Artful Dodger:

> You can't "prove" God but you can offer evidence for the existence of an intelligent force at work in the universe. Isn't that what SETI is all about? Proving the existence of an intelligence "out there" possibily on some other planet? And what is it that SETI looks to find? Signs (or evidence) of intelligence.

At the present, there is no evidence of "intelligence" or "life" outside of our planet. The closest we have come to finding life is organic chemicals in meteorites. Beyond that there is no evidence of life anywhere else, but it is quite likely that in the future life could be found in other planets and even in smaller celestial bodies.

As for intelligence, the most intelligent non-human creatures that we have found so far are primates like cimpanzees and gorillas, as well as non-primates like dolphins and even invertebrates like cuttle fish. However, none of them approaches our ability for language and abstract reasoning. We have found no intelligent aliens so far.

Is there an "intelligence at work in the universe"? There is no scientific proof of that. At best there is conjecture, and it is all along the lines of trying to prove that God (the intelligent designer) exists. This is the "intelligent design" argument, a branch of science that so far receives little support in the mainstream scientific community. Intelligent design is creationism repackaged in pseudoscience.