A Question on Abiogenesis

[Schneibster]

My belief is based on logic and is not unquestioning.

Then it has to be amenable to change given sufficient evidence. And given the lack of evidence of any sort of creator, and the wealth of evidence that there are viable hypotheses as to the creation of the universe ex nihilo, and the creation of life without miraculous intervention, why has your opinion not changed? You're facing an absolutely overwhelming body of evidence on both points, and opposing that with the contents of a single book. That is unquestioning belief. It is not faith, and you are not proving the truth of your assertion that your beliefs are based on logic; logic would require that you gather all the available information prior to forming an opinion, and it is clear from your lack of knowledge about essential subjects in regard to the origin of the universe and the origin of life that you have not done so.

I've already stated that, not only is the creation of the universe unexplainable by our current best understanding of how the world works, but there is no realistic prospect that it will ever be explained. The basis is that is where science has led us.

You've stated it, but it is untrue. And if you did the research for yourself, you'd know it, as I do. What it comes down to is, either 90% of scientists are lying, or you're wrong. What it comes down to is, either all of the things that I can see for myself, and deduce from the things I see, are wrong, or you are. You tell me, "the sky is not blue." I walk outside, and look for myself, and it's blue. Sorry, man, but I gotta go with the scientists, and I gotta go with what I can see, know what I mean?

I don't deny that what you sense is real, but it's absurd to think you would be able to see "some big powerful dude in the sky" with a telescope.

That's what your book says; and don't bother denying it, I've read it, friend. Cover to cover. Every single word. I like the prose in the King James edition, personally.

But answer me this: if you don't believe THAT, then how come you believe the rest of it?

It seems far more logical to me that the universe arose by design rather than chance.

Why? Have you examined the laws that govern it to understand the types of order they do and do not impose? And if you haven't, and it's obvious you haven't, because you don't know what the inflationary universe is, and you don't know how physics works, and you don't know much biochemistry, then how can you have formed such an opinion in any fashion that anyone might refer to as "informed?" And if that's the case, then what is it that makes you think your opinion is better than that of people who HAVE bothered to inform themselves about these things, and who overwhelmingly dismiss your opinion as superstition?

And, I've experienced a number of synchronicities that bolster this conclusion.

This is called "observer bias." It means that you've noticed the very, very few instances where some sort of synchronicity occurs, and ignored the enormous number of instances where it could have, or even should have had the few been anything but random chance, but did not.

Further, many people have had well-documented paranormal experiences.

Scientific proof has never been obtained of any paranormal experience; you will note that the million dollars of Randi's challenge, documented on this very site, has never been collected. It is the strong opinion of most here that it never will be. And unless or until it is, your "documentation" is worthless, evidence only, as I said in the previous response, of observer bias and random chance.

I'm open to alternative explanations, but as former New York Yankees baseball manager Billy Martin used to say: "I could be wrong, but I doubt it."

You're not. You don't like the most probable alternative explanation; and when I say "most probable," I mean that it is more probable than the explanation you DO like. You cling to superstitious, magical modes of thought more appropriate to a caveman than to a member of a high civilization; given every opportunity imaginable to go find these things out for yourself, you ignore those opportunities because you don't like the truth. It makes you feel small and scares you, so you avoid it.

 

[Schneibster]

Perhaps because the evidence so strongly suggests an anologue computer.

Because digital computers can't do chaos math- they can only approximate it. To do chaos math, you need analog computers, and analog computers don't give exact answers.

Great minds think alike.

 

[volatile]

I think this whole argument may be summarised as follows:

Rodney: "I don't know what 'came before the Big Bang'".

Everyone else: "Neither do we, yet, but at least we haven't stopped looking."

 

[Schneibster]

It's gettin' there, matt, but I think I'll watch a couple more cycles and see if something different happens.

Which may or may not be an insane act: "Doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results."

 

[VonNeumann]

Perhaps because the evidence so strongly suggests an anologue computer.

The evidence doesn't suggest that at all. The fact that we use analog models in the form of continuous functions and how we operate on them with calculus is what you might be thinking is 'evidence'. How are photons analog?

 

[VonNeumann]

Hmmmm. I'm not sure I agree with that, at least not to the extent you seem to be taking it.

That was a literal quote, that diagram. I think Chaitin believes, as I do, that the universe behaves as a digital computer - please go read and tell me if you agree that's what he's saying.

