Do We Have a Moral Obligation to Seed the Universe with Life?

Humans always need to tamper with nature, it makes people like this (theoretical scientists who have little actual grounding in Natural History) feel more important. We need to save the universe and seed it with life! Only a fool tamper with something that he admires. Stand back, be mostly silent, and enjoy it like an adult.

A society that has stopped having children is pondering this question?

no humans=no moral mission. Problem solved.

"Life is a disease of matter," we shouldn't be spreading it.

Geez, I hope not. Look how screwed up we are.

maybe that is how we got here

We should probably be quarantined here on our planet to prevent us from contaminating the rest of the universe. Sounds like a really bad idea to me.

leave well enough alone. science has proven that the application of practical theory is destroying our own environment, why should we plauge the rest of the universe.

Judith got it. Without life, there is no morality,and thus no moral obligation. Problem solved.

"Geez, I hope not. Look how screwed up we are."

If "nonexistence" is better than being screwed up, you're making a strong argument for suicide.

Humans failing to measure up to the standards humans set for themselves is a reason they shouldn't spread?

Interesting.

I think we should make like an Australia planet, where we send a bunch of criminals and people from jail, and have them mingle with the aliens on the primitive plants and then go there and surf occasionally. Awe Space Surfing

I've already contributed to seeding things with life plenty as a teen.

There is no moral obligation for life. Life exists because it does. Is the universe better off without humanity? Probably, but that's never stopped us. Just hope we fix more mistakes then we make.

There is no question that it is our moral duty to relieve pain and suffering on this very planet we are now living on. Let's focus on that before worrying about the rest of the universe.

I think it would be best for our race, but it would mess up whatever planet we go to the same way we messed up australia. Sucks for them

Keep in mind these are microscopic bacteria, etc. - not homo-sapiens. The focus is preserving Life in general, not "our race," and whatever evolves on these planets will look nothing like Earth life.

"Do We Have a Moral Obligation to Seed the Universe with Life?"

Shouldn't that read: "Do We Have Right to Contaminate the Universe with our Stupidity, Arrogance and Prejudice?"

No.

How about, "hell no!"?

R2K: Beavers. Beavers always must tamper with mature. Always chopping down trees, flooding fields and making their swimmy holes. Nature tampering with nature; I sense an infinite loop coming on.

Sounds like Songs From Distant Earth by Arthur C. Clarke.

Frankly I think the question is moot. The universe does not care if there is life. I want to see humanity survive the planet Earth, yes, probably because I'm wired that way, but I really don't care about microbial life. Life for life's sake is kind of uh... meaningless?

dude good question, people with morals are hard to find and even harder to keep around obligated well to each is own rite? dosen't it all fall upon the person and their descions,i mean if you choose to do the wrong thing has opposed to chooseing to do the rite thing ? does that make sense....i do enjoy the metaphor " morally obligated to "keep the ball rollig"...great mind....

Also sounds like the Blish story "Surface Tension" (
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surface_Tension_(short_story) ). Wonderful read.

The good things humanity has accomplished deserve to be perpetuated. I would hate to think some advanced, benevolent intelligence in another galaxy failed to try to survive by seeding the universe. AFAIK, we qualify (since we're the only intelligence we know).

I love the way people who have never considered this question before are suddenly able to answer with the authority of an Alfred North Whitehead.

The moral obligation part of the argument is irrelevant. Life (whether we speak of microbes or humans) is compelled by its nature to multiply and spread; that's what it is and that's what it does. And it (and we) will continue to do so. By, say, a thousand years from now we will have developed the technology to spread our seed to other places Out There. By the time the Sun goes kablooey billions of years hence, we will no doubt have colonized the far reaches of our galaxy, and the far reaches of our galaxy will do the same to this place.

This, of course, assumes we don't all die via global warming or a massive asteroid collision or somesuch in the next several centuries...

You bet we do!!! It's the single most important thing we can do! As an atheist, the closest thing to a religious mission I think we're on is to convert the universe from empty matter to conscious matter.

man there are a lot of snobbish losers commenting on this post.

"let's not send organisms to barren rocks because the rocks are better off barren." how about "No". rocks don't care, and don't forget, rocks are boring. i love science but rocks are BORING. let's put some monsters on those rocks. why? because we can. the arrogance of our species? sure, "we think we're so great" well yeah, we're pretty super awesome last time i checked. we have rockets and stuff, dolphins are great, but we have rockets. "we shouldn't play god." why not? there is no god, so it's pretty much an available position. there might as well be a giant sign hanging on the universe that says "now hiring: god" let's terraform mars. seed europa with life, and pump our fists frantically while yelling "YEAH!"

morals are subjective, there is no wrong and right, so let's do what is awesome. because it's awesome.

