The really, truly True Believer™ of the Month Award September 2010

Conor Lenihan surprised no one by winning this month’s award. An Anti-Science Science Minister would be anyone’s favourite to get past the post and win any award of this nature. It reminds us that although an award such as this is all a bit of fun, there are some serious sides to it as well.

With elected politicians on our borders snipping away at Schools and Museums trying to get Creationist thinking into classrooms and displays, it is a shock to find a Minister of Science in our own country using an office of State to launch creationist materials in the Irish Publishing market.

Doing so while claiming to just be helping out a mate, Lenihan shows without any room for the smallest doubt that he occupies a position in our government for which he has absolutely no respect, failing as he does to realise that appending his name and title to the launch of such a book means he has gone far beyond helping out a mate and has endorsed the book in the name of the public who elected him and who he claims to represent.

That the other nominees for this month’s award included joint second place winners of an anti-vaccination article from the Irish Examiner and an Irish Judge who sentenced a man to a religious pilgrimage opens our eyes to just why we here at Atheist Ireland feel moved to campaign for a secular society for a pluralist people. There is still much to do.