Because digital computers can't do chaos math- they can only approximate it. To do chaos math, you need analog computers, and analog computers don't give exact answers.

Of course digital computers can do chaos math . You can also do it with something a simple as a diode and an amplifier with feedback (an analog computer). You can do it with paper and pencil on graph paper (start with a non-monotonic function as a transfer function).

Don't you remember Lorenz first wrote about chaos with his meteorlogical model running on an old 1950s computer? His white paper was published under meteorology instead of in an IEEE journal or in a computer journal 9so it was generally overlooked for a decade and a half). It was truncation (that's the non-linearity) in his recursive computation. Except for some early mathematics work on fractals, Lorenz (circa 1960) was the first one to demonstrate determinable-chaos and it was on a digital computer!

 

[VonNeumann]

Schneibster, I note that I ignored in your post you said a digital model of chaos is not accurate. You said that an analog is better but still an approximation. So I may have taken issue with you on the wrong thing. I agree that a digital computer would have to have a hell of a lot more resources than one we could ever build to do more than just approximate 'chaos', if that is your suggestion.

people tend to forget that the universe is infinite, or at least that as far as we can tell there's none of the indications we'd expect to see if it wasn't.... but it was still infinite even then.

I guess I fogot, too . How do we know the universe is infinite. Infinite in what: volume? Mass? Time? ...what?

 

[Myriad]

I find this interesting because it speaks through the worldview I have that the universe behaves as a digital computer. I've found this idea to be generally considered "silly" or worse by so-called skeptics here. I don't know why people aren't more open-minded to it.

VonNeumann, given your post count and the implication that you've raised this topic before, you've likely been asked this question before too, so I apologize if you've already answered it in earlier threads. Have you read Stephen Wolfram's book A New Kind Of Science (NKS)?

If so, what do you think of (a) the book in general, (b) Wolfram's physics model in Chapter 9, (c) the proposed Principles of Computational Equivalence and Computational Irreducibility?

If not, I believe the entire book is readable online for free at the Wolfram Research web site. (Reading it in that form might be difficult on the eyes after a while -- though curling up with the 15-lb. printed doorstop is no picnic either, to be honest.)

I mention it because Wolfram explores in considerable detail the idea that the universe, as well as all nontrivially complex systems within the universe, exibits behavior comparable to that of a digital computer, quite possibly one running an absurdly simple program. (The Principle of Computational Equivalence suggests that it doesn't matter whether or not the underlying causal functionality of the universe is anything like that of a digital computer, because complex behavior is fundamentally the same regardless of what kind of machinery it's generated from or how complex the relevant "program" is.)

I'm not trying to bait you into controversy unawares, so I'll also mention that Wolfram's book (and his approach to developing and publishing it) has been strongly criticized by many scientists and skeptics, and that some of the criticisms are valid IMO. My own position on it is somewhat ambivalent, however, as I also believe that some of the book's merits are being overlooked. For instance, no one seems to be leaping in with any alternative mathematical explanation of intrinsic randomness generated from simple cellular automaton rules. Instead, the ability of trivially simple programs to generate results otherwise (that is, other than having been generated from a trivially simple program) indistinguishable from randomness either gets lumped in with chaotic behavior (which it clearly is distinct from) or ignored entirely (implying that it's of no great significance). Yet no one seems to object to using the method to generate random numbers for practical purposes -- it's a built-in feature of the Mathematica software.

If you'd like to discuss your concept in a new thread I'd be willing to participate and I promise to strive to be open-minded about the idea. However, I'm likely to refer frequently to Wolfram, which is why I ask how familiar you are with "NKS."

Respectfully,
Myriad

 

[VonNeumann]

Great minds think alike.

You guys make me laugh. To be in the company of a lot of great minds who believe the universe is analog, is easy.

There are at least a few great minds who believe the universe is 'digital'. Someday, when the verdict is accepted by mainstream that the discrete model is valid, please come back here to the archives to see how you were so sure your model is 'right'. Come on guys, please catch up to the 20th century [yes: "20th"]!

 

[Schneibster]

How are photons analog?

