I'm not convinced aliens visited or sent probes to Earth, but I accept the high likelihood of extraterrestrial life. 'Oumuamua and Loeb's arguments are strong, definitely more than many "exotic rock formation illuminated from just the right angle with two dozen parameters frozen at pre-set values" explanations I've seen in some papers. When you reach that point, the alien probe hypothesis deserves to be considered on equal grounds.

the pure magical thinking and incomprehensible leaps of faith it takes to believe in faster-than-light travel.

It really doesn't. You can get spinless localizable tahyons from assuming the existence of particles whose relativistic mass doesn't depend on relative velocity. Magical? Hardly. There's no reason, be it physical or purely mathematical, why it's prohibited. Hell, even for something as simple as rest mass = dynamic mass, you get all the special relativity working as intended and it's a valid solution to the Klein-Gordon equation. it's called Cox-Hill tachyon formulation if memory serves.

This doesn't even get into the general relativity with all its gravitational weirdness.

Just kinda spitballing physics here, though. Last time I did well while pissed-out drunk, but we can try it your way and stay sober.