catholic Church in England bid us all farewell by branding atheists as “not fully human”.

I'm not fully human? What am I then sir, a grilled cheese sandwich toaster? ;).

For the time being these two people's words can just be dismissed as childish name-calling that only makes them look silly and is in itself fairly harmless, so instead I placed my vote firmly for Pope Benedict XVI who's attitudes and words continue to kill innocent people.

Pope Benedict XVI: […] Having stated in March that AIDS “is a tragedy that cannot be overcome by money alone, and that cannot be overcome through the distribution of condoms, which even aggravates the problems”, could 2009 finally be his year?

My idol Richard Dawkins called him a boring choice on a RichardDawkins.net talk page on the poll, but I agree with AlanW who posted a comment on the same page.

[The pope is the] obvious choice for many people because of the sheer scale of the horror he causes. If he doesn’t get the award what does that say about our humanitarian concerns versus petty political points?

I'll be calling my grandfather this afternoon after my next exam for a chat to hear who he picked and why. I'll be meeting up with him in hell after we're both gone ^_^. Who do you think should get it?