Dan Brown - 'The Da Vinci Code' and 'Angels And Demons' (merged)

I assume other people have read these books? I read The Da Vinci Code a while back, and Angels And Demons last week. What do people think of them? I loved them, to be honest, but I know some people (usually Catholics) don't. They do have a lot of controversial issues in them - there being a surviving bloodline of Jesus, the role of Mary Magdalene, the Holy Grail etc. Riveting reading, though

Brown tells us a lot about a variety of different subjects that we probably wouldn't have known otherwise. All really interesting, but the only problem for me is working out what's actually true!

I'm at university now and one of the subjects I'm studying is called Rise of Christianity. I'm not religious (nor am I an atheist, though), but there's a lot of people in my class who (in my opinion) know far too much about the bible, and take things too seriously. I'll admit that The Da Vinci Code is one of the main reasons I took that class, just to learn more, so I occasionally bring up the book with other people. I asked one guy if he'd read it, and his response was "No, but I've read about six books criticising it". Funnily, he didn't speak to me again Anyway, our lecturer had this to say on the subject, and I paraphrase, "The Da Vinci Code is great entertainment, but basically it's just rubbish".

I know there's a mix of religious and political views on here, so I wondered what the general TTF poplace at to say on the matter?

Re: Dan Brown - 'The Da Vinci Code' & 'Angels And Demons'

CraigSmith said:

...The Da Vinci Code is one of the main reasons I took that class, just to learn more, so I occasionally bring up the book with other people. I asked one guy if he'd read it, and his response was "No, but I've read about six books criticising it". Funnily, he didn't speak to me again Anyway, our lecturer had this to say on the subject, and I paraphrase, "The Da Vinci Code is great entertainment, but basically it's just rubbish".

I know there's a mix of religious and political views on here, so I wondered what the general TTF poplace at to say on the matter?

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Not having read the DaVinci Code, but having read reviews of it (as did your friend), I would put it in that class of manifestations that I call "miracles via projection." For instance, just the other day, I saw on television a ten-year-old cheese sandwich(!) (I forget the how and why of it) that a woman claimed to have the face of Mary on it! There was a picture of it, and indeed there was a spot on the toast that looked liked a face. (Like the face seen on Mars, to say nothing of canals...)

As far as I'm concerned, this is the same principle of projecting (seeing) angels and kitty cats in clouds. It is beyond me that people still fall for this sort of thing — I call it nonsense — and get all worked up over it. How gullible can you get. Finding codes in books is what I term a kissin' cousin to the same sort of projection.

Man loves (indeed needs) to make sense of things, so much so that many times he forces things to make sense that are inherently nonsensical, and loves to connect dots, many times that have no valid connection. Unless we are very careful in our observations and our thought processes, we can fool ourselves into believing the damndest things...

Barley

Re: Dan Brown - 'The Da Vinci Code' & 'Angels And Demons'

Barliman Butterbur said:

As far as I'm concerned, this is the same principle of projecting (seeing) angels and kitty cats in clouds.

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There's more to it than the code itself. I'd see that as made up, anyway - part of the story. But the story is based on what are supposedly true facts. Things like the existance of the Illuminati and the Priory of Sion; all sorts of interesting facts about the Church; the existence of a bloodline of Jesus and the quest of the Knights Templar etc. You should read both books, then see what you think. But just out of interest, could I ask you what your religious stance is?

Good to see you back Craig Smith.
So, at university now - which one? -, and studying what subject, that includes such a surprising topic as "The Rise of Christianity"?
The Da Vinci book is, of course, just one of the wide variety of trivial things that get attached to any religion. Such books can be entertaining, and one has to admire the effort the writers put into them, but they have nothing to do with the mainstream of the religion, and, unless one has unlimited time, are better neglected in favour of much more relevant works.
From its very earliest days Christianity has found itself littered with all manner of weird and wonderful ideas, from some that lasted with some passion for a year or two, through others that seemed overwhelming for a century or two but then dwindled away into obscurity, to a few of which the influence still reverberates today. Fortunately it has always had the resilience and strength to withstand all such diversions, and still therefore retains the essential character, the Rock, on which it was founded.

