@paul

What would they look like? I think the only thing we could be sure of is that - if they're not post-physical - they'd have sensory organs (not necessarily like ours), manipulating appendages, and info processing ( centralised like a brain or distributed). Other than that, I'm not sure. Any other ideas?
How would they think? Well, we have failed to define the difference between intelligent or not and conscious or not. And many of us are still labouring under the misapprehension that those humans who don't look/act/believe like us are somehow ... less/not human so I don't have high hopes of any prediction here. But a different baseline to compare, contrast and test theories of how thinking works and what intelligencr/consciousness is would be amazing! I think the only thing i could bet on is that they would likely be some sort of generalist and would be problem solvers and pattern recognisers. But then again ...
Do they believe in something? I don't think that's necessary if you mean a higher power, but if we are thinking problem solvers and pattern recognisers then i think they would.
Similar religions to us? Actually, now i think about it, problem solving and pattern recognition is likely to lead to - at some point - the idea of an external agency.
Do they know something about religion to correct or confirm our thinking? I hope not! Again, my viewpoint but correcting thinking doesn't seem to be relevant to most religions (people believe and have faith rather than being open to proof). And confimation leads to being even more sure, which is the opposite of an open mind. That isn't to say that religions have a monopoly on thinking that way, ignoring evidence that doesn't support your world-view and picking up on evidence that does is a well known feature of humans.

If we were mainly machines, i wonder how we would think. I wouldn't be surprised if HOW we think is significantly driven by WHAT we are, WHAT we have and need and WHERE we are culturally (think how ethics change over the centuries).

Phew, long post, but its Sunday morning so a good time to philosophise

P.s. i've not seen Interstellar yet, its on my SO's list to make me sit down and watch. But its a lovely Summer here, so the chances of sitting in front of a tv is limited ...

Edited, repeat post.

Intresting thoughts Kerry (loving your Merch List too)
For me it would be strange if there were only a handful of species out there, I'm expecting far more (we're talking the whole Universe & possibly Multi-Universes) but how would they appear?
I think you said it all, except for actual appearance and chemistry (blood? of some kind? energy?) which could be very different from ours & yet we might actually find some species similar to our own (human-like) I'm sure if we stick around we shall witness some truly strange & curious looking intelligent life out there.

As to how they think, react and believe is something different...I guess I come down on the side of if they could correct or confirm our believes then I'd like to know in the hope that if it could be proved that they was nothing afterwards (no god/diety and the like) then maybe as a species we'd figure out we are all as one and this would possibly / hopefully stop the wars and conflict (as you rightly point out though would this make ANY difference to those that want to believe anyway?) on the other side of the coin...and this is the most interesting of results, if such a race could prove to us (how this would come about I have no idea) that there is something afterwards (a life after death) then WOW! how would this change Human thinking? would it? probably no change I guess as most believe this...it would sure change my thinking though

The possibility of us becoming machines or part machines is possibly just as interesting...will it happen? perhaps advancement in medical procedures and medicines, the manipulating of genes etc might (hopefully) mean we don't need to take this route but if we do are we still really Human?

And we haven't even touched on what weird and wonderful things might be out there waiting to be discovered that are not life forms

BTW I can whole heartily recommend the wonderfully made "Interstellar" I must admit to having a cheap albeit HD projector and it really does make a huge difference as it feels your taking the journey with them, oh and the ending will have you thinking about it for hours!!! that's all I'm saying.

Ta paul, I'm having fun now I've got some free time again .

How would they appear? Hopefully like disney animals, big eyes and cute. Imagine if they looked like spiders or in the uncanny valley that cgi representations of humans look like. Do you think we could overcome our prejudices and gut reactions? What about if they smelled funny

It's really hard to extrapolate, given our limited baseline, but the most intelligent animals (taking a punt here) are us and other primates, dolphins, whales, birds (e.g. Crows). Not sure about hive mind insects. But of all the 'normal' ones we've got bilateral symmetry and having evolved to move/navigate in 3-dimensions routinely and big brains (relative to body size) which are near the major sense and which are pretty dextrous and which don't have excessive sexual dimorphism and which communicate at a distance with eachother as well as being social. So... A pen picture ...

