Bad Faith Award 2012: still time to nominate

A few weeks ago we put out the call for nominations for the 2012 Bad Faith Award, as we began the search for the individual who will succeed the 2011 winner, Conservative MP Nadine Dorries, as the undefeated, undisputed champion of irrationality.

As ever there was no shortage of nominations as our Bad Faith Award, now in its sixth year, continued to provide unscientific evidence that humanity is failing to take annual steps towards greater rationality.

In the new issue of New Humanist we promise that the final shortlist will be compiled and that a poll will appear on this blog by Thursday 1 November. So the purpose of this post is to issue a final call – tell us your nominations now, or forever hold your peace.

You don't want to arrive here to vote this coming Thursday, only to find that history has passed you by and your favoured candidate is missing from the shortlist. Nominate now by leaving a comment on this post or sending an email to editor@newhumanist.org.uk.

This is surely the most important election to be taking place in the opening days of November 2012, so have your say and nominate today. To give you an idea of what we're looking for, here are four early frontrunners for the prize.

Lord Carey: The former Archbishop of Canterbury has been on fine form this year in his current guise as right-wing newspaper pundit and outspoken opponent of gay marriage. In April he declared that it “is now Christians who are persecuted” in Britain, “often sought out and framed by homosexual activists”, despite having written in the Daily Mail two months earlier that "British Christians are not being persecuted, as some have said".

 

Cardinal Keith O’Brien: Ever the bridesmaid, the head of the Catholic Church in Scotland has been nominated for the award in the past, but he has surely increased his chances in 2012 with his campaigning against gay marriage. In March he likened the marriage reforms to the legalisation of slavery, and suggested it may be “time now to call a halt to what you might call ‘progress’ in society”.

Baroness Warsi: Another past contender, the former Tory party chair and recently appointed “Minister for Faith” secured a position as one of the favourites for the 2012 award when she used a visit to the Vatican to say that “a militant secularisation is taking hold” in Britain which “demonstrates similar traits to totalitarian regimes.”

Prince Charles: Special thanks to blog reader John Hind, who nominated the heir to the throne for a“lifetime achievement” award. Here’s his reasoning: “there can be few other candidates with such a broad, multi-disciplinary record for irrationality and for shamelessly exploiting his inherited position to advance irrational causes,  from his trenchant support of quack medicine and his jumping aboard every anti-scientific bandwagon, to his indiscriminate support of ‘faith’ against secular values.”