...and your bona fides compared to these 2 scientists is...?
BTW, these scientists only present the scientific facts as they exist, to the best of astrophysical knowledge, they don’t present wild theories.
How many extrasolar planets would it take to begin to tackle the problem of probability of life? A million?
I am not a scientist if that’s what you mean. I definitely can’t do the math. But, I have a pretty good brain and I can think conceptually. I was speaking philosophically. I can observe existence and form concepts about it without having a Phd. One of the authors is an astrophysicist. There are other astrophysicists who believe as I do. The other is a philosopher. That doesn’t mean I should believe everything he says. There are many philosophers who many different ideas. They can’t all be right.
I note that you have not addressed my philosophical argument about there never being only one of any kind of thing. I have tried to come up with an example and I can’t. If you can I would be very interested to hear it.
Why is it so important to you that the Earth be the only life bearing planet?
As to facts there really aren’t that many known about solar systems other than our own. That’s a pretty small sample. Scientists can come up with a lot of theories but we really have only begun to test them and as I already said they were surprised that they found so many extra solar planets so fast and around binary stars as well. It’s kind of like the deep sea vents and all the strange life that lives down there. Scientists were surprised to find them. There were probably a lot of scientists who were sure it would be barren down there. As far as life on other planets we will probably have good evidence for it in the next 10 years by spectroscopic analysis of the light shining through atmosphere’s.