Sorry for the late reply, but I agree the idea is interesting, but for me it comes off the same way intelligent design or creationism comes off, almost as a God

Sorry for the late reply, but I agree the idea is interesting, but for me it comes off the same way intelligent design or creationism comes off, almost as a God of the gaps type mentality. Because if life is seeded from elsewhere, it's essentially placing it's origin into infinity, and kind of hand waving away the need to dig further. Not that I'm saying we should philosophically determine where we want the evidence to go, but usually the idea is based on so much conjecture and leads to the same result practically that it just seems like a secular way of dismissing the search based on the evidence we do have. Granted, we have no idea what discoveries and scientific advancements are going to come in the near to distant future, but while I think the question is worth considering, it seems pretty weird for some scientists to accept this conjecture, but randomly eliminate others. To each his own I guess, but this probably is more about my own distaste for the line of thinking (that, and the whole "we're in a simulation" hypothesis), where it kicks the question off into a place where we'll probably never be able to answer it. Though as far as fun discussion and speculating as entertainment, that is where I find the ideas most enjoyable, personally :)