Re: Dan Brown - 'The Da Vinci Code' & 'Angels And Demons'

Cheers, joxy. I'm at Aberdeen Uni studying history, but I'm also doing some divinity, some philosophy and some celtic civilisation in my first term. The Rise of Christianity course being in the divinity department. I don't have internet in my room there (because I haven't got round to setting it up yet, and when I do it'll be painfully slow), so I don't get much of a chance to spend time on forums. It's only when I'm home I have all the time I want. Although I do still have a philosophy essay to write for handing in tomorrow...

Of course The Da Vinci code has nothing to do with the mainstream part of Christianity. But do you not find all the little bits of information about the history of the religion he puts in fascinating? They're not relevent to todays Christianity, but you get to see why some things are the way they are, or why something really happened 1000 years ago. The Christian idea has survived all the turmoil of the past 2000 years, but the church have never been the completely devout, squeaky clean organisation that they try to project to the world. They were really just as bloodthrirsty as every other monarchy in the ancient and medieval world. And seeing things as they really were is what interests me (being why I'm studying history...).

Thank you CS.
Yes, I guessed you must have stayed in Scotland for your further experience, where universities still deal in solid subjects, leaving the fripperies of media studies and even Tolkienology to the new English red-bricks.
Divinity, philosophy, civilisation, as salt in the soup of history, there's a real Scottish catholic (small "c", of course) education!
Just for the record though, my degree course at the university down the road from here, in Yorkshire, was quite broad, being basically religion and literature, with philosophy and sociology thrown in for good measure. To that I'll add an admission, that a colleague substituted plate techtonics for one of those subsidiaries!
Yes again, all the trivia and minutiae are interesting, and, as I said, entertaining, and I wouldn't put anyone off them.
My only reservation would be that the correct order of things would be to get a firm grounding in that "mainstream" first - which will, after all, include all the detail you could ask for, and then some - and after that indulge yourself in the whims and fancies of any number of writers who jump on to the rolling bandwagon, only to overbalance and fall off before very long. I know wagons don't negotiate streams, but you get my drift?

Re: Dan Brown - 'The Da Vinci Code' & 'Angels And Demons'

CraigSmith said:

...just out of interest, could I ask you what your religious stance is?

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Well, I've been around the block a few times! (Beware: you're going to find out more than you wanted to know, but I think you'll find it interesting.)

My parents were "technically Jewish," but never practiced it. They tried putting me in a Jewish Sunday school when I was little (about 4 or 5 or so), but I hated it so much that they took me out, and that was that for a while.

Then my mother enrolled me in a Catholic day care in a church down the street. The nuns were so mean that I would sneak out and go home. That didn't last long!

Then we moved into our first house. We moved from renting in a poor neighborhood to buying our first house in another poor neighborhood. For entertainment, we used to stand in front of the TV store and watch wrestling (this was in the days when TV — then a great novelty — first began to replace radio). They'd put a TV in the window on a timer, tuned a set to wrestling, and so there was a crowd standing on the sidewalk. They'd bring food and folding chairs!

My other entertainment (along with a crowd of other neighbors) was watching the Pentecostal "holy rollers" go into a trance, dance around singing and speaking in tongues. (The little neighborhood Pentecostal church had no air conditioning on hot nights, so they'd leave the doors open.)

A few years later, my mother enrolled me in a Christian Science Sunday school, along with a few other neighborhood kids. The teacher was a very nice young lady who tried her best to explain the tenets of the church, but we thought they were so crazy that we just laughed at their absurdity — very rude! I dropped out of that too.

Then something happened that had a great effect on my view of religion and of God. My parents, and my maternal grandma and I had gone to Sears to do some shopping. I must have been 6 or 7, maybe 8. Grandma and I stayed in the car while my parents went to the nursery for some plants. I was in the front seat, and my grandma was in the back. We were chatting, but she fell silent. I turned around to see why she'd stopped talking. She was in the middle of having a stroke.

She'd keeled over onto her side. Her eyes were crossed. She was foaming at the mouth. I was terrified. I didn't know what to do. Should I stay with her, or should I go looking for my parents? So I began to pray. Hard. Nothing happened. So I finally decided to go find my parents, praying to find them. Finally I found them, and told them what was going on. I forget what happened after that, but I assume that my parents got Grandma to a hospital, where she appeared to recover fully. But when I got a chance to think about it, I came to the conclusion that prayer wasn't worth a damn, and that God didn't give a damn. For many months I carried the thought that somehow I was the cause of what happened. Finally I broke down and told my Dad what I thought, and he hastened to assure me that I'd had nothing to do with it. But before I told him, the guilt was overwhelming.

