I’d like to follow-up on Barry Arrington’s announcement of UD’s 10th birthday. When I started UD 10 years ago to the day (April 15, 2005), I wasn’t sure what I was getting into. Blogging was fairly new at the time. Moreover, I had a strong preference that my best writing efforts should go into longer sustained arguments as appear in articles and books. Still, it was a time of ferment for ID. The Kitzmiller-Dover trial was gearing up. Interest in media for intelligent design was high. I had lots of speaking engagements. And I was curious how much influence a blog might have.
If I had to say the best thing that’s come out of UD, it’s the camaraderie of like-minded colleagues, many of whom would not know each other except for this blog. Indeed, UD has been a wonderfully fruitful meeting ground for the ID community. It was through UD that I first met Barry Arrington, who has since taken over UD, organized it as a non-profit 501(c)(3), and done a masterful job guiding it. Denyse O’Leary, whom I met in Toronto in 2002, became a close friend through UD and has been an endless source of energy for it, generating many of its most interesting posts. I could name many more. To all of you, a hearty THANK YOU for making UD a place where intelligent design could be forthrightly and fairly discussed.