Light interferes. Interference is a wave phenomenon. Waves are analog phenomena. They are not characterized merely by peaks and troughs, but also by all the points between. You might want to keep in mind that wave mechanics apply to what we normally think of as solid matter, too. So it would seem that ALL phenomena in the universe are far more analog than they are digital. Normally you don't come across things that are this way or that way, but things that are partly this way and partly that way, despite the apparent logical necessity of them not being so. These are called "quantum chimarae." For example, Schroedinger's Cat.

Of course digital computers can do chaos math .

Schneibster, I note that I ignored in your post you said a digital model of chaos is not accurate.

Correct.

You said that an analog is better but still an approximation.

Incorrect. It may or may not be a precise representation of a real phenomenon; most times, if the analog function is well-chosen, it IS a precise representation. But when we try to measure it, we cannot do so with a great deal of precision. In other words, the analog computer is an accurate simulation, but we cannot measure its output precisely enough to determine what the system being simulated will actually do.

So I may have taken issue with you on the wrong thing. I agree that a digital computer would have to have a hell of a lot more resources than one we could ever build to do more than just approximate 'chaos', if that is your suggestion.

To simulate a finite event in the universe in real time, a digital computer would have to be infinite. The math itself should tell you that, if you'll think about it carefully- and as I suspected, you know enough math to understand what I mean, you just haven't thought about things from that angle before.

I guess I fogot, too . How do we know the universe is infinite. Infinite in what: volume? Mass? Time? ...what?

Mass and volume. Not in time in both directions, presumably only in one, the future, and that only if the various vacuum decay speculations don't turn out to be correct.

Specifically, the differentiation events between the various forces can be seen as types of vacuum decay in which formerly unified forces became differentiated as the average energy level of the vacuum fell below certain levels. This energy level today is what we see as the CMBR, the cosmic microwave background radiation. The possibility exists that there is some critical level of the CMBR below which (most likely electromagnetism, but it could actually be any of the four forces) will split into multiple previously unknown forces, and vacuum decay will occur creating a whole new set of low-energy particles heretofore unknown and potentially rendering this universe unfit for life as we know it, or destroying all matter, or something like that. It is the ultimate ecological catastrophe, as Brian Greene has written; luckily, based on what we know now it is extremely unlikely. But never forget that it is not impossible.

 

[VonNeumann]

VonNeumann, given your post count and the implication that you've raised this topic before, you've likely been asked this question before too, so I apologize if you've already answered it in earlier threads. Have you read Stephen Wolfram's book A New Kind Of Science (NKS)?

If so, what do you think of (a) the book in general, (b) Wolfram's physics model in Chapter 9, (c) the proposed Principles of Computational Equivalence and Computational Irreducibility?

If not, I believe the entire book is readable online for free at the Wolfram Research web site. (Reading it in that form might be difficult on the eyes after a while -- though curling up with the 15-lb. printed doorstop is no picnic either, to be honest.)

I mention it because Wolfram explores in considerable detail the idea that the universe, as well as all nontrivially complex systems within the universe, exibits behavior comparable to that of a digital computer, quite possibly one running an absurdly simple program. (The Principle of Computational Equivalence suggests that it doesn't matter whether or not the underlying causal functionality of the universe is anything like that of a digital computer, because complex behavior is fundamentally the same regardless of what kind of machinery it's generated from or how complex the relevant "program" is.)

I'm not trying to bait you into controversy unawares, so I'll also mention that Wolfram's book (and his approach to developing and publishing it) has been strongly criticized by many scientists and skeptics, and that some of the criticisms are valid IMO. My own position on it is somewhat ambivalent, however, as I also believe that some of the book's merits are being overlooked. For instance, no one seems to be leaping in with any alternative mathematical explanation of intrinsic randomness generated from simple cellular automaton rules. Instead, the ability of trivially simple programs to generate results otherwise (that is, other than having been generated from a trivially simple program) indistinguishable from randomness either gets lumped in with chaotic behavior (which it clearly is distinct from) or ignored entirely (implying that it's of no great significance). Yet no one seems to object to using the method to generate random numbers for practical purposes -- it's a built-in feature of the Mathematica software.

If you'd like to discuss your concept in a new thread I'd be willing to participate and I promise to strive to be open-minded about the idea. However, I'm likely to refer frequently to Wolfram, which is why I ask how familiar you are with "NKS."

Respectfully,
Myriad

Yes, I ordered NKS online the month it came out in 2002 (with shipping it seems like it was nearly $100 USD). Every time I learn of someone spouting something that might agree with my worldview, I go look to see what they say - but I don't necessarily study it. If we are going to discuss it, frankly I'll have to go review it - that was 5 years ago that I read it.

