NOTES OF A FRINGE-WATCHER MARTIN GARDNER

NOTES OF A FRINGE- cause), ABC canceled the show’s contract. this myth as one “routinely parroted by WATCHER Maher soon began a new show called credulous idiots like .” Real Time with Bill Maher, which is still doing well on HBO. He was also a writer Maher told that he never for the Roseanne television series and has MARTIN GARDNER takes aspirin because, like all other drugs, appeared­ in numerous films. he thinks it’s harmful. Owners of the Politically, Maher is an outspoken liberal with many libertarian views, such big drug companies are evil men because as favoring legalization of prostitution they bilk the public with expensive and and marijuana. His attacks on conserva- Bill tive Republicans­­ are merciless (e.g., he worthless drugs. On the Late Show with called Sarah Palin a “category 5 moron”). David Letterman he advised Letterman, Philosophically,­ he prefers to call himself then recovering from quadruple bypass Maher: an agnostic rather than an atheist because he accepts the possibility of some sort of surgery, to stop taking the “harmful” transcendental force or intelligence supe- pills his doctor had prescribed. rior to our own. Crank and Too bad Mary Baker Eddy believed In addition to his well-known disbe- lief in God, Maher also rejects modern in both God and Christ; otherwise, Bill Comic medical science. He is firmly persuaded Maher might have become a Christian that almost all ills, including diseases, are the result of bad eating habits. “We Scientist. Fortunately, he has no chil- ell-known stand-up comic dren he could let die because of his Bill Maher has joined the refusal to vaccinate or because he would W ranks of the Big-D atheists, eat shit,” he likes to say. As for germs, Richard Dawkins and Daniel Dennett, he they play no role in our not accept medicine from a doctor in and the Big-H atheists, Christopher illnesses. As a result, Maher is strongly cahoots with those dreadful pharma- Hitchens and Sam Harris, as an implaca- opposed to all vaccines. He even denies ceutical companies that make and sell ble foe of all . However, instead of that the Salk vaccine played any role in writing a book, Maher produced the very the decline of polio! Here is what he said worthless products. funny documentary Religulous. While it in an interview: Let Orac have the final word: “I used has been blasted by followers of all faiths, [Germ theory] is another theory I to kind of like Maher,” he wrote, “but secular humanists have hailed it as a mas- think is flawed. And that we go by terpiece of rhetoric. the Louis Pasteur theory even though I really think that as he gets older he’s Maher was born in Pasteur renounced it on his death in 1956 to a Roman Catholic father bed and said Beauchamp is right. getting flakier and flakier.” l and Jewish mother but grew up in New It’s not the invading germs. It’s the Jersey. After graduating from Cornell, terrain. It’s not the mosquitoes. It’s the swamp that they’re breeding in. he began a highly successful career as a Martin Gardner is author of more than comedian. Maher is referring to Antoine Beau­ seventy books, most recently The Jinn In his first television show, Politically champ, a French biologist who opposed Incorrect, Maher exchanged banter with Pasteur’s germ theory. The claim that from Hyperspace and When You Were various celebrities. After carelessly remark- Pasteur renounced his theory on his a Tadpole and I was a Fish, and Other ing on the show that the September 11 death bed is pure mythology. A sur- terrorists were brave men (meaning that geon who posts remarks on the Internet Speculations About This and That, pub- they were courageous to die for their under the pseudonym Orac referred to lished by Hill and Wang in October 2009.

22 Volume 33, Issue 6 Skeptical Inquirer