I checked undecided. I was asked the same question in person this weekend and have pondered it since. There is little doubt in my mind that in this vast universe that there are stars like our sun and planets around those stars like those found in our solar system. The major question being is there intelligent life on those worlds?

I think the answer depends upon whether life is a relative simple by-product of matter plus time which develops from simple to complex / intelliegence as a natural unguided process or whether life is actually highly complex and requires something beyond time and chance to come about. My understanding is even the most basic living organisms are incredibly complex so imagine unless a guiding force is involved that "basic" life much less intelligent life would be rare in our universe.

I once read a book that, from a scientific standpoint, convinced me that intelligent life in the universe doesn't exist. It's called Rare Earth: Why Complex Life Is Uncommon In the Universe, by Peter D. Ward and Donald Brownlee (2000, Copernicus) The jacket copy says, "Ever since Carl Sagan and Frank Drake announced tht extraterrestrial civilizations must number in the millions, the search for life in our galaxy has accelerated. But, in this brilliant and carefully argued book, Ward and Brownlee question the underlying assumptions of Sagan and Drake's model, and take us on a search for life that reaches from the volcanic hot springs deep on our ocean floors to the frosty face of Europa, Jupiter's icy moon. In the process, we learn that, while microbial life may well be prevalent throughout the Universe, the conditions necessary for the evolution and survival of higher life---and here the authors consider everything from DNA to plate tectonics to the role of our moon---are so complex and precarious that they are unlikely to arise in many other places, if at all."

These guys are perfectly willing to accept evolutionary theory, so for them to virtually prove that anything more complex than microbes could not have "evolved" anywhere else than on our own equisitely balanced orb says a lot to me. From a theological (and mathematical) standpoint, I'm convinced that life never arose anywhere spontaneously. If Yahweh didn't put it there, it's not there---though the scriptures don't make a statement about it one way or the other. I used to wonder if perhaps our God did this same sort of "experiment" on maybe one planet per galaxy, just to see what would happen. But now, having an inkling of the pain He endured for our sakes, I sincerely doubt that He did.

kp

I found this site very entertaining and uplifting. This is another reformed athiest who in attempting to prove that God does not exist, proved (to himself at least) that He indeed does.

Linked here is his explanation of the Miracle of Life. If you go deep enough I believe this where he gets into why planet Earth is the place that life happened.

From CNN:

First images of new planets captured
The first-ever pictures of planets outside our solar system were released today in two studies. Using the latest techniques in space technology, astronomers at NASA and the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory used direct-imaging techniques to capture pictures of four newly discovered planets orbiting stars outside our solar system. full story