Who won this evolution/ID debate?

Facts are mostly boring while theories, even wrong headed ones, can often be made to seem exciting.

Meyer and Sternberg won hands down. It wasn't even close. I listened at the "americanfreedomalliance.org" site.If "Origins of Life" is taken as a reference to abiogenesis, then neither side satisfactorily addressed the question. If it means "life as we know it today" then that includes evolution leading to the current biosphere. That's how Meyer and Sternberg apparently took the question, and they concentrated on addressing whether the neo-Darwinian account is adequate.Shermer and Prothero spent too much of their time attacking ID, which wasn't even part of the topic. This came across as evasive - an attempt to change the topic to one they could handle instead of addressing the actual question.Shermer and Prothero debated as if addressing an audience of biologists. Meyer and Sternberg debated as if addressing an intelligent and knowledgable audience, but without assuming they are biologists. I would say that was a mistake by Shermer and Prothero. I don't think that adequately accounts for the problems they had.

As far as I know, Meyer and Sternberg do write technical papers. I have no idea as to whether they preach from any pulpits.So, no, seriously what you said is not the answer. For sure, it applies to many ID proponents. But it does not apply for this debate, where Meyer and Sternberg did make technical points for which Shermer and Prothero did not provide adequate responses.

Okay, I'll take back my comment on Meyer. Looking at Meyer's Wiki page, I don't see anything there that I would value (except in the sense of giving a negative value). Sternberg's Wiki page describes him as a scientist, and cites his Curriculum vitae. That CV, in turn, lists a number of published technical papers. I think my comment about Sternberg was reasonably correct.

We already do. Our language is rich in words that portray purpose, so it is hard to avoid them.We can distinguish between extrinsic purpose and intrinsic purpose. Extrinsic purpose is as seen from outside the system: the purpose of my car is to get me from point A to point B.
Intrinsic purpose is as seen from inside, or perhaps as inferred from internal processes: the purpose of the heart and vascular system is to transport oxygen and nutrients throughout the body. That would be an example of ascribing conscious purpose. I would consider conscious purpose to be a special case of intrinsic purpose. But it comes across as inappropriate in cases such as the example you gave, where consciousness is seen as implausible.So here are two examples of purposes already used by evolutionists:

1. The purpose of natural selection is to serve as a filter that removes mal-adapted genes, thus increasing the fitness of the population;
2. the purpose of reproductive processes is to copy genes.

You see these implied purposes throughout discussions of evolution. When people say that a mutation is caused by an error in copying, they are implying that there is an intrinsic purpose to copy exactly. And most of the talk of natural selection optimizing fitness is implying an extrinsic purpose.So here we are with the Faith thread: The End of Evolution By Means of Natural Selection. And we see Faith arguing that, by virtue of carrying out those purposes, evolution must have a natural limit. And we see the evolutionists, myself included, arguing that evolution works very well thank you, and it works so well precisely because it fails to carry out those purposes.It is this kind of inconsistent use of purpose language that people find confusing. The particular debate discussed in this thread is related to the same confusion. Fred Hoyle's argument was based on the same confusion.