When I first heard the term ‘Intelligent Design’, I was thrilled that finally, people were beginning to awaken to the idea that life is more than random events responding favorably (or otherwise) to whatever environment or context they happen to appear in. Unfortunately, the concept of ID was quickly and aggressively hijacked by the Creationists crowd, and it is hard to find a person today who understands ID as anything more than a clever marketing ploy by Creationists in their unending attack on science and evolution.
I had hoped that ID would bridge the gap between Creationists and Evolutionists as it had always been obvious to me that there was an element of truth in both of these ideas. “What? You believe in Creationism?” Absolutely, but not as the term is understood today. My version of “Creationism” is closer to the idea of “viral contamination”, in that, life as we know it, did not originate on this planet but ‘landed’ here from space.
This is not a new concept. It’s been around since the 5th Century BC [5] and has had a lively life since then. Today we find some of the greatest minds of modern science on board with the idea. For example, The Nobel prize-winning Francis Crick, the co-discoverer of the DNA helix, claims DNA is far too complex to have evolved and theorizes that our DNA itself was deliberately transported (“Directed Panspermia”) to this planet [4]. Stephen Hawking said, “Life could spread from planet to planet or from a stellar system to stellar system, carried on meteors."
Maybe it was meteors, as Hawking claims; maybe it was a ‘spacecraft’, as Crick claims, or maybe it was some random spores and/or proteins (viruses [1]) floating in space that happened to land here. Where they came from originally should be the debate between Creationists and Scientists, not if they came. As far as life on this planet goes, the conversation is really about “was this planet seeded or did we just get in the way of some viral cosmic dust?”
The idea of interstellar transportation of ‘life’ is not just the domain of theorists. NASA actually has an official office of Planetary Protection [3] that does nothing but think of ways to defend us from invading life forms that may not be so compatible with ours.
My favorite theory is that these protein dust particles, these seeds of life floating in space, are actually encoded messages from other forms of intelligent life in the universe. These messages get mutated as they float for billions of years in the nothingness of space, making them particularly hard to decode the original intended message. For all we know, Humanity might be one of those mutated messages.
I first read of this theory by a Japanese scientists back in the 80's. Today, a mere 30+ years later, scientists from Harvard and John Hopkins have successfully encoded a 2,000-page book into a DNA sequence [17]. Scientific American even has a story on that called "Communicating with Aliens through DNA"[16]. In a few years, humans may be the introducing their own messages into the cosmos.
Given that these leading minds of science support the idea that, at the least, seeds of life exist throughout the known universe, and at the most, these seeds are deliberately being planted by interstellar cosmic Johnny Appleseeds from who-knows-where, it is absolutely ridiculous that we are still having the discussion of whether “intelligent life” exists outside of earth. It does … next topic. [7]
The more interesting discussion is what forms of intelligent life might be doing this. It’s quite convenient that the oldest known [10][11] entheogenic ritual ‘plant’, referred to as a holy sacrament by all of its original discoverers [8][9], the mushroom is an extremely likely candidate be one of these cosmic ‘messages’ from a higher intelligence. Given that mushrooms can do everything from recycling toxic waste to open the doors of perception, it’s easy to imagine that they are a ‘gift’ to the universe from some benevolent life form somewhere 'out there'.
So, in the sense that I believe the seeds of life landed here from outer space and did not evolve on this planet, I am a Creationist. It is also blatantly obvious that natural selection also exists [2]. These two concepts are not only in perfect harmony with each other, they are co-dependent.
Even the ‘other’ kind of Creationism has some potential merit. “You mean like Adam and Eve and the garden of Eden and the six days of creation?” Yes, exactly that. I am not going to get all "Hallelujah!" here, as the extent of my one religious belief is that the concept of a God was invented by the Devil[18], but there are some fascinating correlations in history to the various stories of creation from around the world.
In another post I plan to make soon I will look at the evidence to support some pretty fringe ideas like genetic manipulation/alien intervention and anomalies in ancient history that nicely fills in some of the gaping holes in our current knowledgebase (and consequently breaking many of our current views), but are at the core of some creation myths.[12]
One day, all of our perceptions of reality, from scientific to religious, will be seen as simply different approaches to understanding the same reality we all share. Today, we lose precious opportunities by quibbling over details. Contrary to moving us forward it keeps us stuck in an “I’m right, you’re wrong” paradigm that is as useful as a dog angrily chasing its tail … which only results in a tired, dizzy dog with a chewed up tail.
Footnotes:
The creation myth this fits with is the Sumerian story of the sky gods who manipulated man to be in their own image. In this case by purportedly fusing chromosomes 2 and 3 together to be genetically compatible with their 23-pair creators. FYI, our primate ancestors, monkeys, chimpanzees, and apes, all have 24 pairs.
