Who's your Person of the Year 2006?
Add your nominations here for our "person of the year" title - the man, woman or child who has most inspired us, challenged us, impressed, infuriated, or simply pre-occupied us in the past twelve months. The person, in short, who will be forever associated with this year. Who gets your nomination? Will it be a politician, a scientist, a religious leader, an entertainer, a military leader, a human rights campaigner, or an idea whose time has come? I'm accepting nominations for my blog's Person of the Year 2006 award. I'll announce the winner on December 31st.
So far, you've nominated: Richard Dawkins, Ian Paisley, Al Gore, Blogging, Tim Berners Lee, Gerry Adams, Robin Eames, Norman Kember, Anna Politkovskaya, Pope Benedict, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Atheism, Andy McIntosh, and George W Bush. One one female nomination so far, and quite a few already for Richard Dawkins.
Comments
I get the impression that there's an email campaing being organised to get Richard Dawkins named as your person of the year ...
A vote for Richard Dawkins is a vote for rationality and reason. He has done more than anyone in memory to ask the questions society deems inappropriate or offensive. These are questions that need to be asked if we are to progress as a species.
I nominate: The Second Law of Thermodynamics.
And while we're on this ... can I just point out that the theory of evolution violates the LAW of gravity.
Jenny- I know I'm going to regret asking this.... but, How so?
I do like Richard Dawkins attitude at times - speaking what he believes to be true without care as to who is offended. But, person of the year? Perhaps as far as this blog goes people here can't stop talking about him, so maybe for that reason he could be nominated person of the year. But, I'm not sure what questions he is asking that people weren't already asking? I think his influence on ethics, politics and religion is highly over-rated - in this year or any other year.
SG
I sympathyse with Stephen G a little. But I don't regret my vote for Dawkins, even though I came close to voting for Al Gore. I'm quite serious about preserving the environment. But then atheism and care for the environment go together very well. Occasionally Dawkins speaks out on the world becoming overcrowded and nature suffering as a result. In his lingo: we should control our selfish genes. I warmly welcome that. But it's not the sort of thought that goes down very well with those who view every new baby as a gift from God and think that we should have as many of them as possible. If I were to suggest that it would be good if every 100 people only have 90 children on average for a number of generations, in order to gradually reduce the world population by a few billion, then it probably wouldn't take long for me to be accused of engaging in 'population politics'. Like the God-less Chinese government. But consuming and polluting less (as I try to do) is just one way of helping the environment, fewer people doing the polluting is just as effective. So sorry to those who think of man as Gods finest creation, but it would be an excellent idea to have fewer around. So if a woman gets pregnant by accident, and the 'new life' in her belly has less life in it than the substance that I would scrape from my tongue, then by all means terminate your pregnancy. Similarly, if a man is incureably ill and has nothing but a year of pain to look forward to, let him die with dignity if that is what he really wants. Abortion and euthenasia are both very un-Christian. And both make very good sense in plenty of cases. But you couldn't go by such rational considerations in a fervently religious society. So for promoting rational good sense, which has such huge indirect benefit, my vote for Dawkins stands.
I nominate Andy McIntosh for his blowing up the theories of Creationism and Intelligent Design by reducing them to an argument based on a scientific assertion he made which not only flies in the face of what most of the respected scientists in the world believe, namely that the spontaneous formation of DNA from biologically inert matter violates the second law of thermodynamics but one which he cannot prove to his collegues on direct challenge. He has demonstrated that these theories are not science but anti-science.
Well, I regard William's Person Of The Year to be the people of the year with regard to the content of this blog over the course of 2006. If I was to choose my Person Of The Year in general, it may be different. But Dawkins is surely that guy with regard to Will & Testament, and overwhelmingly deserves the nomination.
Do the people who voted for Leona Lewis not read your blog?
Maybe the women are so busy raising the next generation they don't have time to be in the headlines much.
I can't believe nobody's nominated Jesus yet. Maybe he's with the women.
Mystified- Say we accept your nomination of Jesus Christ for Person of the Year 2006. Who will be your nomination of Person of the Year 2007? Jesus again? Or perhaps Buddha? Maybe we should just rotate the person of the year between the founders of the major world religions on, say, a ten year rotation?
Or if it should be Jesus every year, maybe the Person of the Year idea is blasphemous in the first place since it gives people the opportunity to nominate someone else?