The human race will be as extinct as dinosaurs well before this Earth ends!!!

What if scientists did that and another planet thought it was biological warfare and retaliated on our planet?

The universe has its own methods for creating life.

Plenty of life out there already without our help. Not to mention the fact that it's entirely moot. We're hundreds of years away from this question having any practical significance.

Yay!!! More human beings to contaminate the universe!!! Expansion of present-day-human economic and social policies throughout the bloody universe.Ticker tape and coca cola bottles stretching from here to Alpha Centauri. And if life exist on other planets? Either enslave 'em or sell stuff, or enslave 'em and sell 'em stuff.

I believe that man is the only physical intellectual life created. The universe with its many stars will be settled by intellectual being from the mother seed, "Earth". The technology that will cause this to come into being cannot come from man until war is removed from the Earth. And, death by the hands of man is no longer reasoning for solving issues. Then will that technology be released to man. Death and Hell will not leave the Earth until man has resolved this issure. Lee Ferry, www.leeferrysbestbook.com.

What if what is sent is dangerous for the local environment? We could kill the local microbes for ours. Could this potentially erase the potential for an advanced civilization that might develop without our interference? Lets fix this planet before we start to meddle around with other planets.

they should make a planet with dinosaurs and name it Dinotopia!! XD

Do it. Lets make the universe compatible with homegrown bio. If there's alien life out there that can be damaged, then oh well. Welcome to the survival of the fittest. Its a battle that earth organisms have been having for quite some time,just with ourselves.
Also if there's alien life to be "damaged" maybe it was seeded by some other intelligent alien doing what we want to do. How would you ever know otherwise?

Also maybe that's how life on earth started. A bio bomb from some ancient alien race. You can't go around whining about right/wrong on this sort of thing, it'll be forever debatable and times a wastin'.
Just do it and deal with the results.

I believe it is imperative that we seed life wherever we can as soon as we can. I think those that are opposed to this idea are simply not looking at the larger picture. Certainly, we as a species have many many failings. But observe the great good that we are able to accomplish when we set ourselves to do it. We must assume, for our own good, that we will continue to grow and learn, to make mistakes and also learn to fix them, as we have done for thousands of years. To learn to use our environment to the best of its ability, but without damaging it beyond its ability to repair. Seeding the planets with the basic life forms needed to allow the development of a compatible ecosystem will be a way of paying back our own creation, whether deliberate or not, and adding to the amazing and immense beauty of the universe. What a glorious gift to give. And in time our descendants will travel to where we planted and discover wonders we cannot have imagined. If God does exist, he would be pleased that we valued his gift to us enough to give it to other worlds.

Mankind is destroying this planet, why would anyone want to cause another world to suffer the stupidity of the human race. I hope humans never go to another planet. Leave the universe alone, it will fare far better without the human race interfering with it.

I have never seen such a concentration of misanthropes. Some commenters are so misanthropic that they have read things into the article that aren't even there, just so they can tell us how awful we are. Just like a human, to sprinkle microbes on sacred barren rocks, defiling the whole universe. With such a cancerous, sinful infestation, if the universe had any brains it would hit us with the biggest asteroid it had around. Until that happens, we should probably sit around and feel guilty, and hopefully die, I guess.

I don't know, but I'm trying to spread my seed whenever and wherever possible.

Then we could monitor them during their technological adolescence. I am thinking we could show up in spaceships that can flee at high speeds when detected. We would be immensely evolved an look like aliens to them. Hay, wait a minute!

Shades of the Kurt Vonnegut story "The Big Space F***" that appeared, I think in Harlan Ellison's first volume of DANGEROUS VISIONS.

panspermia = space bukakke

Think, where was mankind before there was mankind; I think the seeding job is taken already.

I agree with coldfish, this is an awesome idea. Those in the "boo humans r teh suxxor" crowd are whining for no reason, TFA is suggesting seeding the cosmos with microbes not humans. Also the microbes that would be sent would probably not destroy any native microbes that they came across as those microbe would have had years to develop and evolve in their own habitat while ours would be engineered by humans and computers trying to approximate what the enviroment is like on some distant rock. This person should set up a nonprofit in order to pursue this. Seed the near galaxy with microbe rockets and space sails.

Wow, so that's misanthropy!

What if we seed the universe, though, and we end up creating the next Hitler?

