Hard panspermism and other small misdemeanors

That term, I mean "hard panspermism" doesn't roll easily off one's tongue*, I know, but then you should blame Francis for coining (or, at least, using) it in this post. To quote the linked:

Panspermia is the hypothesis that life exists throughout the cosmos, and is distributed by meteoroids, comets and interplanetary dust. As hypotheses go on the origin of life, panspermia is a perfectly reasonable one, and over the years it has received backing from a number of respected scientists.

Anyhow, if I were forced to choose between Panspermia and, say, intelligent design, I wouldn't hesitate for any appreciable time. Still, as Francis correctly states, science doesn't operate the way some more spiritual hobbies do. Read it all, please.

And, on the general subject of Panspermia, here comes an excerpt from Stanisaw Lem's The Star Diaries, specifically the 8th voyage of Ijon Tichy.

And now - a few last questions to the Honourable delegation from Rhohchia. Is it not true that at one time a ship carrying your flag landed on then dead planet Earth, with part of its perishable food supplies spoiled due to a refrigeration problem? Is it not true that on this ship there were two spacehands, afterwards stricken from all space registers for unconscionable double dealing with duckweed liverworts, and that this pair of arrant knaves, these Milky Way ne'er-do-wells, were named Gorrd and Lod? Is it not true that Gorrd and Lod decided, in their drunkenness, not to content themselves with the usual pollution of a defenseless uninhabited planet, that their notion was to set off, in a manner vicious and vile, a biological evolution the likes of which the world has never seen before? Is it not true that both these Rhohches, with malice aforethought, malice of the greatest volume and intensity, devised a way to make of Earth - on a truly Galactic scale - a breeding ground for freaks, a cosmic side show, a panopticum, an exhibit of grisly prodigies and curios, a display whose living specimen would one day become the butt of jokes told even in the outermost Nebulae? Is it not true that, bereft of all sense of decency and ethical restraints, both these miscreants then emptied on the rocks of lifeless Earth six barrels of gelatinous glue, rancid, plus two cans of albuminous paste, spoiled, and that to this ooze they added some curdled ribose, pentose and levulose, and - as though that filth were not enough - they poured upon it three large jugs of a mildewed solution of amino acids, then stirred the seething swill with a coal shovel twisted to the left, and also used a poker, likewise bent in the same direction, as a consequence of which the proteins of all the future organisms on Earth were left-handed?! And, finally, is it not true that Lod, suffering at the time from a runny nose and - moreover - egged on by Gorrd, who was reeling from excessive intake of intoxicants, did willfully and knowingly sneeze into that protoplasmal matter, and, having infected it thereby  with most virulent viruses, guffawed that he has thus breathed 'the fucking breath of life' into those miserable evolutionary beginnings? And, is it not true that this leftwardness and this virulence were thereafter transmitted and handed down from organism to organism, and now afflict with their continuing presence the innocent representatives of the race Artefactum Abhorrens, who gave themselves the name "Homo Sapiens" purely out of single-minded ignorance?

So no wonder then...

(*) Causing some unprintable results on the way down, I have to notice.