Oh. My. Bob.

I doubt there's too many people here other than myself, Janie and the ever-elusive Argystokes who actually check out Underwhelming Evidence with any frequency, so I'll give a bit of introduction. Basically it's yet another spawn of Dembski's blog but geared toward the younger crowd. It's here that one can see the "brilliant" and oh-so-mature Judge Jones farting animation, which is apparently what all those ID research dollars are being used for. It's also here where one can find some of the most mind-numbingly idiotic pro-ID arguments on the entire web. For a small taste of pure IDiocy, step below the fold...

For today's target, I've chosen a recent post from a contributor who goes by the 'nym quizzlestick, and boy is it a ripe one. It starts out as a pretty typical pro-ID article by mentioning the scientific community's objection to the lack of actual published results and then adds the obligatory reference to some Darwinist conspiracy to suppress "real" science. So far, pretty standard stuff... but then it gets good.

We'll start here:

But what of the claim that our theories have not been tested and that we have not published peer-reviewed papers. It is initially quite astonishing that something as obvious as intelligent design should even need testing. Do we test the idea that the sun will rise in the morning? It's just not needed because we can be certain that it will.

I like to call this the "Look! It's designed because, well, um... well, can't you just SEE the design???!!!" approach. The comparison of ID to the sun really doesn't even come close to fitting, since observation and testing confirmed the motions of our solar system. If human curiosity had never bothered to ask why, we'd still be left with a stationary earth and an orbiting sun. You guys are welcome to say "look, it's designed" all you want, but the fascination of science extends far beyond the "what" part of the question. We also want to know why, how, when, how much, etc., and you're attempting to throw all that out. I'm sorry, but if something is interesting, it needs a deeper look.

Nonetheless, the skeptical biological community demands that our theories be tested – and so in due time I predict that it will be one of the most rigorously tested theories known to man.

Following from above, I'd like to ask the author how ID will ever become rigorously tested when you guys refuse to ask anything deeper than "what"? Whatever happened to digging in? Getting your hands dirty? Curiosity leading to new and exciting finds completely by accident? Asking and answering everything you can think of? Whatever happened to the insatiable curiosity of a four-year-old whose response to every answer from a parent is to ask why? This can be frustrating and challenging to a parent, but it's also entertaining to see how many levels of "why?" you can answer before resorting to the "I said so" tactic. The simple fact is that the inborn curiosity of a child is what really drives me (and I suspect most people) to learn, and by refusing to go to the next level, you ID guys are really short-changing yourselves. Think about it.

Shit. I've gone and wandered off on a tangent again. Time to get back on track...

Now that quizzlestick's prediction, all we need is a scientist with the balls to actually test ID, and he provides one:

I'd like to introduce one of the scientists who will ensure that it is so. He is building on the work of Behe and Dembski. He is also one of the best communicators that the ID community could ever wish for. I would like to introduce Dr. Kazmer Ujavorsy, chief scientist of the Frontline Science Institute, one of the most prestigious research organizations dedicated to Intelligent Design.

Nevermind that he spelled the guy's name wrong (it's Ujvarosy)... let's go check things out over at Frontline's website:

Frontline Science is the first think tank to organize thinking around the unifying principle of science and religion, i.e. around the realization that human intelligence constitutes the seed of the universe, or the cosmic system's input and output. As Christ has disclosed to us the cosmic system's input and output in Revelation 22:13, "I am the Alpha and the Omega, the First and the Last, the Beginning and the End." In short we are told that the universe is Christ's way of making reproductions of himself, similarly as a tree is the parent seed's way of making seeds in its own image. The theory that Christ is the genotype of the phenotype universe has never been falsified, either in fact, or in principle.

Hmmm... a whole bunch of Jesus and Bible, but I still can't figure out what the hell these guys actually do. The four whole pages of the site are basically devoid of anything substantial. However, since this poo is about the quizzlestick post, let's get back to that...

While mainstream science predicts that we would not be able to make testable claims about ID, Kazmer has done exactly that. His astonishing predictions unify areas of science which were previously considered unrelated. He may be, in the opinion of many ID researchers, at the verge of discovering a "theory of everything", one of the goals of high-energy physics. This is a challenge which even Einstein and Hawking have failed.

I dunno... he sounds a bit like a crank to me. The "theory of everything" and references to "areas where Hawking and Einstein failed" are almost certainly the mark of pure, distilled bullshit. Not only that, but a brief search for papers from this Ujvarosy guy turns up exactly one result: his 1985 work titled "Aircraft and spacecraft in U.S. intelligence activities: reconnaissance, surveillance, and special operations". That's it. I've dug through all the resources I have at my disposal for finding papers and articles, and that's the only one I can find by this guy that isn't an online column. It appears that he's on-par with the work output of pretty much every ID "researcher" on the planet, and it also appears (as is typical of the ID crowd) that he's some sort of engineer or something. However, since I can't seem to find anything about him, even at SFSU, that'll have to wait for another day.

Here's the official howler from the article (put your coffee down before you read it):

But let's examine some of his discoveries – these extracts from a recent peer-reviewed paper published at the American Chronicle show the depth and breadth of his important research:

Wait. Did he just say "American Chronicle" and "peer-reviewed" in the same sentence? Yup... and wow. Apparently, the standards of some IDers are so high that an online rag now counts as a peer-reviewed publication. Wrap your head around that if you can.

The next couple paragraphs are excerpts from the referenced AmChron article, followed by a lovely closing gem:

This is of ultimate importance, because it may explain the process by which other previously inexplicable historical phenomena occurred.

For example, how was Elijah able to read the mind of the king of Syria, and tell the king of Israel the words Syria's king spoke in the privacy of his bedchamber (see 2 Kings 6:8-23) – the same mechanisms that power quantum-creation may also enable this kind of telepathy.

You know, for a "science" that's not supposed to be about religion, these guys sure spend a hell of a lot of time worrying about the Bible and marveling about how their work relates to it. I'm with Lenny Flank here: give them a gun and they manage to shoot themselves every time.

That's all for today. I've had an overload of IDiocy just now and need the weekend to recuperate. I'm sure we'll be visiting with Ujvarosy soon...