Originally Posted by Rod Kaufman
I believe it's both foolish and arrogant to think that intelligent life does not exist elsewhere in the universe. If you travel to a truly dark sky observing site, one in which you can't discern a tree line or, for that matter, your own hand in front of your face, you'll see so many stars that it can make it to difficult to pick out familiar constellations and those myriad of visible stars are only those in our own galaxy. They've taken the Hubble space telescope and pointed it an area of space previously thought to be devoid of anything and found a myriad of galaxies that are island universes in and of themselves. The universe has got to be teeming with intelligent life. I just don't believe it crashed-landed on a ranch in New Mexico in 1947...
Rod, you indeed may be correct(I'll admit that is possible, AFAIK) in thinking that the universe is teeming with life, but so far there is no evidence to support that. I often wonder what it was like for early man to gaze up at pristine, dark skies. Dark skies I've experienced(not quite like you've described) are definitely awe inspiring, but have never led me to thinking about other intelligent life existing; I found myself simply overwhelmed by the beauty.
Oddly, when I was much younger, I think I would have been inclined to agree with you. But somewhere along the line, my thinking changed.