Somewhere around here (I couldn�t find where) we were talking about conspiracy theories and the various books and the general lack of critical thinking that such things imply. I hadn�t read a conspiracy theory book in a while so when a friend mentioned she had �The Da Vinci Code� for lend I just couldn�t pass it up. Three-fifths of the book was highly entertaining. Unfortunately it was spoiled by a gadget ending and plenty of contrived plot points. I�m not particularly interested in debunking the details of this admitted (I guess) work of fiction (even though it lays claim to fact on the very first page). But having just read a conspiracy-theory-type of book I gained some new insights into the phenomenon.

In a commentary by Laura Miller titled �The Da Vinci Con� I think she eloquently captured the sleight-of-hand techniques used by the dishonest and devious.

quote:

Thus liberated, Lincoln et al. concoct an argument that is not so much factual as fact-ish. Dozens of credible details are heaped up in order to provide a legitimizing cushion for rank nonsense. Unremarkable legends (that Merovingian kings were thought to have a healing touch, for example) are characterized as suggestive clues or puzzles demanding solution. Highly contested interpretations (that, say, an early Grail romance depicts the sacred object as being guarded by Templars) are presented as established truth. Sources -- such as the New Testament -- are qualified as ''questionable'' and derivative when they contradict the conspiracy theory, then microscopically scrutinized for inconsistencies that might support it. The authors spin one gossamer strand of conjecture over another, forming a web dense enough to create the illusion of solidity. Though bogus, it's an impressive piece of work.

With Dan Rather fresh in mind, it might not be such a bad idea for people to take what they see and hear with a grain of salt. But that barely explains the phenomenon. As Laura Miller also said:

quote:

The only thing more powerful than a worldwide conspiracy, it seems, is our desire to believe in one.

My thoughts on this subject, having just read a good conspiracy theory book, is that, aside from unquenchable passions of hate as a motivation, we LOVE this kind of stuff because we�ve always been fond of story telling. That we are gullible is no surprise, for how else could we enjoy works of fiction, whether movies, opera, plays or a good book. We jump when the man with a knife jumps out of the dark alley, even when that dark alley lies on a big, silver and decidely flat and lifeless screen in the movie theatre. We�re predisposed to play fast and loose with strict reality. I don�t know why. I can�t just be because it allows for much entertainment value, but who knows.

But the long and the short of it is that when the truth DOES count we owe it to ourselves to drop our fantasies, as comfortable and satisfying as they may be, and cultivate perhaps the only trait that will ever see us through: integrity.

An interesting resource is the reviews on Amazon.com for books and anything else they sell. The reviews on controversial works are especially interesting. Here's the link for the Da Vinci Code (over 3,000 and ,no, I haven't read them all.)

I think these reviews say more about the reviewers than the book, in most cases. There are many who believe this book rightly exposes a sinister plot by the Church to keep dark truths from being known by the faithful. Others think it was just a good mystery adventure. Still others find a need to debunk the conspiracy connotations.

About the latter, there is much that can be said by scholars. Sometime back, I featured on the weekend edition of Daily Spiritual Seed this section of Christianity Today for its astute treatment of this topic. It's worth checking out.

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Edit: 3-31-05: Here's a slide show from a lecture I'll be giving on this topic soon.

I saw a woman in the bookstore about a month ago and she was very excited about the book. Since I had read sources such as Christianity Today I was able to say to her that it was based on poor scholarship and I would not waste my time.

There are a flood of books along these lines now and people are gobbling them up at an incredible rate. If you write any book which challenges the Good Book or tradition, you can sell alot of books.

It may be true that we are collectively moving to a higher level of consciousness, but it's a step sideways or down or backward to get into this stuff, IMHO.

Try a web search on Marcus Borg and see what comes up. He is a popular bible debunker from the Jesus Seminar.

