I think the probability of statistics of a billion galaxies with a billion stars each gives reasonable assurance that there are several Earthlike planets that are billions of years older than Earth. Whereupon conscious beings with billion year advanced technology control nature at levels well beyond Earthlings' limited use of space, ie., satellites, space probes, SOHO.
***That's the whole point of the Drake equation. But its estimation suggests only about 100k of intelligence-filled planets, whereas we can see from the polypeptide/amino acid formation probabilities, that the Drake equation is probably DOZENS of orders of magnitudes off. In engineering, when you are ONLY 1 ORDER OF MAGNITUDE off, you got it WRONG. The Drake equation is off by DOZENS of orders of magnitude. It's fun to postulate and speculate, but the probabilities are not even close.
It took conscious man on Earth 3,000 years to achieve that level of technology -- control of nature. In cosmic time, that's an eye blink compared to a billion years of advancing technology.
***Accounted for in the error bars of the Drake equation.
Which is it? Do you think life got here by chance? Or did it get here by some other venue such as Divine Intervention?
Your myopia is stubborn. Conscious beings living in another universe set the initial conditions for the big bang to cause a life-bearing Universe.. That you don't include that as a choice, despite my stating it as a possibility is a blind spot for you. Your only choices are chance or divine intervention. As I wrote in post 134...
conscious being in a different universe set the initial conditions of the big bang.134