Cliff:
>>I'm not responding to the discussion this came from, but on this
>>point I would point out that the alien-seeding theory is not necessarily
>>an ID theory. It just pushes the question of origins back to the alien
>>home world. And besides, 'seeding' doesn't seem quite the same as
>>'designing'.
Glenn:
>It is designing if the alien designed the bacterium they placed here. I
>have heard that suggested. YOu say that this pushes the question of origin
>of life back to the alien home world and thus imply that we shouldn't do
>that. In what way does this really differ from placing the origin of life
>with God? With God we have placed the origin of intelligence/life of some
>form back to a place where we can not discuss its origin. What is the real
>difference other than one is traditional and the other isn't?
Hmmm... It's easy to split hairs on the question of ID & panspemia.
I think the "seeding theory" is strongly tied to current ID
theories in that both may propose that life did not or could not
arise on Earth. ID has not progressed terribly much further from its
roots as an anti-evolutionary hypothesis. And panspermists such as
Brig Klyce employ similar arguments. The primary differences between
the two seem to be that most mainstream ID'ers prefer a supernatural
origin for life whereas the panspermists tend to think life was a
natural outcome.
Another difference I see is that many panspermists do not propose that
he creation, or in this case, seeding of life has stopped. Thus it is
possible, in principle, to confirm panspermia by either finding life
on other planets that have similar biochemistry or by finding
"space spores"; some form of encapsulated life in space. These
things may still be dropping through our solar system.
I agree with Mike that the attempts to find life's origins on earth
are based on emotional preferences. If you don't know how life started,
the only conclusion you've got is that you don't know how it started.
That's not terribly appealing. And it's surely not a terribly good
basis for a theory of origin by interactive design.
But there are also practical reasons why the search should focus
primarily on terrestrial origins. One reason is that it's a whole
lot easier. As an analogy; all things being equal, if you've lost
your keys somewhere in a dark parking lot with only one light, the
best place to starting looking is under that light. We can't fly to
the nearest stars and so far, any possible supernatural ID agent
seems reluctant to leave good evidence of its interference in the
natural process involved with the evolution of life.
SETI investigators are in a similar boat; they limit most of their
scans to those portions of the spectrum where they *think* they
can hear extraterrestrial transmissions -- It's not because they
know extraterrestrials prefer to use those bands, it's just that
if the ETs use other bands, the signal might not propagate well
enough for detection.
Regards,
Tim Ikeda
tikeda@sprintmail.hormel.com (despam address before use)