Every few years a new theory and apologists will be refuting them all in the years to come.

caritas,

mm <*)))))><

The Da Vinci Code is an interesting beast in that, minus the main plot, it might just as well have been another run-of-the-mill, loose-with-the-facts conspiracy-theory "non-fiction" best-seller. Instead it was presented as a fictional story woven around supposedly established facts. It turns our that a few of those "facts" (such as John in The Last Supper looking very much like a woman) seem undeniable while many other "facts" are clearly either outright bogus or far-out-on-a-limb conjectures. But from what I gather (and from the authoritative tone of the book), many, if not most, of the people who read this book treated this stuff as fact. The Da Vinci Code just goes to show how the many manipulative and dishonest "non-fiction" conspiracy theory books have blurred the line between fact and fiction. A book about the U.S. government accommodating or overlooking 911 and then shooting a missile into the Pentagon as a cover-up might actually make for a harmless fictional thriller. But when it's presented as fact it leaves many people (including the review-warrior Phil) scratching their heads and wondering how anyone can take this stuff seriously. After reading the Da Vinci Code you can see how entertaining these types of books can be whether they are presented as fiction or non-fiction. It was certainly a page-turner.

Those many supposed non-fiction conspiracy theory books might be truer to themselves if they did what the author of the Da Vinci Code did and present the material as fiction. Perhaps we need a new category: Dan-Fiction. But whatever the case may be, it seems the public doesn't care. There's a built-in market for UFO-ologists, JFK conspiracy theorists, and, of course, any work that bashes western civilization and, in particular, Christianity. For a variety of reasons, people are not taking the news of the day at face value. As I said before, with people like Dan Rather (and he's just the tip of the iceberg) it's no wonder. I also wonder if people have an intuitive sense that they are being manipulated and lied to and are reacting against it.

Listen to Rush and Michael Medved, or read an article or two from National Review Online, and you might gain a better handle on who is manipulating whom, when, where and how. Once you see the game that is being played, and who is playing it, you don't need to rush to read dubious supposedly non-fiction best-sellers to find out the truth.

It turns our that a few of those "facts" (such as John in The Last Supper looking very much like a woman) seem undeniable . . .

Good posts, Brad and Michael, only the above point is far from factual. We have no knowledge from Scripture or early Church tradition what John looked like. da Vinci's depiction was his own, imaginative rendition. Where John is mentioned in Scripture he is always a brother of James and is called "he" on numerous occasions.

(BTW, notice da Vinci's Christ also looks feminine!)

I think if one has an ignorance of the Bible and a kind of willingness to discount Christian teaching, this book can seem alluring and even welcomed. Its conspiratorial aspects just don't stand up, however. Neverthelss, Brown is laughing all the way to the bank. Look for a movie sometime next year, I predict.

OK, I read it. Here's my Amazon.com review. I'd be willing to elaborate, here, if anyone wants to go more into it.

Entertaining, but tedious and . . .
. . . just plain loaded with baloney about early Christian history, as others have noted. I know it's fiction, but those who don't know much about Christianity and its history might actually believe that the early Church taught that Jesus was only an inspiring human (umm, read Paul's Epistles), that the Council of Nicea changed all that, that there was really a conspiracy to cover up his history, etc. I guess you can do anything you want with fiction, including fabricating a whole other version of history, if you wish. And if it's got a strong anti-Catholic bias, no problem at all. Don't expect the proponents of political correctness to object, as anti-Catholicism IS politically correct is many circles.

Then there's the tediousness. So much detail! And do people being chased really lapse into such long recollections and reflections about symbology, history, etc. I know it's a literary device to instruct readers, but it seemed incongruent with the context and setting.

I haven't read all 3,016 reviews, but I've read quite a few and haven't noticed anyone pointing out the major internal contradiction of the whole story. Think about it . . . if Jesus was really only a human being, then could Brown's Grail figure be invested in any way with divinity? Hee hee.

I just read the Da Vinci Code a couple of weeks ago. It's a fun, smart mystery. AND THAT'S ALL IT IS. Some people just take things too seriously. As an aside, the construction of this novel illustrates how real conspiracies are put together: Select your "proof" carefully, impose an interpretation on it that is not refuted on its very face, and amass as much evidence of it as you can that is not INconsistent with your claim. Brown did it cleverly as a writer of fiction. Conspiracy buffs do it less innocently.