The title "New Kind of Science", I think, reveals what was in Wolfram's heart when he published his magnus opus. He thought it would be revolutionary - is my guess. He was accused of being too puffed up with his ideas. No doubt he is brilliant. I think he makes a good case for a digital universe - a universe that is computationally limited.

I need to read what are the criticisms of NKS. I suppose you may have read some of my stuff on thread: "Does Mathematics Exist". After weeks of waiting for someone to ask me the right questions, I finally threw a few tidbits out there.

But I'm always finding new things. I didn't even know about Konrad Zuse's paper (1967?) on "Calculating Space" till a year or two ago. If you could have heard me in the 70s, you would think I had read Zuse. Zuse proposes that the universe is as a digital computer and it is made evident by the computational limitaions of speed and bandwidth (not sure what term he used) and that limited precision might explain turbulence. So he beat me to it, but he didn't say how it explains relativity.

Then recently I picked up Chaitin's book. When no one seems to be thinking what you're thinking, you might think that you are the only one in the world to have thought these things (that you are certain must be correct). So I note that Chaitin has a heading on Against Egotism. He says:
1. digital philosophy can be traced back to Liebniz.
2. digital physics can be traced back to Zeno.
3. Chaitin's defintiion of randomness goes back to Liebniz.
4. Chaitin's "omega" can be traced back to Borel.
5. Borel's number can be traced back to Turing's uncomputable real number.
...
Not that I know anything about omega or Borel - I'm studying that now. My point is that the digital philosophy is old - very old.

Chaitin doesn't totally agree with NKS. I need to see if I can go back and see what the rub is. I don't know enough about NKS to say to what extent I agree and understand Wolfram's worldview. Of course,the main problem with cellular automata, if that is the model, is that if it operates in our space-time, it is a background dependent model. I don't see how a model can work if it is background dependent. That would bring back the aether and classical physics. Maybe Wolfram explains that away - I don't know. In my case, I believe the underlying mechanism is no more detectable in our universe than my PC's transistors are detectable from within this program I'm typing on right now. I don't take cellular automata so literally anymore as I did when I first read about Stan Ulam's and von Neumann's synthesis in the 1940s (and I read around 1969). I think it is an interesting computational model but I don't think it matters whether it's a google NAND gates or a google CA cells - it's a hard sell around here to even get anyone to bite on the concept of an underlying mechanism.

I'm hoping I can come to a more clear understanding on the intelligibility of the universe and the notions of simplicity, complexity and irreducibility. I'm hoping that if I spend enough time trying to understand Chaitin's "omega", it might be a quicker cut to the finish than to go through Wolfram's "doorstop" again. If I ever do understand it well enough to teach it, I think I'd put it in the form of a program (but not Lisp!). Chaitin says to understand this stuff is like trying to understand someone else's program (ugh!). He says it is better to derive it all yourself - to me that makes sense but a lot of work either way.

So Myriad, I suppose we need to change frequency here and let these blokes get back to beating up church-lady (no disrespect Rodney).

 

[VonNeumann]

Light interferes. Interference is a wave phenomenon. Waves are analog phenomena.

We all learned about wave equations in physics, right? They are differential equations. So our tool is analog. When you speak into your cell phone, those sound waves are analog for about one stage of amplification at most before they become digitized. A good amount of analytic functions, which in the design process were first synthesized in calculus, are used to process those "waves" - but it is all discretized - all Z-transform. Interestingly, common practice is to synthesize in Laplace (continuous s-domain) and transform into Z-domain (discrete time). But that is because we humans love analog - cuz that's what we learned in school. Anyway.... a bunch of applied science... but illustrative that waves can be 100% digital. I think it is a common misconception that, because our mathematical tools are analog, it follows that the thing we are modeling is analog. Digital Signal Processing is an applied field where the tools are largely digital, even though we have the old habit of using continuous functions for our filters and then transforming it. I know I have probably not convinced you, but I state my viewpoint that I think what you think you are seeing as obvious (the universe being analog) is a biased viewpoint from years of doing "analog math". Come to think of it, Frederick Kantor, who re-cast quantum physics into information theory in the 70s was a digital signal processing engineer. Hmmmm. That was before we had real-time DSPs!

