Um, just quickly, any religion that can't incorporate extra-terrestrial life isn't a well-thought out religion. I believe that all the "major" religions can easily incorporate XT life, considering they've incorporated dinosaur fossil evidence. Well-constructed religions have no obvious 'proof' that they're wrong, and the religious leaders are often intelligent enough to iron out any potential faults.

I also agree that there is a force that drives the creation of life. For example, because of life, there is now proof of life on both our Moon and on Mars. In fact, there's now proof of life outside our solar system (Voyager). Sure, the life was terrestrial in origin, but much of the nature of life is to spread. Pretty soon, there will be proof of life, and maybe actual life (though terrestrial in origin) on all the planets in our system. I'm also pretty sure that I'm going to see such an age.

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Live long enough to see Space!

We can get to space as a species. The above link is information about life-extension (living longer) so that you can personally see a space-based civilization.

The MPrize (a prize to encourage life extension research now contains over 3 million dollars.