This is Brilliant (Via Brad DeLong)

Don Wise, professor emeritus of geosciences at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, is the nation's foremost proponent of ID. No, Wise isn't getting ready to testify on behalf of the school board in Dover, PA. Rather, he advocates for a different version of the acronym: "incompetent design."

Wise cites serious flaws in the systems of the human body as evidence that design in the universe exhibits not an obvious source of, but a sore lack of, intelligence.

Wise has some good points. The advocate of intelligent design is forced to resort to weird arguments along the line of the devil planting fossiles to deceive us. This is a serious problem for fundamentalist Christians. However, it is not a problem at all for Manicheans. Manicheans came up with the idea of the devil. The devil played a major role in Manichean thought. Roughly he created the physical universe, which is the relm of Shaitan. Evidently he did it while God was not looking.

You see the problems with intelligent design are based on the joint hypothesis that the designer is intelligent and that the designer is not principally motivated by a sick sense of humor.

Frankly, I find the sick sense of humor theory very attractive. I try to cling to my atheism but I ask myself "can the creation of Richard Cheney be due to bad luck alone ?"

My own theory is idiocy design. Attempting to deduce the aim of the Creator from His Creation, I can only conclude that he was attempting to plumb the ultimate abyss of idiocy. This means that once we achieve ultimate idiocy we will have fulfilled our purpose. Perhaps the Universe will come to an end.

This theory makes me very nervous every time I turn on a TV.

Update: The end is near. In fact, after reading this, I fear the end is here and doubt I will have time to post this.

If outsourcing the playing of video games is not the ultimate abyss of idiocy, I don't want to find out what is. Well we survived Tamagochi sitters so I guess we must have the potential to be even more moronic.

update: It's much much worse than I thought. The Onion reports, you decide.

Also welcome delongians.