Good God!

Having read a few articles on Slate, I came across this one.  It is about holding off on human exploration of space until some point in the future.

Get this quote:

Rather than make those planets habitable, does it not make sense to purposefully evolve ourselves such that we are habitable in those worlds?

The author mentions that we are most suited for life on Earth.  But we aren't.  Being human, we devised means by which we can live in most of the environments on Earth.  But we aren't suited for any environment in particular.  That's because we are rather vulnerable.  We exist by our creative abilities, not our bodies.  If we existed because of our bodies, we'd have more robust bodies, like the animals have.  The animals are more suited to Earth.  We are suited to whatever place we want to be in, which includes space.

Furthermore, the author speaks well of transhumanism, which makes us into freaks.  We shouldn't tamper with what it means to be human.  Humans should be humans, not freaks.

I hope the author is dead wrong, but I fear that this point of view may have a lot currency amongst some people.  We are going down a bad path, I fear.  In many, many ways.

Finally, you don't go to space just to explore.  If you aren't going there to settle it with people, why go there at all?