If the second is true, it is my belief that life is such an astounding
accident, requiring such perfect arrangements of chemicals to arise
under such perfect environmental circumstances, that there is no other
life anywhere else, let alone life intelligent enough to travel across
the vast expanse of space to visit us.
Perhaps not. The number of stars in the universe, and the number of planets, is astonishingly enormous.
The Drake equation, with even somewhat conservative estimates, would yield a relatively large number of planets with intelligent life, and an even larger number of planets on which life arose. Drake himself estimates 10,000 intelligent civilizations.