If it's true that there is no real good or evil, then all of this is pure rhetoric. I know I'm late to the party, but nevertheless. How can you make an absolute statement like: "The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if
there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing
but blind, pitiless indifference." and then write an entire book on the evils of religion? He shot himself in the foot before he even started.

So we don't have any evidence of life elsewhere; we have no evidence that life will ever form elsewhere; and we have no way of finding that life even if it existed.
Wow. No argument there.

With such powerful evidence in favour, the onus is on the sceptic to demonstrate in the face of such overwhelming evidence why life cannot have taken hold elsewhere.

Absolutely false. You are making a claim; you have to support it; provide the probabilities and calculations.
You need to look up logical fallacies - you're guilty of a fair number of them. Based on the evidence you've provided, there is a vanishingly small chance of life elsewhere.

With such powerful evidence in favour, the onus is on the sceptic to demonstrate in the face of such overwhelming evidence why life cannot have taken hold elsewhere.

No one has asserted that life cannot have taken hold elsewhere.

Is space brimming with the building blocks of life? Yes.
Is space teeming with rocky planets and moons on which life could take hold? Yes.
Does the formation of life depend on natural processes? Yes.
Do these natural processes follow laws which are the same throughout the universe? Yes.
Has life already formed in at least one instance? Yes.

With such powerful evidence in favour, the onus is on the sceptic to demonstrate in the face of such overwhelming evidence why life cannot have taken hold elsewhere.

That is neither evidence nor argument - the fact that prebiotic molecules exist in space is well known. That tells us nothing about whether life exists elsewhere or whether sentient life is inevitable - which is your primary contention.

Now can we please get some evidence and argument to discuss?

Those who deny that life certainly exists beyond the earth have chosen to bury their head in the sand:

"Researchers have discovered prebiotic (pre-life) molecules in interstellar space that may have formed on dusty ice grains floating between the stars.
The molecules were detected in a giant cloud of gas some 25,000 light-years from Earth, near the center of our Milky Way Galaxy — specifically, the star-forming region Sagittarius(Sgr) B2(N), which is the richest interstellar chemical environment currently known.
One of the newly-discovered molecules, called E-cyanomethanimine (E-HNCHCN) is one step in the process that chemists believe produces adenine, one of the four nucleobases that form the “rungs” in the ladder-like structure of DNA. The other molecule, called ethanamine, is thought to play a role in forming alanine, one of the twenty amino acids in the genetic code.
“Finding these molecules in an interstellar gas cloud means that building blocks for DNA and amino acids can ‘seed’ newly-formed planets with the chemical precursors for life,” said Anthony Remijan, of the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO)"

http://www.kurzweilai.net/dna-and-amino-acid-precursor-molecules-discovered-in-interstellar-space

That's not evidence. That's personal opinion. And he's not asking for evidence of sentient beings NOW. He's asking for support for your claims that sentient beings are inevitable - something that you have not provided.

Claiming that something is compelling evidence for you is of no value unless you explain how and why it's evidence and how and why it supports your claims.

The burden of proof is on you.

And yet you claimed that folks are building telescopes because they think they will find sentient life.

Please be consistent.

Your original claim remains unsupported (and apparently unsupportable by you.)

Your personal opinion that sentient life is a certainty in the future is valueless without actual logic and evidence to support your opinion. So far you've presented the Drake equation (which actually works AGAINST your claim) and a lot of hand-waving.

Where is your evidence to support your claim?