Best Posts of 2009

To close out the year, I want to link to ten posts that present substantive content and best represent the development of my thought:

1. In January, I posted the first of two musings on the music and import of the Rolling Stones.

2. In April, I responded to a complicated formulation of the Argument from Ontology. I rejected God's existence on the basis of the argument because I found the initial premise flawed.

3. Also in April, I returned to one of my favorite themes, Atheism and morality. This time, I critiqued what I felt was a silly and wrongheaded post from one of the UD non-scientists.

4. In July, I expanded on a response to a book reviewer. The reviewer was squealing for joy over Paul Moser's The Elusive God. I found the review and the book's central argument to be based on an unreasonable condition: believe in God and be willing to transform yourself through God, and the evidence of God's existence will be made clear. (Posts 8, 9 and 10, below, also touch on matters that relate to why Moser's condition is unacceptable.)

5. In October, I wrote about Bob Dylan and why I think he's (still) so great.

6. Also in October, I pointed out how atheists are cast as the Other by the religious, allowing them to avoid dealing with the intrinsic contradictions and evils that ground belief.

7. In November, I returned to a subject that fascinated me this year: the historicity of Jesus. In this post, I used an article on the subject to delineate my thoughts. I lean toward the idea that Jesus was mythical but I recognize that the case is not strong and that the Jesus-was-historical argument is only slightly weaker. New evidence could easily change my mind.

8. Also in November, I made what I think is one of the more important statements I have ever made. The statement was on interpretation and how even a great and plausible interpretation need not be grounded in anything like reality. The frame is more important than the interpretation.

9. November also saw another important post, this time on the impossibilities presented in both the Hebrew Scriptures and the New Testament. I focused on things that were outright unable to happen in the known universe. For some reason, we don't have high demands for independent corroboration of these impossible things. This post resulted in the best discussion of the year.

10. In December, I have posted lots. Yet, I feel that my comments on science and consistent standards of skeptical inquiry deserve most to be listed here.

This was a productive year. Much more so than I expected. As 2010 arrives, I wish to pursue many of these themes in more depth and I hope to introduce new ones, too.