Skeptics and "The DaVinci Code"

[athon]

I've read a lot of crap books in my time, and DVC wasn't unusual amongst them. Not the worst, hardly very good... poorly written, the overuse of infodumping which gratuitously fed the author's own intellectual ego... meh

I've read numerous short stories and novels in the past which dealt with similar issues, and were infinitely better. DVC, IMO, was hardly novel in any sense.

However, it caught a hype wave. People who don't normally read fiction were out buying novels. Together with the claim in the beginning of the book that made it difficult to determine the facts from the fiction, a large number of non-readers were opened to falsities paraded as truths. Because it became a phenomenom, it was the mass of people discussing it and proposing that what it contained might be true that became a concern.

There are countless fiction titles which blur the lines between factual history and fiction. That's not the problem with DVC. What is the issue is that it is essentially pulp-fiction masqueraded as intellectual material, couple with the sense that pretty much all of its contents are based on researched facts.

Athon

 

[Tarot_Is_A_Card_Game!]

Also, the fact that many of us don't like the "faith based" feeb occupying the White House doesn't inhibit us from puncturing the 9/11 conspiracies

 

[Ausmerican]

I don't believe that Dan Brown convincingly proved that he had not "borrowed" the idea for the Da Vinci Code from "Holy Blood, Holy Grail." The premise of both books is that the French royal family descends from Christ and Mary Magdelene, if I'm not mistaken. And why are we surprised? Don't all Frenchmen think they're God?

I never understood the whole point of the plagarism trial. If the guys who wrote HBHG were seriously trying to write a non-fictional work, why sue someone who uses their research (however shoddy) in a fictional story? It's like they are saying "Here is the truth, believe us. But if you are silly enough to believe us and take our work as the truth, we will sue!"

As far as the Brown book being taken seriously, I have always used as a rule of thumb that if it says 'A Novel' on the cover you can claim whatever you want as fact inside the covers. The original Tarzan of the Apes was written with a foreword explaining how the whole tale was copied from records and munuscripts found in the attic of a family of minor royalty in England who would remain nameless and even at eight years old I didn't believe that either.

 

[JM85]

Most skeptics don't believe in what the bible says so what reason would they have to debunk "The DaVinci Code" even if it wasn't a fictional book? That would be like saying one fairy tale is more legitimate than the other.

...

Fargo was based on a true story?

 

[LostAngeles]

I heard about the book and said, "So it's like Illuminatus! but less fun?"

 

[Jimbo07]

I heard about the book and said, "So it's like Illuminatus! but less fun?"

DVC is more... umm... realistic (in a sense)... but definitely less fun.

So... we're debunking fiction based on historical conjecture? Or as others have posted, are people out there really concerned about this stuff?

 

[The Painter]

I read the book. I thought it was very entertaining. I also read Angels and Demons. I liked that too. Both are fiction. All the controversy is good for sales. It's called marketing.

 

[brodski]

Fargo was based on a true story?

that's what it says at the beginning of the film, but the frame claiming that the work is based on fact, is as fictional, as everything else in the film. It is a work of fiction from start to Finnish. But unlike the DaVinci Code, Fargo is very good.

I don't see a need to "debunk" the DaVinci Code as such, just a need to point out to people that it is fiction.
However, when you come across someone who believes that the DVC is any reflection of historical fact, then they a little light debunking is necessary.

 

[Garrette]

I agree with the idea that the novel as a novel requires no debunking, but I have had to engage in a bit of specific debunking.

A close friend knew I didn't believe the "research" in the book, but I was there when she told another friend "It's amazing how much research Dan Brown did. He really knows his history!"

At which point I said:

You don't know the half of it! You should see the stuff he had to leave out because of death threats!

 

[SteveGrenard]

Depends.

If it is claimed to be fictional, there is no need to counter anything.

If not.....Dan Brown's ass is grass....

Brown is really scared now. Will he have to refund the millions of dollars he
made on this?

 

[slingblade]

I dunno....seems pretty obvious to me why some church leaders are nervous about the possibility of their followers believing whatever wild, fanciful crap they might read in some book, you know?

 

[CFLarsen]

Brown is really scared now.

It seems that whenever a skeptic starts the questioning, the woos flee...