There was a point in grade school where I was invited to become a member of a Presybterian after-school club. The only thing I remember was the punch and cookies, and that I lost interest.

When I was about 12 or 13, I began to consciously dismiss Christianity as a viable idea. After all: Here is a God who impregnated somebody else's virgin wife — which struck me as rape — and then loaded down his only son with all the sins of the world, and allowed him to be tortured to death. It also struck me as patent nonsense that this God allowed even little babies to be permanently damned to fry in hell forever unless they'd been baptized. It struck me as particular nonsense that people were born sinful. That was my take on Christianity as I understood it then, and it really hasn't changed all that much since. But don't be offended: as I have studied other religions, I've pretty much come to the same conclusions about all of them — that they are all some unique combination of wisdom and tommyrot — some more, some less. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

Then I grew up some more and got into high school. One day I told my mother a mildly anti-Semitic joke. She looked at me and said, "You shouldn't say things like that." I said, "Why not, it's funny!" She said "Well, you're Jewish." I was both stunned and scared. (I'd no memory of the Jewish Sunday school, and hadn't until well into adulthood.) It was as if someone told me I was really a Martian, and I felt like I had suddenly grown an extra head.

When I went to school the next day, I told my friends, who were as astonished as I was. They immediately made me the house expert on Judaism, and I knew nothing about it!

At 18 I joined the Air Force. So when, at 2 or 3 in the morning after my swearing-in as a new airman, we landed at the training base, we were subject to hours of filling out forms and being asked endless questions. One of the questions a bored airman clerk asked me was, "What religion are you?" for the first time in my life, I answered "Jewish," expecting something horrible to happen. He merely checked off something on a form.

The military has to be able to say that they take care of their people's spiritual needs. To that end, every incoming airman is mandated to go to ONE religious service. So one day my Flight (which is the equivalent to an army company) attended the mandatory service, which was your generic one-size-fits-all Christian service and that was that. But it wasn't.

Somehow or other, I found out that there were Jewish services held on the base by a Jewish chaplain, and that any airman could be excused from basic training long enough to go to services. They had to let you go. The Christians went on Sundays, when there was no basic training anyway. The Jews got to go on Friday nights and Saturday mornings, because the Jewish Sabbath goes from Friday sundown to Saturday sundown. So I got two whacks at it during each week. This fostered resentment in some of the men, and I got my first taste of real anti-Semitism.

I started studying Judaism with all the zeal of a convert, and was soon heavily involved, and that lasted all the time — more or less — that I was in the service.

After I got out and began college, Judaism faded out of my life. I found "civilian synagogues" not to my taste: too full of spiritual hypocrisy and too clubby. Obviously this was me more than it was them.

CONTINUED NEXT POST

Re: Dan Brown - 'The Da Vinci Code' & 'Angels And Demons'

CONTINUED FROM PREVIOUS POST

In college I met the woman who became my first wife, who was Jewish and drop-dead gorgeous (I kid you not!). So because of that and because of the kids, we participated in all the main Jewish holidays, and treated them lightly.

Cutting the story short: I enrolled in a postgrad school of psychotherapy, planning to become a family therapist. During that time — when I began my internship — one of my clients was involved in a spiritual movement based on Hinduism. The man was pleased with my work with him, and recommended several other people who were also in the movement. I began to get soaked in this thing, because of the nature of the issues they were trying to resolve. Eventually I was invited to attend one of their gatherings, because their spiritual leader was in town. Again, cutting things short: I was utterly fascinated by Hinduism! I studied it as voraciously as anything I've ever been involved with. But still — I thought to myself: this (the movement, not Hinduism) is either the biggest potential power the world has ever known — or it's the biggest con job. So for the next 20 years I kept one foot in and one foot out.

But before I got really involved I went through a divorce, and so I had the time to get seriously into it — with one foot in and one foot out. Finally there developed some serious scandals around the leader, and I began to feel betrayed. I stayed in because of the music service I was doing, and because I'd made many good friends. Most important of all, I met the woman who became my second and present wife, the light of my life! The sad thing is, I married a true believer just at the point where I was through with the movement. So I'm nominally in, but at the far fringes. I still like the people I've met, and 20-year friendships are not to be dismissed easily.

