[Las Vegas Dave]

Link: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/05/22/aliens-congress-seti-astronomers_n_5370315.html

[mowowie]

I am CONVINCED that half of congress and Hollywood are aliens......

[aruanan]

"In the last 50 years, evidence has steadily mounted that the components and conditions we believe necessary for life are common and perhaps ubiquitous in our galaxy," said Werthimer in his written testimony, adding: "The possibility that life has arisen elsewhere, and perhaps evolved intelligence, is plausible and warrants scientific inquiry."

The problem here is their reasoning. Just because there are conditions without which life cannot exist doesn't mean that, given those conditions, life must exist.

Though most life on earth cannot exist without oxygen, carbon dioxide, or water and though their disappearance would cause almost all life to perish, the presence of those three does not necessitate the appearance of life.

Given, for the sake of argument, the evolution of all life on earth from a single life form, the chances for that happening is a virtual certainty compared to the likelihood of that single life form arising through abiogenesis. And the likelihood of it happening anywhere else in the universe is a product of that improbability multiplied by itself.