XXX navigates by sonar - its native planet is smoke covered and dim, most of the light comes from this young planets volcanos, at least until they throw megatonnes of soot into the air. Because the planet is dim, there is't much high energy food. So XXX has to be able to travel, but not spend a lot of energy doing it. Gravity is low so flight is easy-ish. But while there isn't much high energy food, sometimes the clouds break open and let light through and life bursts into activity. XXX has evolved to drift with the winds most of the time, but when needed to be able to travel quickly in specific directions, and most importantly to avoid the volcanos. [i'm thinking an air yacht here!]

This ability to control its movement has given XXX a great advantage over the other beasties, wouldn't it be good if XXX ate them? But, remember, life is hard, don't get too specialised: XXX will eat anything - omnivore! [non-specialised!]

With the low gravity and the slow pace of life here normally, there are some huge floating YYY''s. If only XXX's could co-ordinate they could eat them. Sonar is pretty good at receving detail, and XXX's have to transmit pings to get the info back. Gradually the pings develop to contain inherent information, not just the information of the object they reflect off. Comsider thoughh, a ping is inherently tied into their senses, language is intuitive. [we've got comms!]

Now life is sparse, apart from during the cloud breaks and it's own hunting pack XXX rarely sees another member of its own species. How does reproduction happen? Releasing spores. High in the atmosphere the spores circulate endlessly, almost. Until they merge with another and start to grow, to become the next generation. They'll hide and hide and hide, try to avoid the grazing YYY's then lurk round the hunting adults to pick up food scraps, and be prompted with language. Then as their size and understanding grows they take their place in the pack.

The parents, if you can call them that, because they invest no energy in rearing the young, get old and die. Their last and most honourable act is to present themselves to the pack to be eaten, to ensure the pack survives. Life after death is the contribution to the pack; not being taken away and separated out with a's to the left and b's to the right.

And now i've got to go, my train's nearly arrived at it's destination!

Fancy having a go yourself Paul?

No

Fun reading

Do you think we can call XXX BOB? I shall let you call the YYY species

The species XXX sounds a little Dolphin like to me, I watched a documentary a year or so ago (on Discovery) and your description of how such creatures might look & act on their Alien Planets was very similar to this...you would have been perfect dreaming up such other species for them.

Yeah I think I'd prefer a nice, intelligent, good or neutral smelling alien race that looked like those McVities Furry Friends Ads or those in AVATAR
But hey if they're huge blobs of jelly with ooze secreting from everywhere, whilst smelling bad I'd still LOVE to meet and learn from them (there's always ways around the smell...the way they look you would eventually get used to) but that's just me! I would dearly love to meet one.

I think (sadly) that your right though in that many of our race would see them as MONSTERS and just take umbrage to them upon seeing them (even if they looked angelic and were the most beautiful creatures in the universe you'd still get some that would simply shoot first)

Another what if subject...would be what if we were to meet a warring alien race?
I'd like to think if an alien race was more advanced than us then they would see us as no threat whatsoever and may even help us? but what if a race similar to us maybe at the same stage of development (perhaps say 500 to 2000 years in advance of us) then would we want to be known to them?
I'm going to say No to that one

It's going to be interesting over the next few hundred years (as we leave our cradle of the Earth) to see what we'll discover & how we will react to all these different things we shall inevitably encounter in our travels.

BOB? I'll go with that (thinking bob-the-floating-widget over here ).

Hmm, the YYY's, I'm not sure. Not good with names ... Best try and steal one ... Bandersnatches?

I'd hope I could get used to aliens that hit our bad-gut-reaction, but I'm not sure I could get to like them face to face. I'm not very good with insects and spiders, have tried to get the hang of them, but didn't make it better (am in the don't mind them when they're outside or i don't know they're there but if they're inside and i knw they're there , or place). At least i didn't get worse though!

Agressive alien race, that's a tricky one. This is one of the reasons I don't watch much SF on tv/films. It feels like (with some honourable exceptions) the movie industry only likes making SF films that are action/chase/horror, and the aliens aren't gonna be our friends in that situation. I think its more likely though that we'd be dangerous to those we met (intelligent or not) than them to us.

However, if they were a properly aggressive race, we'd have to learn to work with their dominance/sumbission/surrender signals. I remember reading once (I read a lot) that humans are pretty much the only species that actually routinely kills and permanently injures other members of the same species and don't do the dominance/submission thing well. Other species do it in extremis. I guess because its a risk all for not necessarily much gain (you might have another fight tomorrow). Any ideas?