An illustrated version of the book is out that shows in full color everything the book mentions, including the pyramids at the Louvre, which took the story full circle. Since "The Last Supper" was restored, with years of dirt and grime cleaned off and the paint repaired, we can never be 100% sure that it's exactly like Da Vinci painted it.

Incidentally, I'm sure I'm not the only one who's noticed that the new movie "National Treasure" is very Da Vinci-Codish, except using the symbols and icons of American History instead of Italian art.

Markle

P.S. They both trace the McGuffins of their stories back to the Templar knights, too.

Those Templars were busy guys.

M

Mark, I've recently read that Ron Howard will be directing the movie, "The DaVinci Code," with Tom Hanks starring as Langdon. Should be interesting.

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Yeah, it's just a novel, fiction, a batch of half- or fabricated-truths, stacked up in interesting ways, but this guy's got an anti-Catholic agenda, as evidenced in his earlier writings as well.

I thought this review from Crisis Magazine was well done.

quote:

While his extensive use of fictional formulas may be the secret to Brown�s stardom, his anti-Christian message can�t have hurt him in publishing circles: The Da Vinci Code debuted atop the New York Times best-seller list. By manipulating his audience through the conventions of romance-writing, Brown invites readers to identify with his smart, glamorous characters who�ve seen through the impostures of the clerics who hide the �truth� about Jesus and his wife. Blasphemy is delivered in a soft voice with a knowing chuckle: �[E]very faith in the world is based on fabrication.�

But even Brown has his limits. To dodge charges of outright bigotry, he includes a climactic twist in the story that absolves the Church of assassination. And although he presents Christianity as a false root and branch, he�s willing to tolerate it for its charitable works.

(Of course, Catholic Christianity will become even more tolerable once the new liberal pope elected in Brown�s previous Langdon novel, Angels & Demons, abandons outmoded teachings. �Third-century laws cannot be applied to the modern followers of Christ,� says one of the book�s progressive cardinals.)

They take him on for rampant b.s. concerning a wide range of other issues as well. To me, all that sort of stuff weakens a novel. If you don't even get the facts right -- intentionally! -- then there's some kind of agenda at work, or so it seems to me.

It's my understanding that time travel at will is a scientific impossibility. And yet those fabricating, dishonest, manipulative science fiction writers, with their anti-science agenda, keep rubbing the noses of real scientists in their biased and arrogant fictions, misleading impressionable, gullible, and often underaged, readers.

And don't even get me started on Harry Potter and his pro-sorcery agenda......

Or Greek and Roman mythology, with their polytheistic agendas.......

Everyone is so touchy these days....

Markle

OK, bud, you wanna argue with me, eh?

Time travel IS a possibility if you can go faster than the speed of light, and that's usually considered in science fiction books. They don't ever really ask the reader to believe something that goes against the laws of physics or chemistry, just to imagine what could be done if we were to develop technologies that go beyond what's currently possible. Lots of fantasy, there, but no disrespect for science, and no distortion of historical facts -- at least none I've ever come across. E.g., you won't find them saying that Einstein's work was so controversial that the U.S. government had him arrested and his works banned. That's the kind of stuff Dan Brown did in his treatment of Church history.

Harry Potter - - pure fantasy, with connections to lots of mythology and folklore. I've never seen historical fact distorted, nor detected any agenda. As a Christian, I have no problem with the series whatsoever. It's all about imagination and the wonderful, mystical world of early childhood. Spiral Dynamics purple system -- a level the West has neglected.

So I think you can see the differences between these approaches and The Da Vinci Code. An analogy would be someone writing a story about World War II and accurately reporting on many of the events, but altering the facts in a few areas to develop their agenda. The novelist might, for example, acknowledge the realities of Auschwitz, but say that only people who had undergone a fair trial and were sentenced for committing atrocious crimes were sent there. They might maintain that what really happened is that the camp was bombed by the Allies, and that lots of paperwork was destroyed to cover up the mistake. Then comes our hero, on the trail to discover some of the records that are still available, with the big, bad U.S. government on his trail to find and eliminate him and the records.

