@layman,
While Ive always included panspermia as an option within the origins of life on the planet, it is NOT a"new and better ID". It merely transfers the origins of life to another place in the Galaxy or universe.
Since the origins of life can be evidenced to have independently occurred several times in our planets history an at widely separated geographic places, and at separate geologic times, the possibility of the "Seeding" of "life" as passengers on incoming bolides has already been listed as a "possibility" and is not a new idea to science. It sits there as on of the many options left to us to investigate .There ARE entire groups of scientists and science majors who have been searching that evidence to see if it "fits".
However, once life had become established on the planet , the major stages of lifes ascendancy have followed the several mass extinctions that were triggered by some natural catastrophes or (initially) there were cellular "catastrophes" such as the "stages of Archean life" or , mpre importantly to us, the introduction of excess gases by cyanobacteria had displaced the 4 stages of Archean life. However any attendant evidence supporting a "scientific ID" hypothesis to explain these "burps of life" has yet to be produced by the ID "brainytrust", even a hint of ideas would help . The burden of proof is not on the magazine "story writers" or Discovery Institute spinnoff papers, its on some lab coopted ID "scientists" to try to actually stop the bullshit and get to work proving all this speculation.
AS Monterey JAck said, Behes "irreducible complexity" wasnt, because itd been several times debunked by several grad students from Vancouver working independently with others from U of Mass.
DIscovery Inst and the Scientific Creationism hotlines strongly make those arguments that you continually clip and post as novel thoughts to consider. However,papers where "belief' is more important than evidence, aint science. Conclusions gotta come only after all the data is in and gets digested and peer reviewed.
Thats another thing, peer review. So far, the very way that ID research gets carried out is to post long winded articles with tiringly big worded concepts that are merely attempts at arguments against existing scientific data, like Irreducible complexity or "specified information". So far theyve not proceeded beyond those meager conversation points. I know that theres some work being done on the "tracks of panspermia" as a paleontology /geochemistry effort . Nobody from "Bob Jones " or "Liberty U" science departments nor any of the vaunted scholars that Discovery parades out every so often seem to be doing ANY real work to try to make , , panspermia seem like an intelligence driven "seeding" of earth. ALSO someone oughta be working on "periodic alien intervention" to provide some evidence that lifes responses to extinction events WAS INDEED, intelligence driven and not mere natural selection by the remaining life forms freely filling in newly open niches. Wheres the workers at??
All ID has given us so far is TALK TALK TALK TALK, LAWSUIT, OOPS < MORE TALK ,STILL ORE TALK, and "lets try to affect some fly over states legislature with some nifty religion friendly laws about ID and Creationism"
Texas , in march 2017 finally shot down another assault on science by such proposed legislation. Fortunately it never got out of committee. (not for the strength of scientific arguments but from fear that the courts would become involved and from the precedent that Dover has presented.
