Intelligent Design is the most likely to be true hypothesis for the origin of life.

There is a need for the term complex to be defined. From http://www.thefreedictionary.com... - 1. a. Consisting of interconnected or interwoven parts; composite. b. Composed of two or more units: 2. Involved or intricate, as in structure; complicated. When you say that the TEDtalks video showed how the beginnings of complex things can arise by chance, you aren"t incorrect but this is not the point of the video. Complex things arise by chance all the time. A puddle of mud can be very complex. Simply put because it is made out of lots of different kinds of stuff that are interconnected or interwoven it fits the definition well. The point of the video was to show how a select mixture of chemicals in a controlled environment can behave in ways that resemble the actions of living cells. Taken from the article you provided- "It will also mean that for the first time a plausible explanation exists for how an information-carrying biological molecule could have emerged through natural processes from chemicals on the primitive earth." This is false. What it posited was a hypothesis (scientific word for guess) for how two of the four nucleotides could have emerged through natural processes. Whether or not the described process is probable or even possible still seems up for debate, as Dr. Shapiro pointed out that one of the starting materials needed is very unlikely to have been found in a pure state on the early earth as it is "quickly destroyed by other chemicals". Dr. Sutherland"s response seems very weak. He says that cyano-acetylene (the starting material in question) is the fastest consumed chemical in his reaction. This is only another illustration of the chemical"s high reactivity rate and doesn"t undo the problem of finding it in a pure form in nature. He also defends by pointing out that it has been detected on Titan, so there"s "no reason" it wouldn"t be present on the early earth. This is completely ridiculous as Titan"s and Earth"s atmospheric and surface conditions are extremely different, not to mention that the average surface temperature on Titan is W22;179.2 "C. Lower temperatures result in decreased rates of chemical reactions, so it would make sense that cyano-acetylene would be more likely found on Titan than on Earth as it is far more difficult for nearby chemicals to react with it. This doesn"t address though the bigger falsehood present in this quote by the authors of this article. They said "information-carrying". The study gives no indication of how these nucleotides could have arranged themselves in a way that is "informational". Strings of letters can written out at random, but they do not contain information in the conventional sense until something of intelligence, ie. people, arranges them in a certain way that gives them meaning. The RNA and DNA in living organisms are not randomly assembled, their sequences are arranged in such a way that they achieve a purpose which ultimately is the propagation of more copies of themselves. Now some of the articles you referenced earlier mentioned how random RNA libraries were able to produce sequences that were able to perform a limited number of relatively simple tasks present in living cells. However these achievements are analogous to producing a few short words when you string out random sequences of letters. Creating an isolated word here or there using this method is possible, but to get multiple words to form next to each other in a way that makes sense gets exponentially more and more improbable. These kind of accomplishments are miniscule when considering that the information present in the genomes of bacteria are akin to a ten volume encyclopedia if not more so. A living cell consists of thousands of different kinds of chemical reactions all happening simultaneously and harmoniously, all working together for a common cause. The random RNA library method may be able to produce isolated strands with certain small scale functionality, but to get sequences in parallel that work together gets exponentially more difficult to achieve the higher you try to go with it, just like the case with random letter generation. And understand that the more improbable the situation gets the larger the libraries you need, which makes any proposed scenario for creating such RNA pools in the first place less and less likely to be possible. "Also as I said before Crystals are moderately complex correct? You can tell they have a design because of their edges and no intelligence is involved there correct?" Crystals are less complex than mud as they are more uniform in composition. They are however more organized, but this analogy fails anyways as there are known natural causes that produce crystal formations. Also crystals carry out no conceivable function on their own unless intelligent beings are utilizing them. "Anyways, your argument is basically this, a tasty fruit grows from a tree so other strange objects growing on trees must also be tasty! Which is wrong because a good majority of fruits are not suited to the human palate." straw man fallacy In the end of your argument you say that we do not know enough to make any definite conclusions. You should note though that my central argument simply states that the intelligent design hypothesis is the hypothesis most likely to be true, which is not a definite conclusion. You have not successfully undermined my premises nor shown how my reasoning is illogical. That being said I appreciate your acceptance and participation in this debate, and I found the articles you shared to be very interesting and informative. https://www.broadinstitute.org... http://en.wikipedia.org...(moon)#Climate http://en.wikipedia.org...