My guess is the PC crowd wound find such a novel unconscionable and would be denouncing it at every turn. Its anti-Semitic, pro-Nazi spirit would be condemned, and it would be pointed out that today's generation of young people, who know almost nothing about history, are highly susceptible to popularized revisionary perspectives.

This just doesn't happen when the history of Christianity is manipulated, however. Not by the same critics, at least.

My (obvious) point was that fiction is fiction and it seems beside the point to be looking for "agendas." Stories have to be ABOUT something, or there's no story.

Nothing is beyond question, not even religion. Islamic societies wouldn't agree with that, but fortunately we don't live in one.

Markle

Markle:

The book being fiction doesn't make the author immune from the kind of criticism Phil is making, since the story apparently takes more than a few liberties with Christian history that even those in the liberal Jesus Seminar wouldn't support. It doesn't seem Phil is critical of the author's story-telling ability, but only with the blatant revisionist history to that end, and one that appears intended to generate a certain effect within the New Age movement, which is strongly disposed to trashing orthodox religion without engaging in any serious dialogue.

Phil isn't remotely suggesting the book shouldn't have been written, or issuing a moral fatwa against it, so what's your beef with his critical remarks? He gave you some distinctions about the use of revisionist history for the sake of fiction writing, but you didn't note them as having any obvious validity. You did the same with Brad's remarks re: McCarthyism. Interesting pattern of non sequiturs . . . . .

<< the story apparently takes more than a few liberties with Christian history that even those in the liberal Jesus Seminar wouldn't support. >>

So what? It's a NOVEL. It's a work of fiction. It's not a treatise on theology. "Star Trek" took more than a few liberties with science. Anyone is free to write articles about what Brown got wrong, and many people already have.

<< Phil isn't remotely suggesting the book shouldn't have been written, or issuing a moral fatwa against it, so what's your beef with his critical remarks? >>

I never said he was doing that. I'm not a regular here, but if you knew of Phil's and my long history of friendly debate about many, many subjects beside this one, in other forums and directly, you'd understand that I'm not perpetrating a "beef" with him. Phil knows me and I'm sure he didn't take it amiss.

Markle

"Anyone is free to write articles about what Brown got wrong, and many people already have."

Which is what Phil has done re: the author's revisionist history. Such criticism doesn't take away from the book's fictional merit, but is necessary to the extent the author actually believes the distortions to be true.

It's a good question on the floor, here: just how much liberty does a fiction writer have concerning fictional or scientific facts. As much as they want, I suppose, if we take fiction to be just something "made-up," or a "fabrication." I guess that's a valid argument; many, like Markle, on the Amazon.com book reviews of Da Vinci Code make this argument.

As w.c. noted, echoing my earlier posts, the problem is weaving historical fact and fabrication in such a manner as to cast suspicion on early Christian origins. It would be one thing if only the fanatical knight/scholar Teabing was doing so in the story, but our hero, Robert Langdon, nods approvingly as he "explains" the "truth" to Sophie.

This will be a movie in a year or so. Imagine Teabing (Anthony Hopkins? Michael Cain?) and Langdon (all-American boy, Tom Hanks) trashing early Christian history (which they will have to do if they are in the least faithful to the book). I wonder how the critics will respond? Think of the many who chastised Mel Gibson for supposedly playing an anti-Semitic card in his movie, "The Passion of the Christ." And yet there's no doubt that Gibson wasn't making up the Jews' role in the crucifixion. I'll be watching to see if these critics comment on the anti-Catholicism that runs rampant throughout the book. If I were a betting man . . .

Here's a contrast: the recent movie, "National Treasure." So far as I could tell, there were no distortions of historical fact; my daughter (M.A. in history) also noted that they got it right. The fantasy did not create an alternative history of the early U.S. and Founding Fathers; it merely played off their Masonic connections, which are rather well-established for some. It was a fun movie, all the more so for the way it worked with history.

Again, I acknowledge the "fiction-means-you-create-your-own-reality" school. Fine. Just don't imply in the front part of your book, then, that your story is based on historical realities. That's playing loose with the facts.

