Several standout moments from Thinking Christian in 2009:
Most Viewed Blog Post: Maybe They Really Can’t Tell the Difference. One thing I’ll say for Panda’s Thumb, they can sure drive traffic. Nick Matzke linked here, and numbers soared. Thanks, Nick!
Best Discussion of the Year: Pennock, Monton, Matzke, Luskin. I’ll admit that wasn’t my best title of the year, but it does communicate something. It started with a post I wrote about an article by Robert Pennock. The other three persons named in the title (Bradley Monton, Nick Matzke, and Casey Luskin, all three of them prominent in the Intelligent Design controversy) chimed in and took part in an extended interchange here, along with many of our regular commenters.
Best Book of the Year: This one’s a toss-up. The honor goes to:
- Catherine Claire Larson’s As We Forgive: Stories of Reconciliation From Rwanda, which also occasioned another best discussion of a different sort and another series, and also to
- Bradley Monton’s Seeking God in Science: An Atheist Defends Intelligent Design, which led to yet another best discussion.
Biggest Disappointment: Discussion Grounds, with Luke Muehlhauser. It got off to a very promising start but it didn’t last.
Biggest Hope for 2010: Discussion Grounds, with ? . I have an invitation out to another participant, who will make things very interesting if he accepts. There’s a plan B in case that doesn’t come through. In other words, Discussion Grounds is not dead, it’s just taking a break.
Most Unbelievable Comment: “Heh. I forgot about that quote.” Nick Matzke, referring to his infamous, “Intelligent design is creationism in a cheap tuxedo.” The New York Times and a whole passel of others have quoted him on it. Even David Berlinski considered it a “brilliant insult” (search the word “tuxedo” inside here). But that’s been such a small thing in Nick’s rich history, he almost forgot he was the one who said it. Really, Nick?
Best Learning Experience: Nick Matzke comes up yet one more time, and I have to give him his due. He recommended some reading for me in evolutionary ethics, and my series on Mary Midgley resulted. Thanks again, Nick. (That’s enough for you now, though. I wouldn’t want readers to think the year was about you 
.)
Best Dialogue With An Atheist: The series with Tom Clark, Director of the Center for Naturalism.
Most Shocking Revelation: How I Spend My Free Time
Most Mysterious Unanswered Questions: Try Your Hand At These…
Most Likely To Have Long-Term Impact: Why I Signed the Manhattan Declaration. It’s not that I expect this post to be so influential, rather it’s the Manhattan Declaration movement as a whole that I expect (and hope) will have a powerful effect.
My Own Favorites: My personal favorite blog posts may come as a surprise to some readers, because they haven’t drawn the most traffic or generated the most discussion. They include:
- The Map or the Fuel: Living by Grace
- The Challenge of Jesus (another best book of the year)
- The Preeminence of Christ
- No Private Claim On Jesus
- Wishes or Prayers
Atheists and skeptics who frequent this blog seem ready to dispute anything that has to do with reasons to believe in Christ, but they don’t have as much to say when I write about Jesus Christ himself or what it means to follow him. My favorite posts have been in that category, not because they’re contested so lightly (I enjoy the debates here) but because for me the year 2009, like all other years, was about Jesus Christ himself.
More Hopes For 2010:
One year ago I wrote a short series on Deep Social Change: Four Essential Priorities for 2009. I’ve been working on these priorities behind the scenes with educators and apologists, and I would like to think we’ve seen some progress, but it hasn’t been enough. The same priorities remain crucial for 2010 and beyond. My thinking on them has morphed through the year, however, and now I’m working on a related book I’m calling Reclaim the High Ground. The book proposal is nearly finished and ready to share with some author friends of mine before I send it to publishers. A non-fiction book proposal, by the way, is quite a project in itself. I believe I have at least half of the work on the entire book finished already.
With that and with this blog, my one overriding hope is the same: to make the known the greatness of Jesus Christ, and to make a difference in his name: because it’s all about him.
And I hope and pray that you have a marvelous 2010. Thank you for reading!
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Hey, Happy New Years, glad I was so, um notorious.
I don’t get your point on the Most Unbelievable Statement. Do you think I was trying to hide my having said that statement or something? How does that make any sense?
Notorious[ly] wrong…
Nick, to be honest I have no idea why you wrote that or what was on your mind.
If that’s the case, it seems like a weird nomination for the Most Unbelievable Statement of the Year…
Well, Nick, I don’t know what you meant or why you wrote it, but I still find it hard to believe that you “Heh…. forgot about that quote.” In other words, just looking at what you wrote in that comment, without any diving into it for deeper motives or meanings, that statement seems hard to believe.
