In article , Gary
Harnagel writes:

The odds of spontaneous life could be arbitrarily close to zero.
That we are here (necessary for this discussion to take place) has zero
commentary on the odds of spontaneous life anywhere else.

That's likely to be quite irrelevant:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panspermia

Panspermia is a hypothesis, by no means proven.

I'm a bit confused. Perhaps you mean that since SOME civilization has
to be the first, one can't disregard that we are the first.

Whether it is likely that we are the first, and whether it is likely
that we are not alone, are other questions.

That it is believed life developed here first spontaneously in three or
four billion years, yet the universe had the means to initiate the
process nine billion years earlier presents the weaker argument. It
seems to me that we should be arguing intelligent life developed long
ago in the universe until refuted by evidence to the contrary.

Why should we assume anything? Also, there is no way to disprove the
existence of extraterrestrial intelligence. Yes, the universe is older
than the Earth, but since civilization developed only recently on Earth,
it in no way follows that it must have developed earlier elsewhere.

I'm not considering that; rather, I'm referring to planets around stars
that are much older than our sun, say, K-type stars that live as long as
the age of the universe. Or maybe, early G-type stars that are gone now
but the intelligent species "hatched" by them have migrated to a younger
star. At only 0.1% the speed of light, generation ships could cross the
entire galaxy in a mere 0.1 billion years.

There is no evidence that this has happened.