But they knew this in terms of scale, if not a picture montage. These guys didn’t deny the issue, they just rationally asked “well, where are they?”. You state the scale IS the reason why we can’t prove ET life- so it becomes a tautology- proving itself by being unproveable? I think my math instructors would chastise that point of view. My logic profs would indeed!
Regarding religion being left out, - sorry but evolution is the religion that makes all of this so utterly unproveable-a foundational (error) that just has to be carried through or else the whole house falls....
Just what if all of this creation indeed is not billion or trillions, but only tens of thousands of years old- that order of merit would change the whole metric of the equation- none of the other variables Drake and Fermi etc described would even be reasonable, so the thought, no, the demand, that life exists elsewhere could be moot.
Regards
It’s narrower than that. I said the scale and distance, and the later realization of how many galaxies there are out there, mean ruling out the possibility of extra terrestrial intelligence is foolish. I’m not saying there is ET, because I can’t know. But to say there is none, is foolish. But I think life out there is the way to bet.