[SirLinksalot]

Does belief in Panspermia ( i.e., a hypothesis that the seeds of life are prevalent throughout the Universe, and furthermore that life on Earth began by such seeds landing on Earth and propagating.) count as intelligent design ?

No less a distinguished scientist than E.O. Wilson (Pellegrino Research Professor in Entomology for the Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology at Harvard University) seems to be attracted to it. There is a hypothesis that alien lifeforms seeded earth eons ago with microorganisms to produce life as we know it.

See here for instance :

http://www.panspermia.org/whatsnew.htm

It says :

“E.O. Wilson thinks panspermia is likely: Some serious biologists – and I count myself among them – have begun to wonder that among the enormous and still unknown diversity of microorganisms one might – just might – find aliens among them – true aliens that arrived from outer space. They’ve had billions of years to do it. But especially during the earliest period of biological evolution on this planet. We do know that some bacterial species that have earthly origin are capable of almost unimaginable extremes of temperature and other harsh changes in environment, including hard radiation strong enough to crack the Pyrex vessels around the growing population of bacteria.”

[ahayes]

Does belief in Panspermia ( i.e., a hypothesis that the seeds of life are prevalent throughout the Universe, and furthermore that life on Earth began by such seeds landing on Earth and propagating.) count as intelligent design ?

No more than it counts as "intelligent design" if a species of bee settles a new island and evolves into several different species, or if our Mars crawlers deposit bacteria from Earth in the rocks that somehow survive and evolve into new bacterial species.

[js1138]

My post #144 was intended for you.

[omnivore]

"Does belief in Panspermia ... count as intelligent design ?"

Using the same term, in this case "intelligent design," to mean two or more different things, is to cause confusion deliberately. Panspermia theory is clearly not what the Discovery Institute means by "Intelligent Design," so I wouldn't include it in this discussion.

There are at least two versions of Panspermia. One just pushes the abiogenic origin of life off earth and puts is somewhere else. Such a simple change of location for an event would not affect whether it was a purely physical event or there was supernatural intervention needed, so it would hardly matter to the present debate. Another also makes the same change of location for abiogenic origin of life, but also adds the twist of "space aliens" (little green men, etc.) going around deliberately seeding planets with life, like farmers seeding soil. But those green guys would have had to come from somewhere, etc., again, it just pushes the same questions off to another locale and circumstance, it doesn't change the fundamental dynamics of the question of whether or not there are links between the natural and supernatural world.

The panspermia meme comes up again and again on these threads wherever evolution comes up for a bashing. Is it on some Talking Points being handed out by one of the Creationist outfits? I don't get the big interest in it.

Hard to imagine what difference panspermia would make. If life is ubiquitous in the universe, it would still evolve the same way it does here on earth. Same universe, same rules. Methane has the same properties on Neptune as on earth, helium has the same properties on Arcturus as it does on our sun. I don't see what a change of venue buys.