PZ has discovered a post on the blog of Dilbert creator Scott Adams that appears to mock either the idea of the Big Bang or those who mock the concept of the Big Bang. It's really not clear what is going on because Adams' foray into broadening the concept of "intelligence" is a philosophical nightmare, and again, it's not clear if this is intentional or not.

There's a backstory here, which PZ describes. He and Adams got into it -- or rather, PZ got into it with a huge number of Adams followers who plainly are garden-variety creationists and science ignoramuses -- a little over a year ago over a related issue. So the current love-fest involves no small amount of nibbling tenderly at scabs, and the fact that PZ is evidently being hectored by about four million aggrieved refugees from cubicle hell by way of Adams' site is probably not easing matters. I haven't gotten far in the comments to PZ's post, but I did notice Saint Gasoline over there pissing in the fire, which is probably for the best and certainly reinforces his ubiquitous role as an asshat.

I read through the post and I don't agree with the apparent consensus at PZ's blog, which is that Mr. Adams is slyly pimping for the creationist cause and couching it as a throwaway joke in order to stave off charges of creation-friendliness in advance. I think he's joking, but that -- and this happens, even to humorists -- he's not especially funny.

Most of us who read and write here are exquisitely sensitive to what creationists (including the closet ones) say and do and are not especially tolerant of philosophical sophistry, which means at least two things: the potential for "false creationist positives" exists in abundance, and the jabs at science from the good guys need to be pretty funny -- and wherever possible, original -- in order to please this hardened audience.

Adams' wittiness when working in picture frames just doesn't translate into amusing writing, although in the interest of disclosure I admit that I don't find the Dilbert strip all that funny either. (I'm going to go ahead and say that Mike Judge, although owing a debt of gratitude to Adams' strip, has held a monopoly on translating workplace ennui into party humor and sound bytes since 1999.)

Then again, Adams' career choice suggests he probably knows his limitations. I mean, Mark Twain, for all I know, couldn't draw for shit, but this might not have stopped him from posting his doodles on the Internet had it been available to him. And on that score, man, I wish H.L. Mencken had operated a blog. If God had a soul he'd let H.L. run buck-wild on the thing from the beyond, although something tells me those two don't meet up at the Pearly Gates Mall very often.