To simulate a finite event in the universe in real time, a digital computer would have to be infinite. The math itself should tell you that, if you'll think about it carefully- and as I suspected, you know enough math to understand what I mean, you just haven't thought about things from that angle before.

Of course we couldn't simulate anything in real-time within the universe.

But the universe does compute in real-time. And it throws away bits and runs at different speeds depending on it's work load! So the universe does not appear to me to be infinite in capacity. It has limited speed and precision.

After reading your assumptions of infinite universe, I think we have a semantics differential. The universe could mean just what is observable within our Mikowski cone (I didn't say that just right but you know what i mean?), or all that exists outside the observable universe, too. But what about matter that has fallen into a black hole? Is that "in" the universe? What about things that appear and then dissappear in a vacuum fluctuation. When it disappears, does it still exist? In this universe? In a hyper universe? Ceases to exist alltogether?

I guess I subscribe to a finite space-time volume. One with a finite amount of energy and mass within it.

I didn't understand in your paragraph on CBR and vacuum fluctuation where is your explanation that the universe has infinite volume and mass.

 

[Schneibster]

We all learned about wave equations in physics, right? They are differential equations. So our tool is analog. When you speak into your cell phone, those sound waves are analog for about one stage of amplification at most before they become digitized.

You're confusing the map with the territory. The map is digital; the territory is analog.

A good amount of analytic functions, which in the design process were first synthesized in calculus, are used to process those "waves" - but it is all discretized - all Z-transform. Interestingly, common practice is to synthesize in Laplace (continuous s-domain) and transform into Z-domain (discrete time). But that is because we humans love analog - cuz that's what we learned in school.

No, it's because we can't measure with infinite precision.

Anyway.... a bunch of applied science... but illustrative that waves can be 100% digital.

No, it's not. It's illustrative that a digital representation can be of arbitrary precision- not that reality itself is limited in that regard.

I think it is a common misconception that, because our mathematical tools are analog, it follows that the thing we are modeling is analog.

I think it's a common misconception on the part of CS majors that reality must be digital. In fact, Schroedinger's Cat shows us that reality is analog.

Digital Signal Processing is an applied field where the tools are largely digital, even though we have the old habit of using continuous functions for our filters and then transforming it.

We have to- the waves are continuous, our digital representation of them in the other domain is not. It is an approximation, not the reality itself. You are, as I said, confusing the digital map with the analog territory.

I know I have probably not convinced you, but I state my viewpoint that I think what you think you are seeing as obvious (the universe being analog) is a biased viewpoint from years of doing "analog math".

No, my perception of reality as analog is based on deep research into the nature of physics. It is obvious that reality itself is properly described in continuous terms, not discrete ones. We can impose discrete terms on it, and transform the analog measurements- but in doing so, we lose accuracy.

You commented on Lorenz' model earlier. Were you aware that after digging into it, he found that the computer was using figures that were not displayed? That its precision was greater than the displayed figures, and when he entered what he believed was the actual starting state, he was entering an approximation of that state, of less precision than the state itself had, and that that was the reason for the anomalous behavior?

After reading your assumptions of infinite universe, I think we have a semantics differential. The universe could mean just what is observable within our Mikowski cone (I didn't say that just right but you know what i mean?), or all that exists outside the observable universe, too. But what about matter that has fallen into a black hole? Is that "in" the universe? What about things that appear and then dissappear in a vacuum fluctuation. When it disappears, does it still exist? In this universe? In a hyper universe? Ceases to exist alltogether?

A black hole may not have hair, but it has mass. And that never disappears.

I guess I subscribe to a finite space-time volume. One with a finite amount of energy and mass within it.

I didn't understand in your paragraph on CBR and vacuum fluctuation where is your explanation that the universe has infinite volume and mass.

If the universe had finite mass or volume, then it would have to have an edge- or it would have to have a positive curvature. Either of these would be perceptible, even if the edge were beyond our event horizon; the curvature would be directly measurable. You are postulating that we occupy a special position, at the center of the universe. Why should this be so? What possible justification can you give? And if we do not, then where is the edge? Where is the different direction in space? We see no evidence of it, and the curvature of space indicates that it is not finite.

