I don't understand why proponents of Intelligent Design haven't culturally appropriated 2001: A Space Odyssey for their own ends. Because Kubrick's movie (and even more Clarke's novel) can be understood as the most effective artistic representation of their ideas. Mankind evolving not exclusively by natural means, but receiving periodic visitations from a brick that prompts it to advance to the next level and so on.
Of course, Clarke wouldn't appreciate that interpretation, but that's irrelevant. The book speaks for itself. In fact, science fiction as a whole seems fascinated by Intelligent Design. There are more mysterious "progenitor" races than you can shake a stick at. It's almost as if the plain vanilla conception of darwinian evolution was boring, and you need to have your ADN trampled by some exotic alien race or transcendent being to be considered cool.
Would a strictly Darwin-compliant version of the movie still seem as "deep" and "profound"? We could try. I want my monolith-free cut of 2001, now!
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