One day my son gave me a book called I and That by Alex Comfort, which is a critique of the mystical experiences of Hinduism (and by extension of any other religion), and what they probably really are. And I ran across a book called Positive Illusions by a UCLA professor of psychiatry. They had a heavy influence on my thinking, as well as the works of Michael Shirmer, who is a columnist for Scientific American, and especially the moral tenets of Tibetan Buddhism as expressed by the Dalai Lama XIV.

So that's the background. To answer your first question: I stand outside of all religions. I believe that the God of holy books is a first attempt by Man to answer the Perennial Questions, that this God is made in Man's image, and exists nowhere but in Man's mind. I believe that man is essentially incapable of understanding the essential nature of reality, for the same reason that a cat can never learn to read: he simply lacks what it takes.

What I do believe in is, as the Dalai Lama puts it, in a "policy of kindness." I think Judaism has it right when it quotes God as saying that it is more important to observe the commandments than to believe in God. I believe what Buddha has said:

"Do not believe in what you have heard;
Do not believe in traditions because they have been handed down for many generations;
Do not believe anything because it is rumored and spoken of by many;
Do not believe merely because of the written statement of some old sage;
Do not believe in conjectures;
Do not believe merely in the authority of your teachers and elders.

"Better than worshipping gods is following the ways of goodness.

"After observation and analysis, when it agrees with reason and is conducive to the good and benefit of one and all, then accept it and live up to it.

"Be a lamp unto thyself."

I believe that everyone has the right to believe in whatever gives them a sense of purpose about life, gives them acceptable (to them) answers to unanswerable questions and a sense of what's moral and ethical. I believe that NO ONE has the right to force their beliefs onto anyone else, even if their religion says that it's their divine mission to do so. I believe that religions supply a set of positive illusions that enable most people to get through life's tragedies which would otherwise destroy them:

"The final belief is to believe in a fiction which you know to be a fiction." —Wallace Stevens

"When you see through life's illusions, therein lies the danger." —Jackson Brown

I believe that religion can be perverted to rationalize some of the greatest evils man has ever done to himself.

I believe in kindly, loving, cooperative, compassionate human behavior. If man would treat himself in just two ways: loving cooperation and appreciation of differences, the world would be a heaven on earth.

As I say in my Deep Thought: "It's all about how well you treat yourself and others."

And that's all there is to it.

Barley

Barliman Butterbur said:

And that's all there is to it.

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Amen. Amen.

Re: Dan Brown - 'The Da Vinci Code' & 'Angels And Demons'

Holy Blood, Holy Grail covers a very similar (if not identical) subject; the existence of Jesus Christ as a very human and non-divine individual who was married, had children, grew old, ect., and the efforts of different groups to preserve his bloodline down through the ages. Whether true or not I found it to be a fascinating and logically presented bit of historical detective work.

There are many bizarre and rather fantastic stories in history, from the Children's Crusade to the Crucifixion. The exact details about such things can probably never be known, but its always interesting to strip away a few layers of the mythology and try to shed some light on the dark spots.

Re: Dan Brown - 'The Da Vinci Code' & 'Angels And Demons'

Please keep in mind that Religious discussions are not allowed.
However, as long as you stick to discussing the books in question, it is OK.

I know that it is hard to separate the former from the latter when these books are discussed, but I think that if you maek an effort of it it will be no problem.

Thank you.

Re: Dan Brown - 'The Da Vinci Code' & 'Angels And Demons'

Arvedui said:

Please keep in mind that Religious discussions are not allowed.
However, as long as you stick to discussing the books in question, it is OK.

I know that it is hard to separate the former from the latter when these books are discussed, but I think that if you maek an effort of it it will be no problem.

Thank you.

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If you are referring to me, I was asked a direct question (What is my religious stance); what was I to do? For some reason that question opened a floodgate...

Also, I think you will find that the topic of religion will seep into many areas as a natural consequence of the nature of the discussion. I think the mods may have to get more flexible on that issue.

Barley

Gildor said:

There are many bizarre and rather fantastic stories in history, from the Children's Crusade.... The exact details about such things can probably never be known, but its always interesting to strip away a few layers of the mythology....

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The Children's Crusades are history; their details, their facts, are known.
Browning's Hamelin poem is supposed to be based on them, but is there an actual mythology about them?
Whether to consider them bizarre and fantastic is a matter of opinion.
I can't say anything about other interesting points you make, because of the restriction on religion.
As B_B suggests, firm rulings on that matter were always going to be difficult to make - and now already they are.

