Neither, at least at the outset. We should probably first look for the meteor/comet/asteroid that brought them there.
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Hi T,
I’m having problems copying with my iPad, so I’ll have to try to go by memory of what you said.
Let’s assume that we find no meteors or asteroids that show definite signs that they brought life to this planet (let’s call it Planet X).
You stated that at some point in the past life had to have arisen naturally. But that’s a metaphysical assumption. It also rules out time travelling designers.
Even if we don’t find evidence of labs, there is still Francis Crick’s hypothesis of directed panspermia.
Hi @beaglelady,
Francis Crick had a hypothesis he called directed panspermia, where they sent a rocket to Earth with living microbes on it. Motivation? To propagate life?
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Who sent the rocket? A designer? God? Wouldn’t we find evidence of the rocket? Wouldn’t the sender of the rocket want to explore the planet first, to see if it can support life? And then he’d have to get back home, right?
There has been serious discussion about “terraforming” Mars. If that happens, you can bet that evidence of our presence would be left behind (pardon the expression).
If we find living organisms on another planet, with no evidence of precursors of any kind, then we would suspect that the organisms were brought there from somewhere else. And the involvement of intelligence would be a strong explanation in that case.
In your thought experiment, it doesn’t matter that the objects of interest are bacteria. Anything that is anomalous would require similar explanations. So if we found a chuck of obsidian on planet that had no obsidian anywhere else, we would be justified in postulating that the obsidian fell from the sky. And so on.
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If it were the product of intelligent design, perhaps our experience would enable us to determine if the DNA sequence had any tell-tell markers, such as a lack of non-functional DNA segments, Maybe a binary message or trademark embedded in the sequence. If there were no evidence of those sorts of things, it would lend you to think the bacteria was the result of a natural process, either indigenous to the planet or a contaminant from space. Maybe look to see if Voyager crashed there.
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Crick’s hypothesis was inspired by the fact that living organisms seemed so - to use Behe’s terminology - irreducibly complex, that it seemed to require a miracle for them to appear. So instead of adopting that explanation, he toyed with the hypothesis that it evolved through natural processes somewhere else, allowing more time for the process to occur, and then the aliens shot a rocket here with microbes in it. Presumably they sent a rocket, instead of bringing it themselves, because of the prohibitively long distance and time involved. This is all in his book, Life Itself.
But if the aliens designed life, instead of it evolving, they still could have sent microbes in a rocket ship.
If God designed the first bacteria on Planet X, it’s possible he didn’t need to use a rocket ship. 
Darn. Somehow I was able to copy Beaglelady’s comment, but I’m not able to copy yours, Dr. Matheson. So this is from memory:
Are you saying we have evidence of precursors to life on Earth?
Hi Phil,
I once argued that there was evidence embedded in our cells that the designer was God: DNA would be the Father; RNA would be the Son; and Proteins would be the Holy Spirit.
Before I go any further, is there some secret to copying comments that I need to know about?
While it sometimes works poorly with my iPad, if you just highlight what you wish to quote, a balloon saying quote will come up, click it and the highlighted text will be put in your reply. You can do that multiple times in the body of your reply with different quotes.
Oh heavens yes, tons of it. We could talk for a century about what we don’t know, but the analogy of finding bacteria on an otherwise deserted/barren planet is not even close to apt for earth.
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Dr. Matheson,
I’m still not having any luck copying comments. So if there were no asteroids, comets, or meteors in Earth’s past, then there would be no way to offer a naturalistic explanation for the origin of life on Earth?
God is the intelligent designer? Who knew?
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Huh? No, that doesn’t follow from anything I wrote.
There is still interstellar dust and many more modes of transport.
It is the same metaphysical assumption we use in our every day lives, so it seems pretty reasonable. We look for natural processes when we come up to a mystery, so life shouldn’t be any different. If we walk out our front door and find a tree toppled over in our front lawn our first hypothesis usually isn’t that time travelling designers knocked it over.
There is also the practical scientific view. If we are looking to investigate something then would choose the route that actually allows us to investigate. Time travelling designers who leave no evidence are not a viable route of investigation. Things like naturally occurring panspermia and abiogenesis offer routes of investigation unlike invisible designers.
Irreducible complexity was solved by Muller back in the early 1900’s, so I don’t know why it would pose a problem:
“… thus a complicated machine was gradually built up whose effective working was dependent upon the interlocking action of very numerous different elementary parts or factors, and many of the characters and factors which, when new, were originally merely an asset finally became necessary because other necessary characters and factors had subsequently become changed so as to be dependent on the former. It must result, in consequence, that a dropping out of, or even a slight change in any one of these parts is very likely to disturb fatally the whole machinery; for this reason we should expect very many, if not most, mutations to result in lethal factors …”
Muller 1918 pp. 463-464. (emphasis in the original)
We also have evidence of irreducible complexity evolving in the fossil record, such as the mammalian middle ear where two jaw bones evolve into middle ear bones that are now needed for hearing where they were not needed before…[quote=“Bilbo, post:13, topic:36944”]
But if the aliens designed life, instead of it evolving, they still could have sent microbes in a rocket ship.
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That only moves the question to the origin of the aliens.
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The earliest signs of life we see on Earth emerged early in Earth’s history, and it was very simple life. This is what we would expect to see if life arose naturally on Earth.
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Love the quote. What is the source?