You ignored the premise. Nothing just springs into being without a code, so it is only natural to ask who authored the code. Just as a pile of electronic components couldn't have assembled themselves and then arranged themselves into my working computer, nature itself clearly has an author. There is an order to nature that randomness cannot explain.
I am criticising your comparison ( as implied by your answer to your friend ) of a computer with living organism.
Nothing just springs into being without a code, so it is only natural to ask who authored the code.
A computer isn't made from a code. It is manufactured just like a televison, a lawn mower, or even a thimble.
Living organisms are in no way manufactured and do indeed "spring into being" by all appearances. As you may know, people for many centuries believed that flies and mice were in fact spontaneously generated from nonliving matter.
Now we discover in detail the material basis for the generation of life, and you would think this would be a huge triumph for materialist philosophy. We can give a materialistic account, not only of the on going generation of life, but of the history of many millions of previous generations, constituting the evolution of life on earth, as known to us from the fossil record.
Isn't this plenty? Can't we teach that?
Just as a pile of electronic components couldn't have assembled themselves and then arranged themselves into my working computer, nature itself clearly has an author.
You are all over the map. The idea that Nature itself has an author is a philosophical or religious sentiment and science is not concerned with it, since it is only concerned with the workings of nature, which includes the course of natural history, as it presents itself to us.
There is an order to nature that randomness cannot explain.
The primary order of nature is its constitution from space, time, energy, and matter - truly a fascinating arrangement. If you want to say that all of this cannot be explained by randomness, that's fine.