Friday night at the fights: atheist style

The great ballroom was packed with people waiting for the arrival of Richard Dawkins and Bill Maher. Their appearance would signal that the culminating event of the first day of the 2009 AAI convention was about to begin and the air was electric with anticipation. Most of the crowd had been there for hours, first enjoying cocktails at a reception and, later, watching a live, streaming video of Real Time with Bill Maher where Dawkins was appearing as a guest. Then, while everyone waited for them to make the short drive from the TV studio to the convention center (both were in Burbank), entertainment was provided by Brian Dalton, better known as Mr. Deity, whose humorous skits on YouTube have a worldwide following. Dalton enthralled everyone with his personal story (he told us he was a formon; that is to say, a former Mormon) and, accompanied by the cast of the Mr. Deity show, did a live recreation of some of their skits.

Bill Maher and Richard Dawkins showed up while Mr. Deity was still on-stage and the show was interrupted for a couple minutes by cheers and applause as they made their way to their table. Bill Maher was accompanied by a beautiful young woman -or so several people told me. I was seated too far away to tell (a dissenting opinion came from a female atheist I spoke with. "Beautiful? Hmpf!" she said. "Only if you like collagen-injected lips and silicon-injected boobs!" I mention her assertions only in the interest of completeness. As a critical thinker, I cannot vouch for a hypothesis that  I'm unable to personally test... darn it!).

Mr. Deity was able to resume his part of the program after the applause died away and, eventually, Professor Dawkins came up to the podium to introduce the 2009 winner of the Richard Dawkins Award for outstanding contributions in raising public awareness of the nontheist life stance and advocacy of increased scientific knowledge. This was the moment everyone had been waiting for. Bill Maher's selection as recipient was controversial because some of his opinions on diet, medicine and other things are not only unscientific but, as one convention-goer told me, "so far out out in left field that they're in a different ballpark." For this reason Dawkins was expected to be treading a fine line between praising Bill Maher for contributing to the advancement of nontheistic viewpoints, and disassociating himself (and the award) from Maher's more crackpot opinions.

This he did with remarkable aplomb and eloquence. He pulled no punches. He made it abundantly clear that getting the award was no endorsement of the crazy stuff, but an acknowledgement that there was something worth recognizing in Maher's contribution to free-thought and the debate on religion. Behind the wit and humor of the movie Religulous, Dawkins told us, was a serious message: that religion is not just silly or bizarre, but dangerous. His description of the film and its message made Religulous sound as profound as it was funny. In fact, just about the first thing Bill Maher did when it was his turn to speak, was quip that Richard Dawkins summary of the movie was better than the movie itself! This generated a lot of laughter and applause.

 

The rest of Maher's acceptance speech was pretty hilarious too. A large part of it consisted of Bill Maher reading verbatim from chapters 7 and 9 of Rick Warren's best-seller, The Purpose-Driven Life (Rick Warren, as you may remember, is the well-known mega-church pastor who administered the oath of office to President Obama). Even without Maher's occasional comments, Rick Warren's childish writing style and his evident ignorance of the rules of logic often had the crowd in stitches (my own impression was that The Purpose-Driven Life had all the sophistication of a third-grade reading primer, but at least that tells me that the audience it was probably intended for is all the semi-literate and English comprehension-challenged Christians I've ever debated in online chat rooms! If you doubt that assessment, check it out for yourself. You can find the first seven chapters of Warren's book here).

The award ceremony ended with laughter and much applause. People slowly filtered out of the ballroom to go to bed or parties or the Comedy Night fundraiser that would be starting shortly in another part of the convention center. As far as the controversy over Bill Maher getting the Richard Dawkins Award goes, some minds were probably changed by Richard Dawkins' eloquence and reasoning. Others undoubtedly weren't. Either way, one thing is certain: it was an animated and happy crowd that this observer saw leaving that ballroom.

So ended the first night of the 2009 Atheist Alliance International convention.

Photo Credits:

1) Bill Maher and Prof. Richard Dawkins

2) The cast of the Mr. Deity show

If you enjoy my articles, you can click on "Subscribe by email" to receive notice when new ones are posted.