The research seems to parallel Robert Reid's ideas as presented in this blog.

"Designed for Evolution"

I ran across a discussion of George Gilchrist's (http://gwgilc.people.wm.edu) research on Spanish fruit flies, and how they show (relatively) rapid evolution of specific chromosomal inversions in response to latitude/temperature changes. The article was in the context of global warming, but the research has to do with how a colony of one type quickly, "soon evolves" in his words, parallel inversions on two continents that mirror the distribution on a third. He is quoted as saying ""¦you have reason to think it's not a coincidence."

Now, he appears to be a through going conventional evolutionist and anti-ID, so his explanation appears to be that these changes are environmentally driven. But given that these changes appear reversible as the population moves into new areas ( — my statement seems implied by the article, but needs further research into his results — ), and we "know" that evolution cannot look ahead, this seems to be a challenge to blindwatch making that the changes would be so predictable.

However, from an ID perspective, if we allow ourselves to ask "IF the system was designed, how might a designer provide the ability for a genome to exploit environmental changes and evolve accordingly.

I for one believe that the statement "this system is designed" is forever a philosophical statement, even if the reasoning is based on good empirical science. However, it seems to me that opening up biology to ask "IF this system was designed, what exploits not available to random search are there to generate variation?*" allows us to ask a completely new set of questions. Then, after a period of time by all means compare the results of the two paradigms. As it is, the later question is disallowed because "it just can't be designed."

*Yes, I know NS is not a random process, it is a filter that destroys variation; it is the source of variation (blindwatch maker vs. telic) that is at issue in our debates.