Is there intelligent life out there? I sure as heck hope so...because it ISN'T down here! I'm pretty sure that destroying your host planet is worthy of the species achievement Darwin award.
Yes, I absolutely believe that there is a plethora of intelligent life in our own galaxy, and moreso in the multiverse and other dimensions. I personally can think of many possible reasons why this isn't apparent to us, but here are a few.
How do we define life? What are we looking for? We are looking for something carbon based. Something similar to us. That seems to be an extremely limiting definition of life. The reality is that we wouldn't recognize the vast majority of life or consciousness because we are seriously limited by our miniscule pea brains and finite minds. How can the finite possibly comprehend the infinite?
Humans have been evolving for 200,000 years. (If you believe we were created by a God, then you already believe that intelligent life created our species). Our Universe is 13.7 billion years old. Our planet is 4.5 billion years old. Our universe is nearly 70,000 TIMES older than we are. That is a whole lot of time for life to evolve far beyond what we can comprehend life to be. I don't believe we are nearly evolved enough to see or recognize life that has evolved well beyond us, or even that which has evolved differently than we have.
If technology continues on this exponential trajectory, do you think that people who lived 200 years ago would even recognize US as life in 1000 years? Much less as being the same species?
We could be surrounded by extra terrestrial life and not see it because of our own limiting beliefs and ignorance.
For arguments sake, lets just say that carbon based, oxygen breathing humanoid beings from elsewhere are in contact with governments, or military or religious leaders or whomever. Somebody above posed the question as to why we aren't hearing about it. I would say that if the above was happening, they are doing the right thing in keeping it under wraps. The vast majority of us (and I'm including myself in this) are not sufficiently evolved and open minded enough to deal with that in a psychological or emotional way. Mass panic and chaos would set in.
I personally believe that Earth is alive and conscious, at a level far beyond our comprehension. It has had billions of years to evolve well beyond where we are. We are like bacteria (or perhaps a better comparison would be Earth cancer....since we consume the planet to disproportionately grow ourselves) We have TRILLIONS of microorganisms on and in our body. Approximately 10x more than human cells! We kind of are a universe in and of ourselves. Perhaps some of those microorganisms are having this very conversation right now.