This post will sound two ways. First, it will sound like I am saying something, when in reality, I am asking something. Second, it is going to sound like I am picking on a specific group of people. I am not. I am merely accepting an undeniable reality and asking "why?"
     Although the idea of intelligent life elsewhere in the Universe has been dismissed by some Atheists and Agnostics, the overwhelming majority of people who refuse to even acknowledge the possibility are Western, Christian Creationists. Here is where it gets weird for me. Of all the people I could think of to have a problem with the idea, the Creationists should be the last on the list. Oddly, they are first. I am going to explain why I believe it is strange that Creationists would be so vociferously set against the idea, as well as what I believe to be the cause of their vehement reluctance to even entertain the possibility.
     Christianity teaches many things about God. There are two basic precepts to the Christian view of God that factor into this discussion. First, Christianity teaches that God is eternal. To the Christians, this not only means that God will live forever and never die but that he has ALWAYS existed, without Beginning. I know most people believe they can comprehend the notion of living forever into the future. I do not believe we can. I believe that we have convinced ourselves that we understand the depth and implications of the concept. More than that, I do not believe that the Human mind can fully comprehend the concept of always being. Can we really understand what it means to have no beginning? It is concepts such as this that make Faith a necessary part of belief in any Diety. Faith is a mechanism through which we can fill in the blanks left by a lack of facts, information or ability to intellectually understand a concept. For the purpose of this discussion, we will assume that this Faith is not misplaced and that God has indeed existed forever.
     If He has, what has he been doing with his time? Christian tradition teaches that God created the Heavens and the Earth in six days. I know Mike Huckabee believes this to be a fact. I know he is not alone. From our perspective, "six days" means six 24 hour periods. That leaves God with an enormous amount of wasted time on His hands. Archaeology and Anthropology have proven, beyond question, that whether we evolved or were Created, Humans have existed on this planet for millions of years. The Earth itself has existed much longer than that. Even if you accept that the writer of Genesis was engaging in some literary liberties and that it took a lot longer than six of our days, say hundreds, thousands or even millions of years for God to create the Universe and everything in it, that still leaves billions of trillions of years of God's time unaccounted for. What was he doing for the 100,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 years before that? Not to mention the 100,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 years before that? Now do you understand what I mean about having no beginning? I could have put a 1 at the top of the page and filled the rest of the page with zeros and it would still only represent a microcosm of the time Christianity teaches us that God has already existed. What has a being with His awesome creative powers been doing all this time? He sat around for an eternity to finally get off His cosmic Duff and create, what, US? The experiment He tried here, (I say 'experiment' because the Bible teaches that the purpose of the Great Flood was to wipe out the mistake and start over) He never tried anywhere else in the Universe? If not, then what has He been doing with all His time? Trying to figure out why Britney Spears, Ben Stiller and David Caruso have careers?
     The second teaching of Christianity that factors into this discussion is the idea that we were created in God's image. This belief has the effect of making a person feel special. Taken literally, it means we are nothing short of God-like. That is, in the mind of a Christian anyway, a very unique thing to be. It has long been held by Christians that Mankind represents the pinnacle of God's handiwork. That attitude (and this is where you all get pissed at me) has always seemed like an exercise in arrogance to me. To understand why I feel this way, look at where the idea came from. Thousands of years ago, some guy wrote down that God created us, He did it in six days and we were made in His image. None of us know this guy. We heard that he claimed to be inspired by God to write what he wrote. We have no way of knowing if he really did claim that or if he did, if the claim was true. THAT is what Faith is for. We have chosen to believe it because it makes us feel special and it justifies the superiority, real or imagined, that we have seen fit to bestow upon ourselves.
     As near as I have been able to figure out, it is this arrogance that demands of many of us that we reject the notion that, somewhere else in this vast Universe, God may well have created other forms of intelligent life with all the time He has had on His hands. We are just too unique and special for it to be possible for there to exist other races of beings equal to, or superior to us. Thus it is that the one group of people who should be most open to the idea, given their special knowledge of God's lifespan, not to mention His creative abilities, are the most likely to reject it out of hand. They are unique in all of Creation. The Bible tells them so. Pat Robertson tells them so. Therefore, the question is closed. Arrogance demands it.
     Well, I'm not that arrogant. Are we the crowning achievement of God's creative power? I don't know. If we are, may I politely suggest that He needs more practice? By and large, we suck. I would think that an all-knowing, all-seeing, all-powerful God, with eternity and beyond to think about it, could do better than us. I am humble enough to allow for the possibility that He has tried. Perhaps somewhere, on some distant planets, live the results of other creative endeavours He has undertaken throughout limitless Time. Perhaps not. As it stands now, we have no way to know for sure. To insist that we are all there is, that nothing else in the Universe but God Himself can compare to how "amazing" we are, is an exercise in self-convincing, as well as unmitigated arrogance.
     So here are my questions? Why do you believe we are the only sentient, intelligent or "advanced" life in the Universe? Why are you so insistent that the existence of such life elsewhere is impossible? Why is it so damn important to you that we are "all there is?" Can you explain to me how your Bible, which goes to such lengths to demand humility from you, permits such unapologetic arrogance?
     It is possible that I am just hopelessly dense. Be that as it may, I fail to see how, if God created us to live here, He could not have created others to live elsewhere. Could someone please explain to me how those two concepts are mutually exclusive?

     NOTE: I am Agnostic. I am neither a believer or a disbeliever. I do not have enough information to make a decision about the existence of God and Faith doesn't cut it for me. I accept the possibility that there is a God, just as I accept the possibility that there might not be. I am not convinced we just evolved, nor am I convinced we were created. I also do not believe those two states to be mutually exclusive. If there is a God, it may be that we were created to evolve. It may also be that other societies, on other planets, were created to do the same or that they have evolved as we have. Accepting that, I am forced to accept the possibility that other cultures may exist elsewhere and that they may be less or more advanced, (and by unimaginable margins) than we are.
     Although comments and thoughts from all are welcome, I wrote this in the hopes that those who believe in God might be willing or able to explain to me why they seem so dead set against the idea of other worlds being inhabited by intelligent life forms of some kind.
     This is not an attack. It is the result of decades of observation and curiosity about what I have observed, mostly in a particular group of people. If I don't ask, I can't understand.