Quite to my surprise, the intelligent design movement has picked up on our recent study on fruit fly spontaneous behavior. In this study, we found evidence that spontaneous behavior is more than simple system noise. The spontaneous behavior, it appears, has a temporal structure common to many animal species (including humans). Our evidence suggests a mechanism within the brain which seems to have the function of specifically 'muddle' the brain's output, behavior. Our analysis indicates that brains possess this function to overlay spontaneous variations on all ongoing behavior. As this has implications for the predictability of individual behavior, we have posed the question in our press-release, of whether even fruit flies may have a precursor to the biological processes mediating our experience of "free will" (see also here and here). Of course, the question mark was quickly dropped by the media.
Anyway, given our fairly mechanistic conclusions, one can imagine my surprise when I heard about intelligent design blogs arguing that our mechanism was actually a sign of a non-materialistic "free will" which acted upon the materialistic brain. The first to pick this up was 'dacook' from Uncommon Descent. I was alerted to this post by Coturnix (from ScienceBlogs), who also referenced Mark Hoofnagle's excellent post. Later, Mark Chu-Caroll ( ScienceBlogs) also jumped to our rescue. Many thanks to all of you!
Now more IDers are cropping up who have gotten a whiff of our paper. There are now two posts from Denyse O'Leary, one on her own blog and another post again at Uncommon Descent. This time I found the links on Panda's Thumb, a very prominent site I actually occasionally read and permanently link to on the right side of this site. Kudos to Panda's Thumb for defending our science!
The ID comments have in common that they both criticize the general materialism in science more than any evolutionary aspect in our work. As such, the posts reflect the general trend of the ID movement to more openly advocate supernaturalism than they have dared before. I think it is very revealing that the main topic in the ID community seems to shift away from evolution on to a more general spiritual goal, which probably engages their religious base a lot more than dry science. I just wonder what might happen to the ID movement, if the general public found out that some of their outspoken protagonists are advocating a non-materialistic (divine?) will (soul?) even for fruit flies? My argument, of course, would be that our soul evolved from the soul of the common ancestor of flies and humans! (Do I need a humor disclaimer here on top of the smiley?)