Re. Star Trek. I don't know where they've distorted science in any way. Their fantasy technologies do no such thing, as far as I know. They're far-fetched, but that's not the same as distorting science.

It's a good question on the floor, here: just how much liberty does a fiction writer have concerning fictional or scientific facts. As much as they want, I suppose, if we take fiction to be just something "made-up," or a "fabrication." I guess that's a valid argument; many, like Markle, on the Amazon.com book reviews of Da Vinci Code make this argument.

We should probably remember that there is something called a �historical novel�. In these we accept that there is a fictional story interwoven with historical facts -- and we do suppose the facts to be true within reasonable and honest scholarly error or interpretation. If the facts are falsified then what we get is a fraudulent historical novel which I think describes �The Da Vinci Code� rather well.

<< the recent movie, "National Treasure." So far as I could tell, there were no distortions of historical fact... >>

You mean there really IS a treasure map on the back of the Declaration of Independence that leads to a chain of clues to find the vast Templar Knights treasure in a secret cavern under Wall Street?!?!?!?!

Wow!!!!!!!!

Markle

Well, there really IS a document called the Delcaration of Independence written by men, some of whom were Masons. As I noted in the pgh you've quoted, The fantasy did not create an alternative history of the early U.S. and Founding Fathers; it merely played off their Masonic connections, which are rather well-established for some.

Keep trying!

<< If the facts are falsified then what we get is a fraudulent historical novel >>

"Fraud" is a strong word. There was a debate at the time of "The Passion of the Christ" about how Pontius Pilate was portayed as a sensitive, reluctant guy, which put more of the onus for what happened on the Jews. The real historical Pilate was a brutal thug, who was finally removed and recalled to Rome because of so many complaints about him. At some point we get to the fuzzy line between fact and interpretation. All historical fiction--and dramatizations of the lives of real people--represent truth selectively. Does it rise to the level of "fraud?" In "Galaxy Quest," where the actors had to explain the concept of a fictional TV show to aliens with no concept of it, their interpretation was that if it wasn't true, then it was a "deception"...or a lie. But that's putting it kind of harshly, isn't it?

Markle

<< The fantasy did not create an alternative history of the early U.S. and Founding Fathers... >>

Of course it did, since (as far as we know) they didn't really hide a supposed treasure and then use their positions in the new government to plant maps, keys, clues, hints, etc., etc., about how to find it.

(None of which would have happened in the real world. The clues and secrets would have been kept in the Masonic order, not put out in the world for anyone to find. But then we wouldn't have had this fun story!)

Markle

OK, let me put it differently (as if you don't know what I'm trying to say -- must be a slow day in lawyersville ). "National Treasure" didn't alter the historical facts that we do know, but Dan Brown did. Developing a fantasy based on the history that we do know is different from changing the history that we do know and using that revision as part of the fantasy.

Can you think of any other popular novel that has done such a thing? I can't.

In the case of the Da Vinci Code, it's just plain false, for example, to state that Christians didn't believe in the divinity of Christ until the Council of Nicea. That's for starters. One could go on, and many reviewers have.

From science fiction and elsewhere, we get different degrees of "alternative history," where stories are based in our recognizable world, but a few (or more) details are changed to explore what those changes could have led to, or how slight differences could have made known history unfold differently.

I do understand that people may be more vigilant when something as serious as religion is part of the subject matter of the story.

Take another look at the "Fact" statement in Brown's book. All he says is that the Priory of Sion and Opus Dei are real organizations, and that his descriptions of art, documents, and rituals are accurate. Nothing more. I think some people have read more into that than is there.

BTW, there's a secret message hidden on the two flaps of the dust jacket of the book. Did anyone else see it?

Markle

I looked at a couple of pages of reviews of the book at Amazon.com. A couple of people said that the Priory of Sion isn't real. I'm not qualified to comment on that, but if that's true, then maybe the "Fact" page is as much a part of the story as the rest of the book.

Markle

There are articles like this one on the Priory. I have no problem with that part; all in good fun. That's not changing the history that we do know. See?

I'll check out my dust flaps for hidden messages. Can you provide a riddle to help us out?