 

[Ipecac]

I find the numerous religious debunkings of the DaVinci Code somewhat humorous. It's kind of like people debunking my novel about how Frodo Baggins was actually an orc in the service of Sauron who survived the destruction of the ring and lived on as a man in Gondor.

What's the point of debunking a fictional work based on a reinterpretation of a fictional event?

 

[antihippy]

I've not had the time to read the entire thread so I apologise up front if anyone has made this point.

The first page says "the description of the objects and places is all true."

It doesn't actually state that the content is true. It's vague enough to be interpreted just how you like it. It's a very good marketing ploy. Whether it was intentioanl - I don't know - however once the band was rolling Brown* kept his mouth shut on specifics but saying just enough to feed the hype.

* A more thoroughly oily used car salesman type I've been unable to come across since.

I detested this book. It's laughable in so many differents ways. As a work of fiction it's hackneyed, as an allegory it's bloody awful, as fictionalised account ... well.

There was a really good debunking (angry rant?) by UK comedian Mark Steele (the Mark Steele Lectures - excellent well worth a look) on UK TV a while back.

 

[JamesM]

Did anybody else find themselves wanting to read the rich British guy's name as "Teabag"? I have the feeling Brown was trying to portray someone specific (like the French Bigfoot hunter in Harry and the Hendersons), and "Teabing" was a close-enough name.

Still it was distracting.

Teabing is an anagram for 'Baigent', one of the authors of '[FONT=verdana, helvetica, arial]The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail[/FONT]'. His first name, 'Leigh', is the surname of one of the other authors.

 

[c4ts]

The Ptolemy Code by Dan Brown

"Pop pop gurgle fizz pop!" exploded Jeff in a voice like boiling lava.
The painting showed Mary stabbing Lincoln to death with eyes like a shark. The Pope sat standing behind the dead president with a giant pyramid floating above his head which could have been part of the theater's architecture, but wasn't! It was clearly the same Pope who Jeff saw shaking hands with Queequaid in The School of Athens.
"This picture is a shop," gasped Elvis, dying from blue suede suffocation, "I can tell because I have seen many pixels in my time."
Jeff was shocked by a thousand lightning bolts when he removed the pixels and revealed a noneliptical syzygy! Jeff's smoking corpse came back to life because of some other bad simile which I am too lazy to construct. "This proves it! Spherical Earth is symbolic!" he roared, in a voice like twenty pointing hands emerging from his mouth for no apparent reason.
"You'll never live to tell about it, Jeff!" laughed Eva, in a voice like a twirling villanous musketball.
"Oh yeah?" spouted Jeff, in a voice spraying drivel so furiously it obliterated the Earth and killed everybody. The end.

 

[gfunkusarelius]

i find the DVC CT interesting because people i work with (the same ones who believe "loose change" at face value) seem to believe in a lot of it...they basically gravitate towards what they want to believe, but it is a weird thing for them to argue because they arent christian, so they end up arguing that fiction was skewed by someone else and they check out the gnostic gospels and find out what "jesus was really like" and all i can think is wow, they dont believe in the bible, but they believe in some gospels that have even less historical evidence? then of course you get into the whol slippery CT slope of "they dont have earlier accounts because the church destroyed them all!" and i get bored about that time

 

[c4ts]

I agree with the idea that the novel as a novel requires no debunking, but I have had to engage in a bit of specific debunking.

A close friend knew I didn't believe the "research" in the book, but I was there when she told another friend "It's amazing how much research Dan Brown did. He really knows his history!"

At which point I said:

You don't know the half of it! You should see the stuff he had to leave out because of death threats!

Death threats his editor made because Dan Brown's bad writing drove him postal...

 

[Psiload]

I saw an ad for the upcoming DaCode film, and it got me to thinking...

I read the first fifty pages of "The Davinci Code." By the fiftieth page or so, I was actually laughing aloud to myself. Now this was not maniacal or mocking laughter. Rather, it was genuine laughter at some of the content which was so outrageous as to actually be laughable.

Cutting to the point, would/could/should a skeptic use his/her skeptical powers to debunk a fictional hocum which, to many (not all) people, "degrades" the overall image of Jesus Christ and/or the ecclesiastical tradition?

Well, what do you think?

Then again...

It's not like the Da Vinci code had anybody walking on water, or coming back from the dead, or anything as laughable as that.

Right?