Sunday, July 19, 2009

The people will not be silenced

"Then he smiled. They can try to keep us incommunicado. They can try to silence us. But knowledge is more powerful than ignorance. Curiosity is more powerful then fear."
- From the conclusion of "Jupiter", a science fiction novel by Ben Bova, published in 2001

The novel is based on the conflict between scientists orbiting Jupiter who hope to discover life on Jupiter and the various religious authorities on Earth. The latter effectively govern most of the nations of Earth and believe that God only created life on Earth. They wish to suppress any evidence to the contrary or any attempts to seek such evidence. What it really boils down to is a struggle for power.

Does this sound familiar in several places in current times? Many existing governments or rebels attempting to overthrow governments want to have only their version of the "truth", sometimes in the name of religion, sometimes in the name of another orthodoxy, almost always for the sake of power.