Atheism vs. God's Existence

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So we need to prove that the designer exists before we can say it may have been designed? That's illogical. There are people searching for evidence of extraterrestrial intelligence. Do they have to prove that aliens exist before we can interpret a radio transmission showing a sequence of prime numbers as having an intelligent cause? NO. 

It is only a God of the gap if you assume that your answer is correct and thus has the gaps to be filled. When you say that I have no proof that the designer exists, why can't I just say you are arguing from materialism of the gaps? 

Why is it my responsibility to show that mutation and natural selection are inadequate? Shouldn't it be their responsibility to prove that it is adequate? 

Please explain why design is magic? Did the person who designed your laptop use magic? I sort of doubt it.

Yes, you do need to say a designer exists before you can say it may have been designed. It's illogical to say design without designer. If you have evidence of design, which cannot even potentially be explained by natural processes, then you might be on to something. If you have evidence of a process by which DNA could be tampered with by an outside intelligence, you might have deisgn (in the sense that you mean it). How you might demonstrate those, I haven't the foggiest.

You're positing a phenomenon which has never been observed in nature, but which does seem to exist in the imaginations of humans, rather like elves do. The difference between my "materialism of the gaps" (as you call it) and your idea is that every single thing we once thought was magical turned out to have a natural explanation, and we have not one single reason to suppose that non-natural explanations for natural phenomena will be discovered. That's why I keep calling your concept "magic".

We do prove that mutation changes a gene pool over each generation (along with some statistical factors, like genetic drift), and that Natural Selection has the effect of altering the direction of that change by favoring some changes over others, with each new generation.

There is nothing anywhere to suggest that these natural processes are "inadequate", except in the desperate wishes of those who want to think that some Intelligence (typically God or some other Higher Power) has done something to create us, rather than admitting we are the processes of random changes and nonrandom selection.

Like any other scientific phenomenon, even if you are correct in your assertions (I highly doubt it, but you might be), then you need to provide evidence that the phenomenon you're describing even occurs before even one person takes you seriously on the subject. Appeals to "looks like" and other "common sense" concepts are usually wrong.

You do not need to prove that intelligence exists before you can conclude that an observed phenomenon is the result of intelligence. Again, what if SETI received a radio signal that transmitted the numbers of pi up to one thousand decimal places? According to you, they cannot conclude extraterrestrial intelligence because no such thing has ever been shown to be out there. 

And no, I am not positing a cause that has never been observed. We observe intelligent design at work every day. In fact, it is perfectly capable of leading to the type of systems seen in cells. We have even tampered with DNA as you say. So yes, intelligence is perfectly capable of modifying the genetic code, and this has been demonstrated. 

You say every single thing that we once thought to be the result of a mind has been shown to have a natural explanation. That is just not true. All the gaps that have been filled have been shown to have a natural explanation. But just because we know that there isn't a mind behind everything does not mean that there is not a mind behind anything. We still don't know the origin of the universe, the origin of life, how consciousness works, how the oxygen evolving complex of photosytem II manages to separate water. No one is saying that all gaps are God. Consciousness and the PSII almost definitely have natural explanations.

You say that there is nothing anywhere to show that mutation and natural selection are inadequate. That may be true; it is difficult to prove a negative. Please demonstrate to me that intelligence is inadequate. Rather than the opposition demonstrating that a mechanism is inadequate, the proponents must show that it is adequate. Even if they were both equally adequate (which they are not) we would still have a hard time telling which one actually happened.