Sorry, but you are an idiot. The fact that we need more sustainable sources of fuels doesn't mean we should stop all research that is not "practical" here and now.

In fact, science is cheap, comparing to the lumps of money we waste on:

• Wars
• Unhealthy habits
• Retarded causes like creationism
• etc

What are you saying? Discovering a "mere" fungus on another celestial body would be outright revolutionary, of course provided that the fungus hasn't been brought by the investigating probe from Earth. In fact, finding an extraterrestrial bacteria or plant (or their analogues) would probably be one of the most important discoveries humanity has _ever_ made! Not to mention that it would be exciting to see what sort of biochemistry it would have, its reproductive mechanisms, etc. The jump from no-life to life is conceptually much larger than the gap between various lifeforms.

Once we get implants and augmented intelligence to play around with, the average Joe will easily outsmart Plato & Co, not to mention the potential DNA modifications that will likely be used to produce "faster" brains, with better analytical capabilities, thus making people "wiser" overall.

If aliens have had millions of years to perfect themselves, it's not hard to imagine them leaving their early forms behind, and having merged with space itself.

Humanity is still very young, and 8000+ years of semi-known history is but an instant.

I am sorry, but how is their technological disadvantage temporary? So far no totalitarian system has managed to gain a long term advantage over the "free world". Some exmples:

• Nazis slaughtered and exhiled a lion's share of their scientists, thus limiting their own growth potential
• Soviets never reached even the 90% of the total technical capability of the West, and even that made their empire go bankrupt during 1980s

In order for the countries of the Middle East to reach the Western levels of technology they would need to offer Western levels of education. Good education would encourage progressively larger degree of independent thought, subversive to the very values the current incarnation of fundamentalists hold so dear. I am talking especially about sciences such as physics and biology, which happen to have direct military applicability.

To make the long story short, in order for the Muslim world to overtake the West, they will have to liberalize, and once they liberalize they are unlikely to see our culture as abhorrent.