[mad_as_he$$]

With all due respect I beg to differ. The probability of another Earth like planet with similiar features is just a probable as not. I do not believe that you can make a blanket statement with regard to probabilities. If you are a creationist - Why wouldn't God stick to a receipe that works? If you are a science based thinker then again it is just as likely as not.

If you like some more imagination pretend that the Stargate is real and some other race scattered the gene pool around the galaxy. Or possible by visiting a young planet and leaving behind some stray proteins that took over and began life.

[RightWhale]

Granted that all that is possible. However, none of it has been seen so far, and there is no reason to wait until it is seen. Our job, our assigned task, is to go forth and multiply, not to sit here and wring our hands until something is delivered on a golden platter. We already got our golden platter of goodies, don't expect another.

[far sider]

Larry Norman bump.

If there's life on other planets then I'm sure that he must know,
And he's been there once already and has died to save their souls.

[aruanan]

With all due respect I beg to differ. The probability of another Earth like planet with similiar features is just a probable as not. I do not believe that you can make a blanket statement with regard to probabilities.

If you're talking probabilities of chance events that happened to have a particular outcome, then the likelihood of having a second such outcome are the probabilities of the first squared and so on for each additional outcome. If a particular event has a 1 in 10 chance of happening, the probability of it happening two times in succession isn't two times 1/10 but 1/10 times 1/10, or 1 in a 100. Because of this, the statement that "The probability of another Earth like planet with similiar features is just a probable as not" is defective. The probability of another Earth-like planet with similar features is increasingly improbable with each additional one you propose.