Re: Dan Brown - 'The Da Vinci Code' & 'Angels And Demons'

Barliman Butterbur said:

If you are referring to me, I was asked a direct question (What is my religious stance); what was I to do? For some reason that question opened a floodgate...

Also, I think you will find that the topic of religion will seep into many areas as a natural consequence of the nature of the discussion. I think the mods may have to get more flexible on that issue.

Barley

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1) No, I wasn't. It was only a general reminder. If I were of the opinion that you had done something wrong, I would have told you so directly (via PM). Great reply, BTW...

2) Yes it is. That is why I haven't closed the thread.

I have read The DaVinci-Code and I found it immensely interesting, as it raises a lot of questions and shed some new light to univerally accepted thruths. And as it concerns my personal beliefs, even more so. But as long as I hold the position I do here on TTF, I find it impossible to discuss it as I know that I will eventually end up discussing religion. Those that have participated in this thread so far have manged to stick rather good to the topic without crossing the line (bending is OK by me). I do not want to cause the closing of this thread. The views presented in the book is too important to me for that. But I love reading your views, so please go on. I will not interrupt unless I feel the need to do so.

Re: Dan Brown - 'The Da Vinci Code' & 'Angels And Demons'

Arvedui said:

I have read The DaVinci-Code and I found it immensely interesting, as it raises a lot of questions and shed some new light to univerally accepted thruths...

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If you liked that, then you will LOVE Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid by Douglas R. Hofstadter.

Barley

Re: Dan Brown - 'The Da Vinci Code' & 'Angels And Demons'

I just want to thank Barlie for the amazingly interesting account on his journey through religion. I'm going through some of the same questions now and it's always interesting to hear an account from someone who has gone through it before.

Re: Dan Brown - 'The Da Vinci Code' & 'Angels And Demons'

joxy said:

The Children's Crusades are history; their details, their facts, are known.
Browning's Hamelin poem is supposed to be based on them, but is there an actual mythology about them?
Whether to consider them bizarre and fantastic is a matter of opinion.
I can't say anything about other interesting points you make, because of the restriction on religion.
As B_B suggests, firm rulings on that matter were always going to be difficult to make - and now already they are.

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Well, what I largely meant was that they may seem just as bizarre and fantastic on the surface as some of the wilder tales of creative fiction we enjoy, and are in many cases even more obscure. All we have as documentation are time-smudged accounts (often from only one or a scant few sources) and the revisions made by the many people that have handed them down.

To paraphrase Oscar Wilde: "Truth, in matters of history, is simply the opinion that has survived." This is applicable wherever physical evidence is lacking.

Re: Dan Brown - 'The Da Vinci Code' & 'Angels And Demons'

Originally Posted by Arvedui
I have read The DaVinci-Code and I found it immensely interesting, as it raises a lot of questions and sheds some new light to universally accepted truths...

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Are there any universally accepted truths? Can someone give me synopses of these books (or maybe I'll interrogate Amazon)?

I am fascinated by this obsession with a blood line for Jesus; though as far as I know it only appears in fiction - a sort of Aragorn figure to leap out of the woodwork when the world is in peril, perhaps!

Your spiritual history is fascinating, Barley. No-one can accuse you of not giving it a go, though it seems you met some right twerps along the way as well as some 'saints'.

You've got a lot on your plate, CS, with that bundle of courses. I hope you get out of them what you are looking for. The Church, of course, does not have just one history, and the rise of Christianity is like the rise of the Himalayas - many simultaneous peaks and troughs. Geography would have been easier!

Arvedui said:

I have read The DaVinci-Code and I found it immensely interesting, as it raises a lot of questions and shed some new light to univerally accepted truths.

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If that's how you found it, and if you think it throws important light on anything, I find that distinctly worrying!

Gildor said:

what I largely meant was that they may seem just as bizarre and fantastic on the surface....All we have as documentation are time-smudged accounts....

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Yes, I agree about them appearing bizarre and fantastic, but they did happen and the facts and documentation are quite clear.

Re: Dan Brown - 'The Da Vinci Code' & 'Angels And Demons'

Ol'gaffer said:

I just want to thank Barlie for the amazingly interesting account on his journey through religion. I'm going through some of the same questions now and it's always interesting to hear an account from someone who has gone through it before.

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May you discover a set of beliefs which gets you through!

Barley