Well, like the first book, Brown seriously takes on Church. While I will say this is a novel, and not to be taken as anything other than that, I'm fascinated by what has happened with the Catholics over the last three years when this book was published. While the novel takes stories of the founding of Christianity and molds them into a sort of conspiracy theory, it does open the door that some of what he writes could be true. I mean, take the bible; it's written by humans, flawed and certainly with agendas that will conflict with someone else's - and, as always, history is written by the victors.
The church's stance on the novel, its almost tyrannical way its trying to convince the world that all this written is false, strikes me as a organization with a tenuous hold on its flock. While the US Catholics have been the ones the Vatican has tried to convince -with many books published since 2003 on how wrong Brown is about what he wrote - it seems to think that its flock will take what he wrote too seriously.
Of course, as history has proved, being intelligent and openly question a religion has caused many problems. Intellectuals have always been accused of being anti-religion, but I don't believe this to be true. We are just open to the idea that its possible that Christianity could be nothing more than a great idea, not a rule book to live a life. After all, no one is perfect and no one could live a life as described. The bible offers ideas -which makes it difficult to attack, really - that seem great, but humans are animalistic. Take away their comforts, their daily things that make them "human", and they become animals.
While William Goldman's Lord of the Flies is a novel, also, it certainly portrays (I think realistically) what would happen if things fall a part, if, as Stephen King wrote, the world moved on. The center cannot hold when anarchy takes over, and neither can the church when its authority is challenged.
And that's the basic mistake they make. They've been challenged and they don't like it. But while I have no real dislike for religion as a whole, for as a concept, it is good idea; love thy neighbor and what not, I take umbrage with how they explain these mysteries. It's faith.
God, how I hate that answer.
The church's stance on the novel, its almost tyrannical way its trying to convince the world that all this written is false, strikes me as a organization with a tenuous hold on its flock. While the US Catholics have been the ones the Vatican has tried to convince -with many books published since 2003 on how wrong Brown is about what he wrote - it seems to think that its flock will take what he wrote too seriously.
Of course, as history has proved, being intelligent and openly question a religion has caused many problems. Intellectuals have always been accused of being anti-religion, but I don't believe this to be true. We are just open to the idea that its possible that Christianity could be nothing more than a great idea, not a rule book to live a life. After all, no one is perfect and no one could live a life as described. The bible offers ideas -which makes it difficult to attack, really - that seem great, but humans are animalistic. Take away their comforts, their daily things that make them "human", and they become animals.
While William Goldman's Lord of the Flies is a novel, also, it certainly portrays (I think realistically) what would happen if things fall a part, if, as Stephen King wrote, the world moved on. The center cannot hold when anarchy takes over, and neither can the church when its authority is challenged.
And that's the basic mistake they make. They've been challenged and they don't like it. But while I have no real dislike for religion as a whole, for as a concept, it is good idea; love thy neighbor and what not, I take umbrage with how they explain these mysteries. It's faith.
God, how I hate that answer.
