Is it All Just a Waste of Space?

With all this doom and gloom being broadcast through the airwaves it got me thinking if perhaps an alien race could be listening in an laughing at us. For all we know we could be the laugh stock of the galaxy. Granted they couldn't be all that far away since the radio waves haven't had enough time to travel all that far, but still there is a chance. 

Even if we aren't being spied on by little green men, it still does beg the question, are we alone in the universe? I think it's rather daft of us to believe we are it because if we really are the pinnacle of creation then either a supernatural being or the laws governing random chance goofed along the way. There has to be something out there that is more intelligent and more advanced then us. 

To illustrate this point I think we need to look at some incomprehensible numbers. In the Milky Way Galaxy alone there are an estimated 200 - 400 billion stars perhaps more. For the sake of argument I'm going to go with the higher estimate and say there are at least 400 billion stars. Now there is an estimated 125 billion galaxies in the known universe based on Hubble's predictions. Now if you multiple that out you get an estimated 500 sextillion (that's 500,000,000,000,000,000,000,000) stars in the known universe and if each of those stars could have 8 or more planets around them. You can see where the chances increase for life to exist out there. And remember this is a pretty conservative estimate. 

Dr. Frank Drake who is a retired professor from the University of California, Santa Cruz developed an equation to basically find out how many contactable civilisation there are in a known galaxy, this became known as the Drake Equation. The equation basically takes all the factors needed for a civilisation to develop and then tries to work through all the factors logically. It works to a degree but since we don't really have all numbers right now everything is just a big guessing game. The best current estimations state that there are 2.31 contactable civilisations in the Milky Way. I think that number is probably very low since I highly doubt there are only 3 or 4 planets that support intelligent life out of trillions of possibilities.

So why is it so many humans think we are it? I know most religions state we were created by some sort of supernatural being and never mentions anything else (although I could be wrong, my scope on world religions isn't excellent). But who says creation stories are subject just about human beings? Many of these stories have been changed so much over the course of time anyways that things very well could be taken out of context. 

But if for some reason we are it, the only intelligent life ever to surface in the billion of years the universe has existed then I think we need to either question everything we know about science or rethink religion...either way it's pretty concerning because if we truly are it then the universe is nothing more then a enormous waste of space.