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Where is this natural mechanism that has been shown to be powerful enough to "create" the vast diversity and complexity of life on earth? Mutation and natural selection have not been shown to have that kind of power. Doesn't it make sense to investigate other possibilities?
Only if you can show why th naturalistic explanataion fails. Mutation, entropy, and billions of years seem perfectly adequate to me to explain the biodiversity we see.
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I am sure you are going to say that given the conditions at the time, the odds of life emerging or the odds of simple life becoming complex life are 1 in 1. But isn't that just an a priori conclusion on your part, ignoring the possibility that it could be the product of design.
You are arguing your conclusion. It is of course POSSIBLE that design was repsonsible, but we would only look for such an absurd explanation after all naturalistic explanations fail. You, instread, claim that starting with the naturalistic possibility is equivalent to starting with the absurd possibility. So, if faced by a body at the bottom of a cliff, you would say that the it was
equally reasonable to start investigating whether this person was a climber, as to start investogating whether thaey had been abducted by a UFO and pushed out the airlock at 40,000 feet. As far as you are concerned there is no distinction between these possibilities: both are an "a priori" assumption.
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