Panspermia

Have a quick look at:
http://cfa-www.harvard.edu/iau/Animations/Animations.html This page shows a series of animations of object such as asteroids, comets, etc.. That have passed through our solar system.

This one shows objects that passed near earth in 2002
http://cfa-www.harvard.edu/iau/Animations/EarthRideSmall.gif It really is amazing! The size of the dots is not to scale, so some of the very near misses are not as close as they appear, and depth is not shown so most of these are passing above or below the earth. Still, it makes you think...

And if you go looking a bit, you find that the earth gets hit with rocks from all over the place! Martian invaders even:
http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/solarsystem/mars_knocks_021107.html

Some of those rocks even looked like they had some fossilized life in them. Given the fact that some microorganism can easily survive the type of heat and impact that a meteor would experience on earth entry, it is possible that life from other places has already visited earth.

Mr. Crick of DNA fame, often said that of all the theories of how life came to be on this planet, the one that was the least hard to believe was "Panspermia" or the idea that some sort of seed crashed into the earth from another planet where life had already developed. In other words: "There are those who believe... that life here... began out there."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panspermia

The nice thing about this theory is that is does not, of necessity, offend either the Christians or the scientists since it doesn't really answer the question of how life first came to be. The fact that neither group chooses to embrace a theory that provides a middle ground just shows me that the two groups wish to fight.

If you are a christian, where does it say that the garden of Eden was on this planet? Isn't it possible that God created life somewhere else first, and then it spread to here?

If you must have logic, can you not admit that Panspermia is at least as likely as spontaneous organization?

And yet, the Christians push "intelligent design" on our kids in the face of the obvious evidence for evolution and scientists give them no hope of anything greater being out there by pointing only to evolution with no viable idea how it "bootstrapped" itself into existence.

Wouldn't it be true that teaching Panspermia to our kids would provide them with a sense of hope and wonder while also not requiring that they reject reason?

At some point, we MUST expand past this world. The steely eyed rocket men of yesteryear knew that as strongly as we seem to deny it today. Living sustainable is a good path and will extend our time here, but at some point, we will have to stop reproducing entirely or move outward. And having only this one little basket of human eggs seems foolhardy to me. We must go up and out to the stars. And our children will be the ones to do it.

With our ability to cooperate, and our ability to hope, let us inspire them.

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