After consideration I am not sure that extraterrestrial life exists.

Good call davidf. Agnosticism is usually the right answer on these things.

For what its worth, I'd opine that its more likely than not that we will find some sort of life somewhere sometime although it'll probably be very rudimentary life - RNA and the like. Its also quite possible we'll see some sort of bacteria-like life and other types of Prokaryotic life. Given recent discoveries, it now seems much less likely that we'll find Eukaryotic life let alone multi-cellular life. The more we look but don't find intelligent life, the more likely it becomes that no life-form anywhere in the galaxy has every reached our level of advancement ie no intelligent life in our galaxy cluster other than us.

That’s true, mhaze.

<<Working out the likelihood isn't evidence. Its guess-work based upon assumptions based on an imperfect knowledge of the universe.>>

However, the fact that we can have an idea (however vague) of the chances of life existing elsewhere in the universe renders any analogy, between the comparison of such chances with the chances of a god existing, false. Your ‘dark matter’ analogy also fails for similar reasons.

According to the latest estimates, there are at least 2 trillion galaxies in the universe. Each galaxy contains billions of stars. Even if a tiny portion of those stars had planets, and a tiny portion of those planets were capable of harbouring life, the chances that life does not exist somewhere else is still vanishingly small.

<<Just like DM is based guess-work based upon assumptions based on an imperfect knowledge of the universe.>>

Yes, but it’s still not analogous to a god, or the belief in gods, for the reasons I’ve mentioned so many times now.

<<The philosophy behind most of your posts?>>

Hardly something I would have thought you’d want to be suggesting, given that you have failed miserably on all three topics discussed: whether or not ”the deity” can be disproven, the difference between agnosticism and atheism, and now the validity of comparing the chances of extraterrestrial life existing with the chances of a god existing.

<<Agnosticism is usually the right answer on these things.>>

Finally you’ve applied the word ‘agnosticism’ correctly. Hooray!

Agnostic:
(in a non-religious context) having a doubtful or non-committal attitude towards something.

http://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/agnostic

Now you just need to learn its definition in the context of religion. Fat chance of that, eh?

<<The more we look but don't find intelligent life, the more likely it becomes that no life-form anywhere in the galaxy has every reached our level of advancement ie no intelligent life in our galaxy cluster other than us.>>

Yes, but there are at least 1,999,999,999,999 other galaxies.

OH I don't know. We've found some suprising places on earth with life on it. But those places are not livable for us.

If we are built in such a way that we flourish here. Perhaps there are worlds that we could not survive but another kind on thrives on another world that we could not survive.

A lack of knowledge on this does not say one way or another. But lacking knowledge does not mean we should lack hope. I think the prospect of other life is what fuels scientists to keep looking. Find out we are not alone.that our war torn world is not all there is in the glory and amazement in the heavens of stars and galaxies.

There are several potential conclusions. But there is still hope too. For those who've not met an ET and know their good or bad (UFOs nowadays seem to be less frequent then ghost stories), for those who just don't know there is still hope. That's in my opinion what fuels scientists to keep listening to the stars, when there are many other more practical things to be concerned about too.

...as of now we know that we live on a planet that is full of life. And we also know that that is a rare quality. An oasis in the desert of of the beutiful skies.

Dear Not_Now.Soon,

«But lacking knowledge does not mean we should lack hope. I think the prospect of other life is what fuels scientists to keep looking. Find out we are not alone.»

I am surprised: you would be the last person I would expect to hear this from.

Don't you hope in God?
What other hope need one have?
What need is there for other life when we can have eternal life in God?
Do we need to find out that we are not alone when God is always with us?