[Tribune7]

Few people believe life originated with RNA world; the problem is, there are as yet few identified chemical relics of anything earlier. But we're working on it.

And there is no problem with that, but at what point do you give up?

In contrast, all ID can say is 'gee, it's complex; something really really smart and really really powerful (wink wink) must have done it'.

No, what ID says is that the most rational belief is the belief in a designer. There are plenty of reasons not to believe in an RNA world -- RNA is delicate etc. -- but you do. What reason do you have for this?

[Right Wing Professor]

No idea, but we've barely started. Until recently, we didn't even know how to probe nanoscale structures on surfaces. We had no inkling of how the protein translation machinery might have originated. We didn't know RNA could act as an enzyme. We still have very little idea of the chemistry that goes on on surfaces in extremophile environments. And we didn't have the computational power to begin to model any of these events.

No, what ID says is that the most rational belief is the belief in a designer.

...for which we have no scientific evidence and no even plausible mechanism for implementing the design (other than 'poof!'). I don't think so.

There are plenty of reasons not to believe in an RNA world -- RNA is delicate etc. -- but you do.

RNA isn't that delicate. The main reason it hydrolyses easily in a lab is the ubiquity of nuclease enzymes - which obviously weren't a problem in prebiotic environments. Cytoplasmic ribosomes, for example, whcih are largely composed of RNA, have lifetimes of several days. I've listed already the reasons why I think RNA preceded DNA as the genetic material, although I don't think it was the original self-replicating material.