Dan Brown’s “da Vinci Code” & “angels & Demons” – Unfair Criticism Of Religion?
I posted this question in the “Religion & Spirituality” category. 25 of 30 responses were along the lines of “It’s fiction, you idiot.”
I wonder if I’ll get a different response from people who care about history.
I started to research historical lies and slanders in Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code – there are many. Brown falsely claimed that the Catholic lay organization, Opus Dei, is an evil conspiracy. However, while reading a list of prominent Opus Dei members, I came across this:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_pro…
Margaret Ogola, medical director of the Cottolengo Hospice in Nairobi for HIV-positive orphans and Kenyan author. A supernumerary with four children, she heads the Commission for Health and Family Life for the Kenyan bishops’ conference.[35] Her novel The River and the Source, which follows four generations of Kenyan women in a rapidly changing country and society, won the Africa Region Commonwealth Award for Literature. Interested in women’s empowerment, she is also Vice-President of Family Life Counselling (Kenya).
I googled Margaret Ogola and learned that she opposes the distribution of condoms in Africa because she claims they encourage the spread of AIDS.http://www.physiciansforlife.org/content…
At that point, I gave up on researching Dan Brown’s historical inaccuracies. The main point is that much of organized religion is spreading great evil in the world. Dan Brown is fighting that evil.
Dan Brown is not fighting the evil of organized religion, except to throw lies after lies. It’s like the people who went around saying that Obama was a Muslim or a Communist. These are not true, and they have never been true. Does that make them right because they are fighting against Obama? No, it means that they are biased and are willing to throw any words that they can that they think will turn people against their target. In the end that makes them look stupid, regardless of whether or not they are right.
Dan Brown has poorly written a number of books that attack religion, but does so by misrepresenting religion and using lies to support his arguments. His does this to build drama into a piece of fiction, but that’s the underlying truth. He does it because religion is one of the few safe things to attack these days, after our loss of faith in religion’s power. We see the trappings, we see the history, and we see the “blind” worshippers, which all seem the opposite of our modern, individual way of thinking. It’s an easy thing to turn into an enemy.
Dan Brown simply uses this cheap and easy cliche, and builds novels around it. He is not fighting evil; he is cashing in on our anxieties, the way psychics and con men do. He is not a hero; he is simply the lesser of two evils.
as long as organized religion exists, there will always be haters, and there will always be someone screaming “unfair” every time someone says something that contradicts someone elses religion. this is nothing new. there is nothing that can be done to stop it as long as people are still allowed to have opinions
Don’t try to search his historical accuracies as his books are books of fiction.
For instance the Dead Sea Scrolls do not have anything regarding, Jesus, Mary Magdalene, Christianity etc.
The Jesuits had nothing to do with the dissolution of the Knights Templar. The Knights Templar were dissolved in the early 1300s. The Jesuit order was founded in the 1500s.
Opus Dei is an organization which is controversial among some Catholics as they feel it demands a rigidity in its members. Because of that the organization will become a target for writers of sensationalism.
Well, you do have to remember that both of those books were fiction, hence why so many people probably gave you that answer. You wouldn’t say that JK Rowling was promoting witchcraft by writing Harry Potter would you? The same argument can be used on both of those. Both books are works of fiction and the goal isn’t to persuade people to change what they think or act. If Dan Brown really wanted to fight the “evil” or organized religion, then he would have gone about it a different way, not writing a fiction book.
I am 64 years old and in these 64 years I have figured it out. I know when a question is asked like this, it is because the person asking really would like an answer, but the bottom line is If you are a Christian (I am) you find it offensive but on the other hand if you are not a super fired up christian then you would say not and then there are many like me that believe it is just Entertainment and let it go as that