Dan Brown Does It Again

Dan Brown’s new thriller Origin was published last year and caused quite a stir. His previous books featuring the intrepid Robert Langdon, Professor of Symbolics at Harvard (no such discipline exists), who in each adventure has a new female assistant, but never ties the knot, are a heady cocktail of travelogue, history lesson, world conspiracy, and a demasking of the evils of Christianity, especially Catholicism, which is the last acceptable prejudice.

The Da Vinci Code shook the foundations of the Catholic Church with its bold thesis that Jesus and Mary Magdalene were married and had children, who started a blood line that continued to our day (Holy Blood, Holy Grail). The ”evidence” for this was contained in the Code that Leonardo Da Vinci inserted in his famous fresco The Last Supper.

Brown maintained that the figure on Jesus’s right was Mary Magdalene, as is clearly evident from the female features. What Brown did not know – or did not tell his readers – is that is how Renaissance artists painted youths, and at the time of The Last Supper John (Mary Magdalene) was a youth.

None of Brown’s fans (I venture to say) have heard of the

ancient and quaint village of Ponte Capriasca, Switzerland. The church of St. Ambrogio in that village contains an exact copy of Leonardo’s Last Supper painted by his pupil Cesare da Sesto.(1477-1523). Sesto put the names of the Apostles under the figures in the fresco. Under the name of the Apostle who is supposed to be Mary Magdalene is the name Johannes (John), which proves that the Code is a preposterous fabrication.

As time went by, other flaws were discovered in Brown’s thesis, until the emperor was revealed to have no clothes.

Those who are interested in this old controversy are directed to the following website, which contains a discussion of the artistic errors of The Da Vinci Code, i.e. www.ignatiusinsight.com.

When confronted recently with the facts, all Brown had to say in his defense was that “he believed it at the time.”

Can books written by a hoaxster or abysmally poor scholar be trusted? The Germans have a saying, Who lies once cannot be trusted again.

Perhaps Origin is another hoax or a sloppy piece of scholarship? Maybe it is not. Let’s give Brown the benefit of the doubt.

When the Code came out, reviewers of major newspapers praised Brown to the sky and said that with his book he deserved several doctorates.

When confronted with the misrepresentations and outright lies in his books, his supporters say that his books are “only fiction.”

They fail to consider the fact that the authors of historical novels observe an unwritten code not to tamper with the historical background against which the action of their story takes place., Thus, readers of such novels as Quo Vadis and The Robe can learn a lot about the period in which the fictional story takes place.

That is not the case with Brown’s books, which are so-called “thrillers.”

Unsophisticated readers are unaware that every thriller

contains certain basic elements called the paradigm. It starts with the question What if,’ and everything else follows.

In logic, this is the fallacy of petitio principi, in which the conclusion holds the premise. Another word for it is, begging the question. You fit the facts to the thesis selected beforehand. That’s why in the Code, evidence supporting the divinity of Jesus is excluded by advancing the preposterous claim that Constantine at Nicaea in 325 ordered 300 bishops to declare Jesus God for political reasons.

If the truth in Brown’s books is so distorted, what accounts for their dizzying success?

First, anti-Catholicism. Brown does not conceal the fact that he thinks the world would be better off without religion, especially without Catholicism. . When people no longer have any unshakable values, they’re ready to believe anything. Atheists take advantage of this to wage a vicious, libelous campaign against the Church. Brown’s books, read by tens of millions of naïve people unaware of the preposterous falsehoods they contain, are disgraceful propaganda tracts – not merely harmless novels. His books are .comparable to The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.

Liberals perceive Catholicism as the main obstacle to their agenda of birth control, abortion, euthanasia, the ordination of women, the marriage of priests, marriage and adoption of children for homosexuals, cloning human beings, etc. The liberal media have created a receptive atmosphere for such books by accenting pedophile scandals, opposition to condoms, and supposedly outdated views on sex and marriage in the Church. The popularity of Brown’s books derives from the revulsion generated against the Church.

Shouldn’t the Church yield on some of these issues?

At a lecture I attended, Hans Küng expounded his proposals for modernization of the Church (women priests, marriage for priests, carte blanche for homosexuals, democratic election of priests and bishops, permission for an abortion, etc.). A Protestant minister from the audience called out, ‘We did those things, so why are our churches empty and yours are full?’ King was speechless.

Even if the Church attracted more attendees, what kind of believers would they be? Isn’t a core of true believers more desirable than a mass of opportunists? Christianity triumphed because the first Christians were willing to die for their beliefs. The percentage of true believers today is probably no greater than in the twelfth century.

Before he became Pope, Cardinal Ratzinger predicted that the Church would shrink considerably in size to a core of true believers. Is that bad?

Brown in Origin asks whether God (monotheistic) will survive in the confrontation with science (Artificial Intelligence)

After all, the gods of the past all disappeared as knowledge advanced.

He seems to imply that God will not survive, which in his opinion would be a good thing.

The fall of Christianity will mean the end of our civilization. What was the ancient world like before Christianity? It was awash with various cults and local gods. Polytheism wasn’t the boon secularists would have us think. Infanticide was common, slavery was universal, education confined to a narrow elite, and women were treated as chattel. Christianity changed this when it proclaimed that man was created in God’s image rather than the gods in man's image

A person may disagree with Brown’s opinion that we would be better off without religion

Whatever one may think of Brown’s scholarship (or lack thereof), I take my hat off to him for bringing into the popular culture the crucial issue of our time – The Fourth Industrial Revolution (Artificial Intelligence and its spontaneous development).

Brown hopes that a biologically enhanced human will emerge in the future.

I would turn Brown’s question around. It’s not whether science will kill God but whether science will kill man (women included).

In the New World of transhumans, there will no longer be any use for Plato, Shakespeare, Goethe, Bach, Mozart, or characters like the Marx Brothers. Transhumans will be a lot of things, but they won’t be funny.