I have always been of the opinion that we are alone in the universe. I have been badly outnumbered by those who see billions of stars and think the odds favor intelligent life beyond earth, so I was surprised to see the book "Rare Earth" get even a polite reception.
I think NASA should not be spending money looking for ET, and I would rather they had a different mission such as opening space to development. Mainly that would involve cheaper transportation and a favorable legal environment.
If we stumble across ET sometime, fine, we will deal with it. Until we serendipitously find ET, it is a weak mission to go looking.
Space tourism is the only market I foresee, but it's still too expensive and the training is still too rigorous for most people.
I for one hope we never encounter a civilization more advanced than we are. If they are at all militaristic and even a few hundred years more advanced than we are -- never mind millions of years more advanced -- we're goners.
I don't know about this rare earth stuff, either, having not read the book . . . But do we really know enough about life to say that advanced forms cannot evolve unless they have an environment just like earth's? I'm skeptical.
I used to think advanced life was probably abundant in the universe, but no more; the failure of the many SETI searches of the last few decades to turn up even one, argues strongly against it, IMHO.
So I'm with you, RW . . . NASA should change the focus from searching for life to exploiting and developing space near earth.
You are not alone...in your theory that is ;^)
Not only are the conditions extremely rare... but more importantly, the size of the universe is sooooo vast that even if there are intelligent critters out there who can communicate with us (extreeeeeemly doubtful), then it's ludicrous to me that we could receive their transmissions and then we could communicate back with them.
Given the speed of light, there's no way we could even dialog with any other beings (nevertheless meet 'em). That space-time continuum is a real pain in the neck. Not unless someone can travel at Star Trek speeds. And the beamer would help immensely too.
Personnaly, I base my 'theory' on the my beliefs that the creator of the universe came to this planet in the form of a human being and he then proceeded to let himself be killed for our sins. If God loves mankind that much, then obviously we are extreeeeemely special to Him (which I interpret as unique). Mankind's dominion over the planet confirms this.
I think technology is a wonderful thing as it only helps us to get a better glimpse of the greatness of the Almighty.