I do believe that Extra Terestrial life exists - I even think its been proven - comets and meteors have contain signs of life.
The real question "Does Intelligent Extraterestrial Life Exist" is a more interesting one. If our understanding (limited though it be) of the size and age of the universe is accurate then there is certainly a good probability that life has evolved somewhere else. How far they have advanced and how far they are away from us or two of the factors that will decide whether we will make contact with them or not.
Given our current level technology I doubt that we will make contact in the foreseeable future however you never know what inventions will help in the search; certainly a faster than light form of travel would reduce the size of the task ... who can say.
As for the dangers of contact - if ETs had a violent culture then they probably wouldn't have been able to co-operate enough to gain the technology to get off their planet in the first place (we are struggling!). And anyhow, we've already announced our existence to the universe with the radio signals we've already transmitted -- cats already out of the bag eh.
SETI@home and Astropulse are funded by grants from the National Science Foundation, NASA, and donations from SETI@home volunteers. AstroPulse is funded in part by the NSF through grant AST-0307956.
