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j_ung
Jan 11, 2004, 4:40 PM
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So, anyone else read this yet?
Like millions of others, I found it completely engrossing, especially to my philosophical side. The level of detail is amazing! I even found myself looking up photos of famous works of art to verify details in the book. The most fascinating of all: The Last Supper is filled with pagan symbolism, and sure enough, that's a chick to Jesus' right.
I understand it's just a work of fiction, but am still especially interested in hearing a Christian's review of the book.
dannooguy? tradman? bumblie?
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overlord
Jan 11, 2004, 5:18 PM
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haven read it jet, but i probably will sometime.
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g.g.32-82
Deleted
Jan 11, 2004, 6:16 PM
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read it twice, great book. I am christian but anyone could read this and enjoy it
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tradman
Jan 11, 2004, 10:04 PM
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All things considered, I think The Da Vinci Code is an interesting book, if only for the controversy it provoked. It's fundamentally a collection of esoterica, and uses the conceit of the priority of sion, grail and templar lore to glue them together.
I don't find it in the least bit offensive for the simple reason that anyone of even moderate intelligence who can read will quickly find more interesting details the book doesn't mention than it does.
If it gets people thinking and reading about christian history, I'm all for it!
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danooguy
Jan 12, 2004, 1:56 AM
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I am not qualified to comment.
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mark_e_wallace
Jan 12, 2004, 4:02 AM
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Yep. Ironically enough, I just finished it about two hours ago.
I'm a Christian, but admittedly I'm not much of a church goer and really not very knowledgeable about Biblical lore vs. science. That being the case, I'm probably best off leaving the "review from a Christian perspective" to someone else. I would find it easy to understand why a hardline Christian would take offense to some of the material, though.
Nonetheless, I found it to be a very entertaining read. It's certainly not Nobel Prize material, but it's a great "curl up on the couch w/ a cup of coffee" book.
-- Mark
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lilred
Jan 12, 2004, 5:10 AM
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The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown
http://www.danbrown.com/novels/davinci_code/
Bizarre facts from the book Digital Fortress:
· In large cities, Americans are photographed on the average of 20 times a day.
· Everything you charge is in a database that police, among others, can look at.
· Supermarkets track what you purchase and sell the information to direct-mail marketing firms.
· Your employer is allowed to read your E-Mail, and if you use your company's health insurance to purchase drugs, your employer has access to that information.
· Government computers scan your E-Mail for subversive language.
· Your cell phone calls can be intercepted, and your access numbers can be cribbed by eavesdroppers with police scanners.
· You register your whereabouts every time you use an ATM, credit card, or use EZ PASS at a toll booth.
· You are often being watched when you visit web sites. Servers know what you're looking at, what you download, and how long you stay on a page.
· A political candidate found his career destroyed by a newspaper that published a list of all the videos he had ever rented.
· Most "baby monitors" can be intercepted 100 feet outside the home.
· Intelligence agencies now have "micro-bots" -- tiny, remote control, electronic "bugs" that literally can fly into your home and look around without your noticing.
· Anyone with $100 can tap your phone.
· a new technology called TEMPEST can intercept what you are typing on your keypad (from 100 feet away through a cement wall.)
· the National Security Agency has a submarine that can intercept and decipher digital communications from the RF emissions of underwater phone cables
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lilred
Jan 12, 2004, 5:11 AM
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The Malleus Maleficarum
The Malleus Maleficarum (The Witch Hammer), first published in 1486, is arguably one of the most infamous books ever written, due primarily to its position and regard during the Middle Ages. It served as a guidebook for Inquisitors during the Inquisition, and was designed to aid them in the identification, prosecution, and dispatching of Witches. It set forth, as well, many of the modern misconceptions and fears concerning witches and the influence of witchcraft. The questions, definitions, and accusations it set forth in regard to witches, which were reinforced by its use during the Inquisition, came to be widely regarded as irrefutable truth. Those beliefs are held even today by a majority of Christians in regard to practitioners of the modern “revived” religion of Witchcraft, or Wicca. And while the Malleus itself is largely unknown in modern times, its effects have proved long lasting.
At the time of the writing of The Malleus Maleficarum, there were many voices within the Christian community (scholars and theologians) who doubted the existence of witches and largely regarded such belief as mere superstition. The authors of the Malleus addressed those voices in no uncertain terms, stating: “Whether the Belief that there are such Beings as Witches is so Essential a Part of the Catholic Faith that Obstinacy to maintain the Opposite Opinion manifestly savours of Heresy.” The immediate, and lasting, popularity of the Malleus essentially silenced those voices. It made very real the threat of one being branded a heretic, simply by virtue of one's questioning of the existence of witches and, thus, the validity of the Inquisition. It set into the general Christian consciousness, for all time, a belief in the existence of witches as a real and valid threat to the Christian world. It is a belief which is held to this day.
