While I am tickled that even after all this time, the thread comes back to life, I am still convicted that we are not the only intelligent beings in the Universe.
Well here is my reasoning:
The bible teaches that man was created and that he sinned after giving in to Satan's temptation. Man was created in part in order to be tempted and tested as part of the answer to Lucifer/Satan's rebellion.
However God, in his grace and mercy and love, who knew this would happen, made a way for man to be reconciled to Him again. This being by Jesus coming to earth to live a sinless life as a man and to die for our sins.
The bible teaches that a flesh existence is not how we are meant to live, we are meant to have far better bodies (of which Jesus has one now) which are in fact higher than the bodies of angels, therefore, the true place we should be living is in heaven (or the new earth and heaven, yet to come). These bodies also will not die or perish. In short we live in these material bodies while the time of testing and temptation exists.
Now Jesus died for us so we can be saved and be able to attain life in heaven (new earth etc) and have glorified eternal bodies and life. In living on earth and dying he started Christianity and the message of Christianity is preached to this day to mankind.
To be saved you need to hear the message of the Gospel, know who Jesus is , understand the message and accept / believe on him as your Savior.
Now Jesus only died once, he will not die again, He is now seated at Gods right hand (ie in heaven as 2nd in command and even better than he was before his life and death here.)
However he still has the wounds of the nails etc to show he was crucified and he will apparently have these for eternity.
Now, if there were intelligent life comparable to us on other planets, then :
1) if they sinned they have no way to be saved as Jesus will not die again and he did not die for them. It would be like someone saying to us that Gods Son went to live on another planet as some alien and lived a perfect life there and if you believe that he did that then you can share in his salvation, but the story of his life and death be set in alien worlds and cultures etc with not one shred of proof. Yet you'd still be expected to live a moral life because of it and even die because of it.
No religion does that and one should not expect any alien life to understand, believe or accept what they are told about some far of planet called Earth.
In short this position states that any aliens that sin don't have a way to get right with God again AND therefore God would not have created them if he knew He would not be able to save them if they sinned.
2) Further, if the assumption is that there are aliens but they have never sinned, then they would not experience death as God would not let them die, but rather they would already have entered eternity, ie be at least equal to angels and hence not need to dwell in this material universe.
Lastly, the bible says that when Jesus 1000 year reign is over, some time after that the heavens and earth will be rolled up and replaced with new heavens and earth. This is saying that this universe exists as long as Gods plan for man is in operation, once the fullness of salvation has come to mankind, then this universe is replaced with the eternal heavenly universe and creation.
It is broadly due to this line of reasoning that i say that as a Christian, my theology leads me to conclude that there is no other comparable intelligent carbon based mortal life anywhere else in this universe, other than possibly plant and animal life.
