Extraterrestrial life on Earth already exists, from bacteria to pollens and other microscopic life forms, which have been brought here in the bellies of millions of meteorites over Billions of years. Microbial life, yet life none the less. With the melting of the Glaciers and Ice Caps, meteorites that had not seen the Sun for Millions or even Billions of years will soon be soaking up the rays, and any extraterrestrial life forms contained within would be free to interact with the local life forms. What consequences arise from their newborn release and interaction in the food chain boggles the mind, the scenarios endless. Could extraterrestrial life be the reason for HIV/AIDS, the Spanish Flu, and numerous other Black Plague like diseases? No one has proven that they are not, their origins still suspect or heavily theorized, but yet not scientifically proven beyond a doubt. And we only have some knowledge of the past few hundred years of our existence on Earth, what of the time back to the beginning of mankinds’ existence? Thats’ a lot of interaction for our planets’ occupants with spacial cast-offs.
But, as far as conscious life forms, sentient beings, show me one and I will believe. As soon as the “Mother Ship” arrives, I will be a firm believer. However, with about as much physical, scientifically proven evidence of an alien life form visiting our Planet as God has, or His Son has, where do we place our faith? Since that is, basically, all that we have for both sentient alien visitation and faith-based religions; faith. We have a multitude of religions on this planet, with as many Gods, (or more, if we include the Romans, Mayans and Greeks of ancient times) and all are based on faith, faith that the God that they pray to exists and faith of the existence of an after-life. And faith that there was a space craft that crashed in Roswell, New Mexico, and all the other stories, theories and conspiracies prevalent in our society. All based on faith, not fact.
I know, it is very conceited of Mankind to think that we are the only thinking, sentient beings in the Universe. But Life? of course there is life in Space; probably only at the microscopic level, but still a form of life. When talking about sentient beings though, the chances become slimmer. The formation of life on Earth was the result of billions of different yet related events occurring at just the right times in the planets’ evolution, atmosphere, oxygenation, water and rain-cycles all had to come first. The chances of the exact same thing happening on another planet is astronomical, but yet not zero. But for non-sentient life (microbial, plants, etc.) to exist, the odds are much more in their favor. Since our Galaxy, compared to the Universe, is like a drop of water in the Earths’ oceans when talking about size, and since almost each and every star we see, and all the ones we can not see, have planets orbiting around them, saying that Earth is the only planet with life forms on it is very pretentious of us, is it not?
Yes, I do believe that there are other Planets with living creatures on them, but the chances that those life forms are humanoid, or conscious thinking beings, is extremely marginal. If a tree or vine is a life form, if pollens, bacterium, viruses etcetera as well are life forms, then yes, there is life that did not evolve on Earth, thus extraterrestrial. Meteorites have proven that. But when discussing the viability of being visited by sentient beings from other planets, we must also face the obvious question; why would they bother coming here? If Aliens can view our news channels, movies, and all other forms of media streaming through space on a myriad of frequencies, why would they bother to visit, unless they were here to assess our progress as a society, or to size us up for a good few billion meals. Both scenarios would assume that they are smart enough to avoid detection. We are a war based society, and it would be more than obvious to any race with the capability for space travel and exploration that we would welcome them with open missile silos. Visiting Earth would not be viewed as a friendly visit with the neighbors or a trip to a theme park.
As far as being visited by alien life forms of the sentient variety, humanoid or scary creature, our imagination knows no bounds. If we were actually visited by alien life forms, there would be some irrefutable evidence of some sort. Sort of like the pyramids or the big faces on Easter Island; things we still can not properly envision how they were constructed with the tools of the times. But that does not mean aliens did it, or aided in their construction.
