"As far as the statistical impossibility argument, I find it impossible to accept that on the ONLY world where life arose, intelligence ALSO arose, and that that intelligence ALSO developed the technical capability to do SETI. That is starting to sound a bit too much like Intelligent Design, even if you prefer to call it Anthropic."

That's fine. You wish to make a personal faith based or emotional arguement. OK.

What I'm criticizing is the Saganisms (Yes, I know I have sinned here) that blithely cite "bilions and billions" of planets and then, deus ex machina, come out with some magical # of civilizations in the Milky Way. Sagan was an astronomer/physicist. As I said before that the space cadet cult has reactionary problems with, is the those who might be in the best position to estimate scientifically based guestimates on the prevalance of (a) life itself and (b) intelligences capable of technology, tend to have estimates many orders of magnitude less than the Sagan worshipers. They too suffer from lack of data but to label evolutionary biologists "intelligent design" advocates is not just wrong, but disengenuous.