Young Writers Society

So... do you belive in extra terrestrial beings?
I am inclined to believe that somewhere there lives a race of intelligent beings. The idea is pretty enough I guess. What wont be so pretty would be that they decide to come other and settle here!
So what do you think? Aliens (or something else...) or not?

I firmly believe intelligent life exists elsewhere. Earth ain't so special.

Are (1)we the only (2)intelligent (3)life forms?

(1) It depends on who you count as we. Like, YWS, or the whole of humankind? Because I'm pretty sure I'm as smart as they come, but I would beg to differ on the idea of my brothers being as smart as me.

(2) And it depends on what you call intelligent. Is it the ability to create fire? Or the common sense not to play with it? I think my brothers would fail both of those tests, too.

(3) And it depends on what you mean by life forms? Do zombies count? Because they're more like dead forms but they still have complex brain structures (the ones that still have their brains.)

If you were hoping for more serious answers I can move this post to Serious Discussion and Debate for you ;]

I find us being the only living things in the universe very unlikely. We might live far enough away from each other that we never meet, but there has to be someone else out there.

If you look at this from a scientific view. Think about how life was created with all these "one in a billion" chances. I'm pretty sure there's more than two billion planets in the universe. Not having something similar enough to earth to create life (however different that life may be from earth) happen somewhere else is just difficult for me to imagine. We aren't that special.
So in my view there has to be other life in the universe. Intelligent life, well that gets tricky because you have to define intelligent life. Would that be just humans, or all animals? probably not plants, but how am I supposed to know? What do you mean by intelligent life?

Now I'm going to look at it from a more religious view. Because I am a Christian and most of the time when debating something like this I find that other Christians are the people who are more set in their belief of us being the only ones out there.
Usually the argument I hear used most is that the bible says that God created the heavens and the earth. I have never understood how that is enough to convince a person that there isn't anything else. I mean, I can tell you I have a pet dog and a pet cat. But that doesn't mean those are my only pets. For all you know I could have a bird and a lizard too! The only way you would know that those are my only pets is if I said "the only pets I have are my dog and my cat." I have yet to find a place in the bible where directly says "God created the heavens and the earth and nothing else." The bible doesn't really talk about anything outside of earth and things we would see from earth (like the sun and moon). So if it doesn't talk about it, it cannot be for it or against it.

Also, another argument I've heard is that God created us in his image, if he created other life what would be the point? Well, why did he create dogs? or raccoons? or fish? or birds? Only once have I ever heard a reasonable reply to that. They said "for our enjoyment." Well, if in 100 years we create the technology to travel to another planet, wouldn't it be enjoyable to have pets that are native to that planet, rather than trying to adapt our existing animals to that planet? God is smart, he prepares for the future. We've seen him carefully set up things before (Like with Jesus coming, that was so perfectly placed right after Alexander the Great united all of the known world so that everyone could speak the same language, I don't see how such a perfect opportunity to spread such amazing news would have fallen at the same time as Jesus's life without God's hand being in it), why would this be any different?

So anyway, that's just my opinion. If anyone thinks otherwise I'd love to see their opinion.

Trillions of stars in the Milky Way; infinate galaxies; possibly other universes. I find it impossible that there aren't at least several thousand worlds in our galaxy that have intelligent life as well. They say that we are an accident, but there have to have been other similar circumstances. I am even open to the possibility that there are other HUMANS and the circumstances that occured mirror earth's exactly, even though it is probably unlikely. I have heard ideas that, if civilizations have advanced further than us and can already explore other systems, they'd have reached us by now because it is unlikely that every civilization out there would have developed at the same rate as us. Some may have advanced behind us a bit, but every race could not have.

I believe otherwise. Maybe they are out there and maybe we are all roughly at the same rate since the universe was created at a specific time and planets form over a period of time and evolution and geographical shaping occurs at the same time. Maybe they, like us, have not developed space travel yet or, possibly, maybe leaving the solar system is actually impossible. A scary thought.

I'd like to believe that there are wormholes, space folds, those little spiral wormhole things that take a while to travel through (whatever they're called), and warp technology out there though.