You might enjoy this episode of Haunted Cosmos:

https://fountain.fm/episode/ThES2qADvqzvgWqjGQib

Really worth a listen.

Re: filling the void — I agree and think this is a large part of it. The atheist needs a universe in which he is not utterly alone. But i think there is more to it than cope. Atheism is defined as an absence of theistic belief, but everyone deifies (and therefore worships) something. It is not whether but which. The atheist is just as religious as the theist. It is inescapable.

The *belief* in intelligent alien life makes sense in an evolutionary and materialistic cosmology. It is often the case that aliens represent, in some sense, a futuristic projection of our own transcendant potential in the minds of those fixated on them. Yet, it is a false, even flat, cosmology that cannot abide anything overtly *spiritual*, and instead redirects spiritual belief into things like extraterrestrials, supposed material beings of awe-inspiring technological and evolutionary advancement.

Ultimately it is occult, demonic deception.