I hated to pay for an app but I finally broke down and bought BigDialer from the market, for $1.99. Seemed ridiculous to pay for a dialer, but it was exactly what I was looking for. When I open it up it is always a DIALER and never displays 'recent', 'contacts' or 'favorites', like the stock dialer does.
I have tried DialerOne, TouchPal Dialer, MyDialer and Go Contacts. DialerOne wins out for me. The others show promise, but tend to slow down or crash (at least for me). DialerOne remains a top performer.