The evidence is contrary to your view. I have to go with the evidence.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

Off-world life, if and when we discover it, will tell us a lot about panspermia. It will have to be very different from "life as we know it" to decide the issue, though. Panspermia on a solar-system scale would otherwise be possible; if that's not tenable, panspermia on a galactic-regional scale might still be; then on a galactic scale, then on an inter-galactic ...

A carbon base to life is more-or-less a given, chemistry and physics almost dictate that. Ditto the intimate involvement of nitrogen and protein. DNA? Not nearly as clear-cut, but perhaps still dictated.

Life that has clearly taken some other route than DNA/RNA to establish itself is the only discovery that could possibly put panspermia to rest.

I'm not quite sure what you are thinking here but genomes pretty much tell us all multi-celled organisms went down the same evolutionary path.

Were 'seeds' to have arrived on multiple planetary bodies, the genomes would have resulted from different paths. One needn't find non-DNA life to recognize it as ET. The genomes would be enough to show the last common ancestor lived 3.5 billion years earlier. From there the paths split.

That isn't the case. Instead we find human genes in yeast organisms and so on. There is a pretty clear line of descent.

 

[hammegk]

Great minds think alike.

And hopefully those great minds agree that GR implies analog, QM implies not-analog.

 

[Dancing David]

So if the universe did not emerge from a singularity, what did it emerge from? In other words, what immediately preceded the Big Bang?

The artist formerly known as Unknownable now called the artist Unknowable at the current time.

 

[CapelDodger]

I'm not quite sure what you are thinking here but genomes pretty much tell us all multi-celled organisms went down the same evolutionary path.

Were 'seeds' to have arrived on multiple planetary bodies, the genomes would have resulted from different paths. One needn't find non-DNA life to recognize it as ET. The genomes would be enough to show the last common ancestor lived 3.5 billion years earlier. From there the paths split.

If the seeds all came from the same source, the common features could have been established there. Really basic features such as the twenty-odd amino acids used in proteins and the codons that specify them. I'm suggesting a limited form of panspermia, spanspremia perhaps, which occurs within a region of space. A solar system, say, or a stellar region.

Abiogenesis would still have to have happened somewhere, of course, so I'm just drivelling, really.

That isn't the case. Instead we find human genes in yeast organisms and so on. There is a pretty clear line of descent.

I think eukaryotes arose far too late in the day to tell us much about life's origins.

 

[CapelDodger]

Great minds think alike.

But spell differently .

 

[CapelDodger]

The evidence doesn't suggest that at all. The fact that we use analog models in the form of continuous functions and how we operate on them with calculus is what you might be thinking is 'evidence'.

We do that because it gives us the right results, when compared with what the universe actually does. The Earth's weather is in principle not computable digitally, and yet the universe gets it right every moment. Flawlessly. Never varying from the actual outcome by an iota. And that's just one thing the universe does, quite minor in comparison to the churnings of the Sun. That's where Relativity, with its smooth variance of time and space dimensions, has a significant contribution to make. Which is not to say that the universe doesn't make a very accurate job of incorporating Relativity's insignificant effect on Earth's weather.

The universe has no problem with pi. Anything digital does. Ergo, the universe is not a digital thing.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

If the seeds all came from the same source, the common features could have been established there. Really basic features such as the twenty-odd amino acids used in proteins and the codons that specify them. I'm suggesting a limited form of panspermia, spanspremia perhaps, which occurs within a region of space. A solar system, say, or a stellar region.

....

You are still missing the obvious here. Regardless of what one started with 3.5 billion years ago, from there on the paths of the same basic DNA in ET locations would have TAKEN DIFFERENT PATHS. We are talking about 3.5 billion years. In your hypothesis or scenario, you seem to think so little has changed in that time that life on another planet might have unrecognizable differences. That would require the initial organisms to have had most of what organisms 3.5 billion years later have. It just isn't consistent with what we know about genetic changes over time.

The genes that humans share with yeast organisms were not present 3.5 billion years ago. The gene that initiates eye growth in the fetus of a rabbit that was transplanted into fruit fly embryos and functioned normally was not present 3.5 billion years ago.

The hypothesis of panspermia is just not supported by the evidence. What evidence do you think supports the hypothesis? I have only ever heard the fantasy it could have happened. I have never seen any actual supporting evidence presented.

Organic molecules from space, yes. Life on other planets, I think it highly probable. Life raining down on Earth on a frequent, an occasional or even a rare case, show me the evidence!