You said:

2 different ideas there. I believe that there is modest scientific evidence that we, multicellular animals, the only ones to evolve oversized brains with pervasive language and manipulators, and finally to express technology, are very rare. Quite likely the only ones in the galaxy and perhaps even rarer. Unless the first ignition of life was a huge improbability as some biologists claim, I think that the galaxy is probably full of stuff like slime molds.

Whether the whole place was deliberately made for us is a question of religion and metaphysics.

Regardless of religion and metaphysics, the Universe is a truly vast place - tens of billions of light years across, almost 14 billion years old, 100 billion galaxies with hundreds of billions of stars in them each, and probably trillions of planets. That's a lot for one species on one world that hasn't even gotten itself in person past its moon.

This is why I think we have not found ETI yet: Too many places across too wide a realm for either parties to find each other any time soon, and this is assuming that they are looking. Aliens will be alien after all, and who says they have to develop and think like us?