At last, another post in the UFnO category, a continuation of my attempts at explaining why I’m atheistic regarding the likelihood of aliens ever visiting us, or we them.
I use the term atheistic deliberately; I’m inclined to think that belief in extraterrestrial intelligence visiting Earth is precisely that — it’s a faith, essentially a religion, something that is superficially plausible but that dabbles in the improbable, and without much digging.
To recap, in my first installment I discussed the simple improbability of life meeting us or vice-versa. For me, what it essentially boils down to is the realization that the evolution of technological intelligence is not required anywhere; and that the timescales of the cosmos are such that parallel development of technological intelligences within feasible contact range of one another, at more or less the same time, is extremely unlikely. To this add the absolute silence in radio spectra of all stars within our detection range, and things don’t look too good for the LGMs.
In ensuing discussions here and elsewhere several objections were posted; I’ll try to answer them here as best I can.
