It annoys me when I hear people asking this question. "Do you believe in aliens" Like it's a religion or something.
Lacking concrete evidence and depending simply on the stories of others and a few questionable publications, the presence of alien life does more or less have to be taken on faith. You can't say they exist, but you can believe they do. It does sound a bit like a religion.
Hmmm, trillions of planets, trillions of stars, billions perhaps trillions of Galaxies. Do I believe in Aliens? Well duh huh!
There are two camps to the UFO subject: those who agree they exist, like people agree Antarctica exists (although they've never been there); and those who believe they exist, because they want there to be something more than us. The first camp would stop agreeing they exist the moment they're shown not to; the second probably would not stop believing in that case. Personally, after having read a lot of material on the subject, I am still keeping an open mind on it. I think it's a fun thing to read about; one of the most entertaining sources I've come across is Wendy Connors Faded Discs CD recording of reports to the National UFO Reporting Center in Seattle. It's a historical audio account dating from the 1970's on, and it's 44 hours of spooky fun.
All it takes is just ONE other planet out there to have developed life and aliens are 'out there'. That one planet doesn't even need to be Earth like, it could be a harsh world but still have developed life to live on it, afterall we have life at the north and south poles in the coldest of conditions and they survive. The odds are in favour of other life out there and remember, we only need there to be ONE other planet out there for there to be alien life.
Latest estimates suggest there could be between 361 and nearly 38,000 different intelligent civilisations out there, depending on whose model of planetary formation and intelligent life development you believe: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7870562.stm Personally, I believe we're too late. They're everywhere.
I wish we would speed up our space programs, at the end of the day there could be a malevolent species out there who are developing faster than we are and when they start going out into the cosmos they might find us and decide they wanna get rid of us. We should prepare for worst case scenarios and buck our ideas up. Better safe than sorry.
^^ I for one welcome our nonexistent alien overlords. At least it would provide interesting conversation.
That's just for our galaxy though, and there are billions of other galaxies out there. So, taking all of the universe into account, or at least all of the part we can see, those numbers become much, much larger. I believe there is life out there. Probably a lot more than we expect. But, I doubt little greenmen are visiting us and anal probing rednecks.
You know, I don't believe we on Earth are the only humans in the Universe either. It's a blind belief, yes, and a low likelihood, but not outside the realsm of possibility.
Given the size and nature of the Universe and its physical laws, it doesn't take faith to believe in alien life; in fact, it would take faith not to believe. I have no doubt that there are other intelligent species out there; however, I don't believe they have ever come to visit us. The UFO/Flying Saucer thing is a different story, and that definitely is a form of religious belief (though a somewhat more entertaining kind than most ).
I dont believe all the stories of aliens coming to earth and abducting humans for experiments because they can't have babies. It just sounds so stupid. You mean to tell me an alien race has the technology to fly billions of miles, yet they are still too stupid to know how to make babies? C'mon. Another reason I find alien visitation hard to believe is how did they find us? Out of the trillions of stars and planets out there, they just happened upon our planet and got lucky? If there are aliens I think they are living on their planet wondering if other life exists or they are flying around in their ships still searching for life, but havent found us yet.
I believe, that within the vastness of the Universe, that they is a very, very high possibilty that life exists somewhere other than Earth. I believe that they is a good possibilty that a small portion of that life is sentient. However I do not ignore the very, very, very minute possibility that life of Earth is all there is. None of this takes faith at all.
I certainly believe in aliens. It seems absurd to believe that out of the trillions of planets inhabiting the cosmos we are the ONLY ones. As for UFOs - I'm open to the idea but would need more conclusive evidence, say... a craft landing on the white house lawn.
I do believe other worlds may well be inhabited. Have any visited our planet in the last thousand years? Not very fucking likely.
We're blaring out some pretty powerful radio signals. Anyone passing within, say, 60 light-years of us would have a chance of noticing them.