“2001: Creation from Within or Without?” This is the 50th anniversary of the movie,”2001: A Space Odyssey.” The movie is about the search for the extraterrestrial origin of a series of monoliths, one of which sparked the origin of human intelligence. So, where does our humanness come from? There are two traditions: From without, as we see in Genesis 2.7. when God breaths the spark of life into dead dust to create Adam, “2001,” and the tradition of space aliens bringing civilization to us. And From within, as we see in Eastern traditions, especially Taoism, in which spirit is in all things, and in the architecture and spiritual thought of Louis Kahn. To see these two tradition in tension, look at the most famous panel of the Sistine Chapel ceiling by Michelangelo. It shows God sending the spark of life to Adam. But looking more closely, we see that God himself is within a section of the human brain — thus a creation of the human imagination.
