What scientists REFUSE to say, and with good reason, is that the impact events were part of some master plan of a great diety or some far away superior life force to rid the planet of its ‘accumulated infections’. There is a pattern to these events but the reasons why they have occurred on such a regular frequency has not been properly explained. To think any different would be folly.

“Humans have a genetic need to deny the function of space rock impacts, which is to periodically cleanse the Earth of accumulated infections.”

You almost make it sound like uncleanliness causes the rocks to hit us. Kinda like a magnet, huh?

I like the rest of it, even though it’s unsubstantiated.

Man, that’s some rant. Quite poetic, too.
And for all I know, you might be right. Who can tell, before time and study clarify such matters?

On a more serious note, this story sums up the tension in modern science between truth and sensationalism. We are storytelling animals. The true facts may be more or less interesting than the marvelous story we can tell from the facts, and many good scholars can get caught in the riptide.

I agree with those whose see the Earth’s biosphere extending, through physical and metaphysical interactions, deep into the Solar System. Evolutionary biology and archaeology cannot be fully mapped, as it were, without accounting for mass and energy inputs from exoplanetary sources. Pulses of cometary debris, interplanetary plasma discharges, poorly-understood field interactions between the Sun and its planets, and other infrequent phenomena all likely shaped our ancestors’ lives.