atenolol wrote:
It is like an acorn growing into an oak. As it happens, it is Nature. If it is one's belief that this can only be done through the hocus-pocus of the gods, or aliens, it is not Nature, and the explanation is not science but mysticism.  
There's nothing whatsoever in the movie that says or even suggests that the evolution (of intelligence, in this case) "can only be done through the hocus-pocus of the gods, or aliens."  To me, the first slab is a teacher, the second a beacon and the third and fourth are doorways.  Nothing mystical about any of it.   
cjh5801 wrote:
The idea that humans may have been helped along the path by aliens is no more mystic than animal husbandry. It may not be flattering, and it certainly isn't probable (it's a science fiction movie, after all), but it isn't mysticism.
On the nosey.  The movie does not declare that alien intervention is necessary for any kind of evolution; it only suggests that it happened in this (possibly isolated) case.  Perhaps the aliens knew from their own past, or the pasts of other planets they had observed, that in many planetary situations, races need a little nudge in order to do more than merely exist.
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Last Edited By: Bill Warren Jan 23 11 12:12 AM. Edited 3 times.