Sugarfoot Jack...that is an absolutely fascinating theory, and I see no reason why I should cast aspersions upon it or attack it in any way. It may be quite correct that "life is everywhere and planets are seeded with life by extremophile bacteria".

I've always thought it quite probable that life is, in fact, found all over the Universe, but probably in a tremendous variety of forms. If so, only a few of those forms would likely have evolved to the point of doing what we've done, and developing technologically advanced civilizations. Many of those forms of life might be so different from life on Earth that we wouldn't even recognize them as life.

In any case, I think the theory you've mentioned is a really neat one and there may be something to it. Furthermore, it could be a correct theory, and we could still be being visited by alien spacecraft anyway, as those 2 possibilities are not mutually exclusive.

Shimrod - Why look at it strictly from a Christian point of view? All the major religious traditions suggest that humanity in its present state is in need of further enlightenment and moral development. It's not an exclusively Christian concern, it's a universal human concern, and that's because it's a REAL concern.

Any human being honest enough to examine his own nature and the behaviour of humans in general can see that we need to make some improvements. ;-D I do not have to belong to any religion to see that (and I don't belong to any religion). I just have to use logic and common sense to see it.

Furthermore, I'm not particularly attracted to the Christian religion and never have been. I find the 3 main religions that sprang from the people in the Middle East (Jewish, Christian, Muslim) not very appealing at all because they are:

- too patriarchal
- too guilt-ridden
- too authoritative
- too violent
- and just generally creepy in certain respects

I much prefer Taoism and Buddhism. ;-) Read a book on Taoism and then get back to me. You will find no God in that book, no guilt trip, and none of the well-known negative hangups with which Christianity is littered. Just good humour and common sense.

Then you said: "we've seen no convincing evidence for them"

Wrong. You've seen no convincing evidence for them! ;-) I have. Many other people have. And the government has, but the government isn't telling you about it. If they decide one day that they can control the domestic population better by scaring the shit out of them about space aliens (like they are now scaring them about terrorists), THEN they will tell you some stuff about aliens...but it probably won't be very true stuff, because they generally lie pretty much every time their lips move.

And then you said: "Finally, the cost and difficulty of interstellar must be immense and it still seems unlikely to me that a space-faring people would travel that far just to disconcert a few Americans and Canadians"

Well, Duh!!! ;-) Really??? No, of course they wouldn't do it just to disconcert a few Earthlings. Why would they care about disconcerting anyone? Did European explorers send fragile wooden ships across the Atlantic and Pacific and dare all the perils of those early voyages to disconcert people in Hawaii and North America????? No. They did it because they wanted to KNOW about stuff they didn't know about yet and go places they hadn't been yet. Nothing is more basic to intelligent life than curiosity. If people can go somewhere new or try something new, they will, mostly because they want to satisfy their insatiable need to KNOW about things.

Why did we send men to the moon? Why do we climb Mount Everest? Why do we do any of these risky things? For the very same reasons that any intelligent race explores unexplored territory...we want to know what's there. We want to understand it. We want to enlarge our knowledge. And that is why they would come here, go anywhere else in the Universe that they could reach, and they would spend ANY amount of effort to do it....just like we do. We have spent insane amounts of money to make brief and very unprofitable trips to the Moon and to put little machines on Mars, etc....so why wouldn't others do similar stuff if they possessed the technology to do so?

Like us, they would go absolutely anywhere they were capable of going, because that is what curious creatures do.