You’re certainly welcome to let us know what you meant, if what you meant is different than what you wrote at the time, or from how it appears on a plain reading.
Um…that statement was mostly a offhand joke. Anyone who knows me knows that the cheap tuxedo line is actually one of my favorites, I will use it every chance I get (note: I didn’t invent it). I am proud to have used it, why would I try to hide it?
I guess I probably was a little surprised to be reminded that I used the quote way back in 2004, long before the Pandas evidence and similar stuff came to light, since in the following 4 years the Pandas facts have taken over the discussion to the extent that it’s a little hard to remember how everyone thought about things before Kitzmiller — but of course, I was tickled that such was the case — i.e. people shouldn’t have been surprised by the revelations and result of the Kitzmiller case, I Told Them So.
So anyway it’s weird to have that chosen as The Most Unbelievable Statement Of The Year, when it was clear I didn’t mean it in any hugely serious way. But, you know, whatever floats your boat I guess.
Also, feel free to doggedly, humorlessly defend the literal truth of your statement at the expense of the spirit of it — that’s pretty much a tradition in certain circles.
Oh, gimme a break.
I didn’t pounce on you for it when you wrote it. If I’d really been concerned about your “hiding it,” I would have said so at the time.
You assume my intent was humorless, even though I placed it in a year-end retrospective that also included “The Most Shocking Revelation” and “The Most Mysterious Unanswered Questions.” The same retrospective also included two words of thanks directed toward you.
You think I’m reading something into what you wrote, and that I am “doggedly, humorlessly defendind[ing] the literal truth of your statement at the expense of the spirit of it,” when I clearly said I just didn’t believe it, and I explicitly was not reading anything into it whatsoever.
You can doggedly, humorlessly defend your belief that I am being doggedly humorless. Whatever floats your boat. But I have to tell you it’s disappointing that you would take me that way.
Wow, Nick.
Yeah, it’s Tom being humourless. Meanwhile you show up asking how it makes any sense that he list your statement, then twice challenge his mention as weird, and then give a story rationalizing it, wasting three comments on a single statement not made in a “hugely serious way”.
Typical.
Hi Ho
Sounds like things are getting doggedly humorless around here… Ruff! Ruff! I think I prefer cattily humorless. Even so, perhaps your startling revelation for next year could be
Wait… you mean another atheist is dishonest?!? I’m shocked–humorlessly shocked, I tell you!
My assessment remains somewhat more agnostic than yours (see my 5:53 am comment yesterday). I’m certainly willing to let Nick explain what he really meant, or else if he wants, to treat it (with some sense of humor) as no big deal.
Hehehe. So TC wasn’t joking, but is annoyed that I would assume that he wasn’t joking.
Other commentators are annoyed that I didn’t give a detailed, explanatory response, and then are also annoyed that I did (after the initial replies were strangely agnostic).
Still no one seems to get that it’s a bit odd to have a mostly-joking statement declared Most Unbelievable of the Year. You might as well declare Unbelievable the statement that it takes no atheists to screw in a lightbulb, because atheists don’t believe in lightbulbs.
I’m not much of a comedian, but I know a tough audience when I see one. Happy 2010.
Nick, apparently I missed that you were joking when you made that original statement. I’ll accept that correction now. If it had actually been obvious at the time, I would have taken it that way at the time. Your “heh” did not really signal that your next line was a joke. In context of what followed, it signaled instead something like “it’s fun to be reminded of something I had forgotten.”
Now, did I misinterpret that? Apparently I did. Corrections noted and acknowledged. Misinterpretations are possible. Take, for example, your own misinterpretation, where you concluded that I’ve been annoyed that you would assume I wasn’t joking (sorry about the complexity of that series of pronouns/verb phrases, I can’t figure out how to write it better).
No, what I was disappointed (not annoyed) about was something entirely different. It’s right there in plain view, and it doesn’t require any reading between the lines, as your original joking statement did. Quoting myself:
Having said that, I hope we’re close to a point where we can declare this all very silly and move on.
I, for one, am not annoyed that you “didn’t give a detailed, explanatory response”–that just betrays childish evasiveness. The real concern is the dishonesty animating the evasiveness. But then again we know, per the moral anti-realists, that an “honest atheist” can be both an oxymoron and objectively empty depending on one’s tastes: reducible to something akin to a malleable gastronomic preference… I would call it mind, err… sorry, brain flatulence.
Elvis? Really??
No, actually that’s a different Tom Gilson. That’s why I put the wink on there, at the original post.