At least religious people have an excuse because their belief comes from a place of suffering, no one who thinks these sci-fi fantasy concepts are real is suffering, these beliefs come from a place of extreme comfort, nobody who believes in aliens is from the global south, how many times do liars need to stand in front of governments and say “aliens are real” for there to be some kind of explicit denouncement from atheists for these absolutely non-atheistic beliefs that get a pass because they are sci-fi. PURGE THE NERDS!
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hell, the cosmos might very well be infinite in size. if that is the case (big if), then somewhere very far away the initial conditions and chaotic dynamics of gravity repeated and a planet practically identical to earth has formed and beings indistinguishable from humans evolved. because it's infinite, this'd be repeated infinite times, but they'd be all unfathomably far apart from each other, on average.
They'd all be well beyond the range of the observable universe, impossible to reach due to expansion of space, and not "real" in any practical sense.
In this way, there very well may be "parallel" universes. There's also the quantum "many worlds" version of parallel universes but I think that one's been touched on enough by pop culture, I don't feel like explaining it.