IMPORTANT NOTE: For the rigorous demonstration of the thesis here presented please see "The Design Inference" by William Dembski (Cambridge University Press, 1998), which establishes the formal criteria for inferring design.

IN ORDER TO DISCOVER WHICH of the two possibilities mentioned above is correct, we will need to perform a scientific experiment which reveals what level of design prompts people to react intuitively, "This did not happen by chance." That is, we will need to expose people to different levels of design until we determine what level prompts all of them to say, "This is a product of intelligence." We will call this level of complexity the "threshold for design."

To discover the threshold, we will have to set up a situation which eliminates the potential for "cognitive dissonance" arising. We will need an experimental setting where levels of design are present, and our subjects are under no personal, social, intellectual, metaphysical or other pressures which could prevent their perception of the design. In other words, we will need a controlled environment -- a situation which lacks the factors which could interfere with the normal functioning of man's intuitive faculty.

Fortunately, a quality experiment which establishes the level of complexity which brings the intuitive reaction, "Designer required" already has been done. The controlled environment was the everyday movie theater, and the subjects of the experiment were the millions who saw the film "2001."

THE THRESHOLD:
THE "2001" MONOLITH

AS WE NOTED IN OUR SUMMARY of the film, the discovery of the black monolith was recognized as

"THE FIRST EVIDENCE OF INTELLIGENT
LIFE OFF THE EARTH."

that is to say, the first objective evidence that the universe contains intelligent life other than man.

Please note that not one character in the film objected to this statement. Neither did any film critic take issue. Most importantly, based on all available information, no objections were raised by anyone in any movie theater either. The people in the theaters "agreed" not because they were watching fantasy, and would agree to anything. "2001" was taken very seriously. Viewers were looking at the film critically, and they realized that if such a momentous discovery were to be made under identical conditions in real life, any qualified scientist inevitably would reach the same conclusion. In the theater, eating popcorn, free of personal, social, intellectual and other biases, people agreed unanimously that a black slab with smooth surfaces and a few right angles was conclusive proof of intelligence, for the intelligence that was implied was not God.

In other words, the idea of intelligent life on other planets, superior as that intelligence may be, is not nearly as threatening to man as the idea of God, for the existence of an extra-terrestrial intelligence does not necessarily imply the "dependent-beholden" complex that we encountered in Vonnegut's Breakfast of Champions. When viewers heard it said that the monolith was proof of "intelligence other than man," everyone agreed, because cognitive dissonance was absent. Not one viewer maintained, "Maybe it just happened."

Everyone had the same immediate "gut" reaction. There was no doubt whatsoever. In that "2001" was viewed by millions of people from all walks of life, it cannot be argued that too few people were "tested," or that the subjects of the "experiment" were not representative.

Therefore, what level of complexity does it take for people to see intuitively that something was made purposefully? Does it take a computer found on the moon? An automobile? A wristwatch? No, even a domino-shaped slab is enough! In short, "2001" serves as a controlled, scientific experiment which establishes man's intuitive "threshold" for design. In the movie theater, where there are no implications for one's life, and the intelligence which is the source of the design is not Divine, this "threshold" level is quite low.

(WITH REGARD TO THE VALIDITY OF THE ABOVE ARGUMENT BEING AFFECTED BY THE THEORY OF EVOLUTION, WE STRONGLY SUGGEST VIEWING SECTIONS #7 AND #8 IN THE MENU THAT FOLLOWS AFTER YOU COMPLETE THE SITE.)

THE COSMIC IRONY OF THE "2001" EMBRYO - "THE 2001 PRINCIPLE"

NOW COMPARED TO THE LEVEL of design exhibited by the slab, the level of design found in objects in nature is infinitely higher. Take the design of 2001's HUMAN EMBRYO. The human embryo represents probably the highest level of structural complexity in existence -- a level at the OPPOSITE end of the spectrum compared to the level of design present in a domino-shaped slab!

The question, then, is: Why is it that, while watching the movie, millions of people agree that the low level of design exhibited by this slab could not have come about without the intervention of intelligence, but when these same people leave the movie theater, and encounter MUCH HIGHER design in nature, the conclusion is otherwise?

2001's DRAWING POWER

WHEN THE FILM ENDED, and the embryo filled the screen, it was as if the embryo was saying to the audience, "Hey folks, aren't I much more complex than the domino-shaped slab? If you see that intelligence had to have made the slab, why don't you see that intelligence had to have made me?" Ironic, no? This irony is the basis of this classic film's drawing power. People perceived this message subliminally, but not consciously, because the IMPLICATIONS of the message were too far-reaching. Even though "2001" outwardly was only science fiction, the embryo at the film's end had a real message of ultimate importance for all.

True, at the end of the film, when the embryo filled the screen, the makers of the film probably had in mind only science fiction -- to show the viewers the next intermediary step in man's "evolutionary odyssey." Nevertheless, viewers subconsciously sensed another real and important message here. Seeing the embryo, they felt torn between the science fiction aspect of the film and the statement of "cosmic irony" it implied.

And once people started getting the idea, stronger and stronger indications of this cosmic irony started popping up everywhere. Almost as if he had "2001" in mind, one macrobioligist wrote in 1985:

"It is the sheer universality of perfection, the fact that everywhere we look, to whatever depth we look, we find an elegance and ingenuity of an absolutely transcending quality, which so mitigates against the idea of chance. Is it really credible that random processes could have constructed a reality, the smallest element of which -- a functional protein or gene -- is complex beyond our own creative capacities, a reality which is the very antithesis of chance, which excels in every sense anything produced by the intelligence of man? Alongside the level of ingenuity and complexity exhibited by the molecular machinery of life, even our most advanced artefacts appear clumsy. We feel humbled, as neolithic man would in the presence of 20th century technology..." (Michael Denton, Evolution -- A Theory in Crisis, p. 328).

In short, it is fair to say that simply on the basis of design found in objects in nature that were it not for "cognitive dissonance" God's existence would be intuitively obvious.

Professor John Wheeler, past chair of Physics at University of Texas at Austin, formerly a colleague of Albert Einstein and Neils Bohr, and considered one of the foremost contemporary thinkers in theoretical physics and cosmology, had this to say (from a PBS science documentary, "The Creation of The Universe"):

"To my mind, there must be at the bottom of it all, not an utterly simple equation, but an utterly simple IDEA. And to me that idea, when we finally discover it, will be so compelling, and so inevitable, so beautiful, we will say to each other, 'How could it have ever been otherwise?'"

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