If you spend much time on FR’s evolution threads, it’s easy to get the impression that the “better informed”, non “Luddite” Christian is about as rare a specimen as the moderate Muslim. Yikes.
Hopefully the less strangulation-dogma-inclined believers are just quiet on the subject.
For what it's worth, I think the basic idea behind morphogenic fields is close to the truth. David Bohm's enfolded holomovement model fits too. The tiniest tip of the reality iceberg peaks out of the probability sea as physical life. I think the patterns are far deeper than mere "random" molecular recombination, but they certainly drive it.
Frowning takes 68 muscles.
Smiling takes 6.
Pulling this trigger takes 2.
I'm lazy.
What Sheldrake is saying as I understand it is that once you have a dog or a horse on this planet, getting one on some planet 200 light years away becomes several orders of magnitude easier, same thing with any complex idea or concept more or less. I don’t see how that explains getting life as we know it from inanimate matter. Sheldrake doesn’t seem to be saying anything about abiogenesis.