Monday, March 27, 2006

Debunking the DaVinci Code

This is an event that College Republicans might be interested in.

InterVarsity Mars Hill Lecture Series at WMU presents
Dr. Paul Maier, WMU Professor of Ancient History, speaking on
"The Davinci Code: Fact or Fiction?"
at 7:30 pm this Wednesday, March 29, at WMU's Kanley Chapel.
There will be a question and answer time after the talk, and a free coffeehouse after the event in the Kanley Dialogue Center.

I haven't read the book The DaVinci Code, but I have heard that it is full of lies, and that it attempts to undermine Christianity. I'm interested to learn more about it.

UPDATE: Sigh. Nobody ever believes me. Check out this article for more on Dan Brown's agenda:

"I chose this topic for personal reasons — primarily as an exploration of my own faith and my own ideas about religion. …This may be the first time the secret has been unveiled within the format of a popular thriller, but the information is anything but new. My sincere hope is that The Da Vinci Code, in addition to entertaining people, will serve as an open door for readers to begin their own explorations.
Dan Brown, "The Da Vinci Code," www.danbrown.com"

Oh, by the way, the book claims: "all descriptions of artwork, architecture, documents, and secret rituals in this novel are accurate" (p. 1).

I would think it obvious that a fictional book can have both a real-world agenda and real-world effects. Uncle Tom's Cabin comes to mind.

5 comments:

A.J. said...

From what I understand, the author has admitted several times that the book is pure fiction. However, all fiction is based on some fact, so the book takes real characters and events (Jesus, etc) and puts them in a fictional context. I'd imagine that this is more for people who accept the book as the law, not a "Dis" of the author.

Anonymous said...

Talk about judgemental Allan!Rather than saying you would like to learn more about it, why don't you head over to the library and pick up a copy? After reading it, you will understand that it is just fiction. How can fiction be lies? Its an excellent read, as are Brown's other works. Also check out Angels and Demons, the prequil, it is in my opinion better than Da Vinci Code.

Gregor said...

one of my friends (who I consider to be an expert on literature and catholicism) said that the book is horribly written but that it's fairly interesting as long as you remember that it has little to do with reality. He also said that the book has a bunch of footnotes where Brown uses a Latin word and then tells you what it means, and that all of the footnotes are pretty much completely wrong.
if intervarsity has nothing better to do than bring in some guy to talk about why a FICTIONAL book is innaccurate then perhaps they should consider their purpose a bit.

Dan Roth said...

I'm going to have to agree with Greg a bit. There's a reason I quit Intervarsity after a few weeks. It seemed to me like they weren't accomplishing much. Apparently that's still the case. If people are too ignorant to realize that they picked up the book in the fiction section, that's their own stupid fault. But on the flip side, I'm thinking Intervarsity could be a group we could work with. The liberals hate them too (since they're Christian) so it would be great for us if they were more active on campus. Plus there are plenty of good Christian conservative speakers we could bring to campus and it would be nice to have another group help us.

A.J. said...

That's something to look into, D-Roth. Roy Moore comes to mind, even though that's already been done. If we could find someone in a similar mold, that would be excellent.