It must be noted that during the Inquisition, few, if any, real, verifiable, witches were ever discovered or tried. Often the very accusation was enough to see one branded a witch, tried by the Inquisitors' Court, and burned alive at the stake. Estimates of the death toll during the Inquisition worldwide range from 600,000 to as high as 9,000,000 (over its 250 year long course); either is a chilling number when one realizes that nearly all of the accused were women, and consisted primarily of outcasts and other suspicious persons. Old women. Midwives. Jews. Poets. Gypsies. Anyone who did not fit within the contemporary view of pieous Christians were suspect, and easily branded "Witch". Usually to devastating effect.
It must also be noted that the crime of Witchcraft was not the only crime of which one could be accused during the Inquisition. By questioning any part of Catholic belief, one could be branded a heretic. Scientists were branded heretics by virtue of repudiating certain tenets of Christian belief (most notably Galileo, whose theories on the nature of planets and gravitational fields was initially branded heretical). Writers who challenged the Church were arrested for heresy (sometimes formerly accepted writers whose works had become unpopular). Anyone who questioned the validity of any part of Catholic belief did so at their own risk. The Malleus Maleficarum played an important role in bringing such Canonical law into being, as often the charge of heresy carried along with it suspicions of witchcraft.
It must be remembered that the Malleus is a work of its time. Science had only just begun to make any real advances. At that time nearly any unexplainable illness or malady would often be attributed to magic, and thus the activity of witches. It was a way for ordinary people to make sense of the world around them. The Malleus drew upon those beliefs, and, by its very existence, reinforced them and brought them into the codified belief system of the Catholic Church. In many ways, it could be said that it helped to validate the Inquisition itself.
While the Malleus itself cannot be blamed for the Inquisition or the horrors inflicted upon mankind by the Inquisitors, it certainly played an important role. Thus has it been said that The Malleus Maleficarum is one of the most blood-soaked works in human history, in that its very existence reinforced and validated Catholic beliefs which led to the prosecution, torture, and murder, of tens of thousands of innocent people.
The lasting effect of the Malleus upon the world can only be measured in the lives of the hundreds of thousands of men, women, and even children, who suffered, and died, at the hands of the Inquisitors during the Inquisition. At the height of its popularity, The Malleus Maleficarum was surpassed in public notoriety only by The Bible. Its effects were even felt in the New World, where the last gasp of the Inquisition was felt in the English settlements in America (most notably in Salem, Massachusetts during the Salem Witch Trials).
It is beyond the scope of this article to adequately examine the role of the Malleus in world history, or its lasting effects. At the very least, The Malleus Maleficarum (The Witch Hammer) offers to us an intriguing glimpse into the Medieval mind, and perhaps gives us a taste of what it might have been like to have lived in those times.
- Wicasta Lovelace
I think its RAD that someone is finally opening people's minds on how f'd up organized religion and the government really are
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brianthew
Jan 12, 2004, 5:21 AM
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In reply to: Bizarre facts from the book Digital Fortress
Heh. Halfway amusing read, but the book was miles off from reality in its depiction of most anything cryptographic or computer-related.
Though many of the more practical tips on that list are true (law enforcement scouring of cc databases, etc) many are pretty much sci-fi.
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overlord
Jan 12, 2004, 11:21 AM
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about the digital fortress book:
if your employer reads info on wich drugs you use, you must be able to sue him for invasion of pivacy.
about scanning the cellphone calls... theres too many phones in use for this to be effective for random interceptions.
toll boths and supermarket stuff is logical. and probably true.
TEMPEST is scifi, NSA sub also sounds like it.
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tradman
Jan 12, 2004, 12:25 PM
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Actually, almost all of this thread could be retitled, "how to make money out of fear and paranoia". The Da Vinci Code, the Malleus Maleficarum, and government spying.... all have one essential thing in common: somebody is making money out of digging up and publishing this stuff.
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farasnyl10
Jan 12, 2004, 12:55 PM
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i read the da vinci code about a month ago-- essentially started it, and didn't put it down until i finished it. pretty good.
from what i've looked up and read about some of the claims on my own, it seems that much of it is purely speculative from both sides---our view of history is what has been left behind, and is likely an incomplete picture at best.
definately some interesting points, though.
anyone read 'the fountainhead?' i'm about a hundred pages from the end, but it's been an incredible read.
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bumblie
Jan 12, 2004, 1:47 PM
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I thought the book was a wonderful piece of fiction. The author does an exceptional job of blurring the lines between fact and fiction, even though his intro states otherwise.
At the end of the book when he cleared Opus Dei, after using them throughout as one of the bad guys, this left a sour taste in my mouth. I likened it to someone being charged with rape and then vindicated. Even though one is completely innocent, their reputation will still suffer. It's right out of the political mudslingers handbook.
