Last week, I wrote an article concerning the possibility and probability of advanced alien civilizations in the Milky Way Galaxy. 
After considering the ratios of factors which contribute to the development of intelligent civilizations, I showed how there could easily be upwards of 450 or so in the Milky Way. 
Now, the method I used is called the Drake Equation, but it is not meant to be taken as a definitive statement about the exact number; it is really just useful to get into the ballpark and help us understand the signals we do or do not receive from within our galaxy. 
Simply by manipulating the ratios of life forming, intelligence development and sustained existence over millions of years, one could arrive at numbers like one civilization in every thousand galaxies or even fewer. 
Regardless of the rarity of advanced communicating civilizations, if even one besides us were to exist anywhere in the entire universe there would be several immediate philosophical and religious implications. 
These implications will begin to matter depending on either the previously mentioned conviction that we are not alone, due to an assumption of the natural development of life everywhere, or because of any future, conclusive, physical evidence of independent life somewhere else.
Trying to approach the subject of extraterrestrial intelligence from a philosophical perspective makes sense.
I do not claim expertise on what I am about to say here, so if I am wrong feel free to correct me, but I have thought about these ideas a good deal, and I am getting the majority of what I will say from the Intro to Philosophy course I am currently taking. 
If you hold purely to any theory of materialism or physicalism then it will not really matter if there is life somewhere else, it is merely interesting. 
Now what I want to talk about are the implications from dualism, the idea which, according to Robert Solomon’s “Introducing Philosophy Tenth Edition” textbook, says there are two fundamental essences in the world. 
In dualism there is the physical realm, ruled by physics and dealing with objects which can be fully understood ideally by empirical methodology, and there is the realm of the soul or of the mind which is independent to some degree from the physical world.
There are varying degrees of dualism, some of which will not be too interested in whether or not aliens have souls. 
One variety of dualism states the realm of the mind (what we might call conscious perception or even the soul) is a product of the two aspects of every object in the universe, the physical and the mental. 
This dual aspect theory could either claim the whole universe is composed of both a physical and a mental part which both interact causally somehow, or it could say the mental world is subordinated to the physical and is not able to act as independently as we would like to imagine but is the product of physical interactions and brain chemistry. 
In either case there would be some conflict over extraterrestrial intelligence or non-human mental behavior, but only to the degree which human souls themselves are not fully understood.
There is also the idea of mental phenomenon being a result of complexity in a physical system. 
Isaac Asimov in “Foundation’s Edge” proposes the theory of all physical objects having some amount of mental experience governed by the laws of physics, laws we do not know yet. 
Asimov’s mentalic world is determined by the complexity of a system, where doors and walls are capable of the most minute thoughts of linearity and sturdiness, while adept humans and robots are capable of monumental feats of telepathy and mind control.
The type of dualism which is probably most touchy on this subject is the variety ascribed to by the majority of Christians, which approximates a theory called causal-interactive dualism.
Causal-interactive dualism is similar to the last few I mentioned, but it is even more polar, saying the mental/spiritual and physical worlds are very different, not even two aspects of the same substance necessarily, but yet they are able to interact so the soul is in control of the body and so in the case of religion, any sinful action performed by the soul-body system is attributed to its soul. 
Finally, I hope I have shown how philosophically, there is not too much at stake by saying aliens could be equal to us humans from a soul perspective; ideally any issues we would have with their having souls are just the same issues we have not figured out about our own having souls or non-physical minds. 
Religion is another important factor, as the details move past philosophy and into the realm of faith, sin and redemptive divine intervention on our planet. 
Christians make up many of the people around Mississippi State, and are largely causal-interactive dualists; therefore, I will primarily address Christianity’s say on aliens in my next article.