"Let me never fall into the vulgar mistake of dreaming that I am persecuted whenever I am contradicted." - Ralph Waldo Emerson, Journals (1838)
Doesn't that say it all?
Don't get me wrong, I have my own problems with the The Da Vinci Code, but they have nothing to do with a perceived "attack" on Christianity. First, as a skeptic, I'm bothered by Brown's assertion in the opening pages of the book that "all descriptions of artwork, architecture, documents, and secret rituals in this novel are accurate." That is misleading, because, well, it's not true. Secondly, I just don't like it. Call me an elitist, a snob, or whatever, but the book reads to me like the fast-food equivalent of a novel. I really can't understand why so many people love this book, but I have to suspect that it has more to do with the revisionism of the book than it does with the quality of the writing. If I've got to read something contemporary, I'll opt for some James Ellroy.
The Emerson quote was sourced by Laird Wilcox in The Degeneration of Belief: Quotations on Fanatacism and Dogmatism. Lots of interesting quotes in there.
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For those who can't believe six impossible things EVERY morning, there is always "A Different da Vinci Code" at altreligion.about.com.
There it all boils down to a simple case of the Hermetic androgynes, and the true intellectual ferment of the Italian Renaissance.
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