Additionally, on the authors website, he disparages conspiracies as a bunch of nonsense - implying that all of the assertions of his novel are factual.
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tradman
Jan 12, 2004, 2:17 PM
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I think Dan Brown really wants to be regarded in the same light as John leCarre or Tom Clancy - as a thriller writer who injects enough fact into his work to make it credible. Unfortunately, he lacks both the writing and analytical skills of both of the above, and ends up coming across as exactly what he is - a mediocre writer desperate to be taken seriously, whose anti-establishment bias lead him to make silly claims that a child wouldn't believe.
"The Fountainhead"... imho a landmark work, and one that should be required reading for anyone who aspires to be "a creative". Takes an age to read though... :)
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dookie
Jan 12, 2004, 2:37 PM
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I read angels and demons and am halfway through da vinci right now. I personally like Dan Browns writing as well as how he blends history with fiction, I think it makes for some very interesting stories and situations. In both books, I have been pleasantly surprised with twists and turns in the story that I never expected. Maybe that makes me a 'shallow' reader or something, but as far as I'm concerned if I'm entertained then it's a good book. His writing isn't for everyone though. I think that can be said for almost any author - I can't stand Tom Clancy for instance. Never could get into his books. What I like about his stuff is that it's made me think about a lot of things - symbolism, iconography, historical fact vs. fiction. In reply to: The author does an exceptional job of blurring the lines between fact and fiction, even though his intro states otherwise. |
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tradman
Jan 12, 2004, 3:43 PM
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Most folks who had a problem with the book didn't like the fact that although Brown himself said it was fiction, but a lot of people took what he wrote to be real.
As for symbolism and iconography, a lot of rubbish has been written about a lot of art, and about Leonardo da Vinci in particular. Da Vinci remains a mysterious character, although certainly a genuis, which makes him a good candidate for pinning symbolism and speculation to. If you really try, you can find "letters", "symbols" and "codes" in a great many paintings without trying too hard, but it'd be worth thinking a bit harder than Dan Brown has about what you're doing and why you're doing it....and to remember that there's a point at which speculation becomes fantasy.
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bumblie
Jan 12, 2004, 3:56 PM
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In reply to: The intro just states that the architecture, places, and artwork are used in factual manners - they exist and the locations and buildings are where he says they are. The organizations he uses do exist, but the story is fictional. He clearly states this. I don't see what about that isn't true. :roll:
Much of the historical info is correct. Stating that the story is fictional gives him artistic license to "modify" historical anecdotes here and there.
How much of the histories of Mary, The Catholic Church or The Knights Templar are "modified" under the guise of fiction?
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dookie
Jan 12, 2004, 4:06 PM
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so then... writers should either do total fiction writing or total non-fiction, and nothing in between so as to not blend fact and fiction? That seems to be the problem many have with his work.
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robmcc
Jan 12, 2004, 4:20 PM
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In reply to: · a new technology called TEMPEST can intercept what you are typing on your keypad (from 100 feet away through a cement wall.)
Old news.
In reply to: · the National Security Agency has a submarine that can intercept and decipher digital communications from the RF emissions of underwater phone cables
I understand it's possible to tap optical cables as well. That's a pretty neat trick.
Suggested reading The Puzzle Palace and Bamford's follow on book released a couple years ago. Don't remember the name.
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bumblie
Jan 12, 2004, 4:23 PM
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In reply to: so then... writers should either do total fiction writing or total non-fiction, and nothing in between so as to not blend fact and fiction? That seems to be the problem many have with his work.
Absolutely not. In most cases of fiction with factual backgrounds, it's obvious the story is completely fictional. However, Dan Brown plays a little looser with clarifying the boundaries of fact and fiction. The subject of this book and how the author portrays things leaves the reader with a sense of uncertainty about what was fact vs. what was fiction.
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dookie
Jan 12, 2004, 4:25 PM
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I got ya
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pinktricam
Jan 24, 2004, 8:23 PM
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I got the book for Christmas and read in pretty quickly. It was good fiction, but didn't anybody else think that Sophia and what's-his-name were awake and going (and thinking clearly) for an unrealistically long time...what? Like 3 days, right??
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j_ung
Jan 24, 2004, 11:13 PM
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:lol: I think the story actually took place over the course of a day and a half. It did seem a helluva lot longer though, didn't it?
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jumpingrock
Jan 24, 2004, 11:38 PM
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In reply to: I am not qualified to comment.
Has that ever stoped you before? :lol:
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wallwombat
Jan 26, 2004, 3:57 AM
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In reply to: In reply to: I am not qualified to comment. Has that ever stoped you before? :lol:
Ha Ha Ha
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