Humanity is a cancer upon this earth; we reproduce for the sake of reproduction and kill our host in our wake. Not that I'm not diggin' my role as cancer in sneakers (or would ever wish harm on my fellow man), but there is NO need to to make it an intergalactic phenomenon.

we have a moral obligation to prevent the further spread of the carbon infestation

Boy, this one prompted a lot of comments. My opinion is "seed" = infest.

we have been waiting for some advanced race from out there somewher to discover us - what if we are the ones destined to be that first great spacefaring race?

A few people now have referred to infestation rather than seeding. They are somewhat synonymous, except that infest has a negative connotation. Now, whether life exists or not is of no moral consequence in itself. Life is not good or bad, just a process. So, it seems to me that these "infestation" people are for some reason anti-life. They prefer a lifeless universe, or at least believe we should somehow not effect or manipulate the universe and let it roll on as if we didn't exist? Or maybe they fear our seedling microbes would somehow displace native life, which is evil when humans do it, even unintentionally. Of course, if panspermia or extinction is caused by anything other than humans, it isn't evil, just natural, eh? A strange morality that seems to set us outside of the natural world, and excuses all actions except those made by humans, who's actions can not be in any way explained by natural processes, but must have been chosen by free will with some malevolent sinful intent. I find that a pretty depressing world view.

"Humans failing to measure up to the standards humans set for themselves is a reason they shouldn't spread?"

Well put Tertium.

The act of creating life is a gift that the beneficiary enjoys as they see fit. We're getting hung up on the idea that we can't control the direction of life as it rolls forward in the flood of time. Since we can't then it's better not continuing life? What unspeakable presumption. And very authoritarian, I might add.

Each of you has parents who in some form or another made the decision for you to exist here on earth. They set no conditions on your existing. They knew you could become a monster or a god or maybe just an animal, but all the same their decisions gave you that choice.

As well to say that nobody should have children because one of them may be the next Hitler. They may also become the next Gandhi, the next Voltaire, the next Helmuth Hübener.

That's the point. You get to choose who you are. So will they.

-Incidentally, Helmuth Hübener's life story was an interesting one:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helmuth_H%C3%BCbener

Do we have a moral obligation to possibly contaminate other places in the universe that might already have, or have in the future, their own forms of life?

Hell no.

I think the whole thing reeks of arrogance. In the cosmic sense of things, what makes Earth life so darned special anyway? What gives mere humans the right to go dinking around with other planets and such?

Why not? It's not about rights, it's about philosophy and unanswered questions regarding life elsewhere. We recently learned that our own potential to be "heard" by other life forms out there is dampened by our TV signal switchover.

As far as we scientifically know, we're it. "We" meaning everything on this planet that isn't mineral. To seed some primal world with the right conditions to make panspermia work is not arrogant, it's noble.

Think of the possibilities, maybe things would evolve into a Utopia. No religion, no countries, no possessions. Etc.

Shannon hit it on the head - do we want to convert "empty matter" into "conscious matter". This has nothing to do with morality, and nothing to do with spreading "humans".

It's a question of wether or not we want to seed LIFE in it's most basic forms, allowing it to progress and evolve into something more complex. It's about wether we want to generate AWARENESS. And I think we should. I do think we need to be careful not to interfere with planets that may already have simple life, but should we seed "dead" empty worlds? Hell yeah! The Universe could use more opportunities to become self-aware, although it does already have mechanisms in place to do this... but we can still help :) Of course, we should focus on our own problems here on Earth first... especially since we're driving ourselves to extinction...

I think that life has seeded itself in the places where it is currently needed. before we go talking about seeding the universe with life (which seems like the very definition of hubris) let's learn how the hell to take care of what we've got here

something more to consider is that while everyone is responding on the idea that we as humans are the plan for this new planet, consider we are not. Everyone reading this blog should go to the popular science website and look under technology and then robots. The gov. is spending billions on creating robots that can think and feel and make choices, they are the potential beings for any new planet found, and they are what is being sent out to space to see if it can survive. So dont worry fellow humans neither you or your children have a role in the coming future. Think about all the technology wonders we know about- you think the government isn't decades further in their advancements? Right. They can and are doing things that everyone should be thinking about. If we are going to preserve life then its time society came together without the government and found a way to coexist. The government is taking us where they want us group by group and nobody says a thing til their group is confronted. Future planets- lets worry about our planet and our people. No jobs, teachers laid off- no relief money for Katrina- but billions to build robots for some hopeful future life. What a joke.