MarsOne Response to Muslim Fatwa

And among His Signs is the creation of the heavens and the earth, and the variations in your languages and your colors: verily in that are Signs for those who know. (Quran 30: 22) The Muslim world has a rich tradition of exploration. The verse from the Quran above encourages Muslims to go out and see the signs of God’s creation in the ‘heavens and the earth’. The most influential example of this was the Moroccan Muslim traveller, Ibn Battuta, who from 1325 to 1355 travelled 73,000 mile...

 Knowledge for the Sake of Understanding is in Our Blood

Science has a simple faith, which transcends utility. Nearly all men of science, all men of learning for that matter, and men of simple ways too, have it in some form and in some degree. It is the faith that it is the privilege of man to learn to understand, and that this is his mission. If we abandon that mission under stress we shall abandon it forever, for stress will not cease. Knowledge for the sake of understanding, not merely to prevail, that is the essence of our being. None can defin...

 Isaac Asimov on Star Trek

They speak about the mission of the Enterprise being "To boldly go--" a split infinitive I heard every single time--"To boldly go where no man has ever gone before" they mean it primarily, I suppose, in... territorially. They're visiting stars that no man has till then ever visited. Their going through vastnesses no man has ever penetrated. But in addition, they're meeting problems that man has not faced. [What] Star Trek really presented was the brotherhood of intelligence. It mattered not...