The DaVinci Code

I just finished "The DaVinci Code" by Dan Brown and must say that I LOVED it! It was a well written book that really had me hooked. I love a good thriller and this definitely hit the mark. The introduction was also very intriguing. The last line of the intro said,

"All descriptions of artwork, architecture, documents, and secret rituals in this novel are accurate."

Really? How accurate? Does he mean accurate with a bit of creative license or down to a science factual accurate with no room for discussion? The answer to that question depends on who you ask. Obviously, the Catholic Church refutes most of his facts, calling them pure speculation. In fact, there have been several Catholic/Christian rebuttals to Dan Brown's book written by theologians. I received a copy of "The DaVinci Decode" by Grenville Kent and Philip Rodionoff from a friend. While I have not yet read it, I plan to do so shortly and will give my opinion of that as well.

Honestly, I am Catholic (not a very good one), and I can see why church leaders might have been offended by or angered by this book, but I was not. Dan Brown's book is a book of fiction. Are there facts/ideas in the book that I was not aware of? Yes! Did the book make me think about my religion and the beliefs that I hold? Yes! Is that a bad thing? No! People should be encouraged to think, use their brains, and create their own beliefs and ideas. To limit yourself to that which you are told, is to do a huge disservice to yourself as well as society. It is the "thinker" that discovered that the earth was not flat, that designed and built the airplane, and that is creating new inventions as we speak. While I used to think of history as pure fact, the memorization of names and dates, Dan Brown did bring up one important point in his book that I had not considered. History must be written by someone, and none of us are without our own bias whether intentional or not. As they say (don't ask me who they is, it is just something I've heard before), "There are three sides to every story: my side, your side, and the truth."

"Everyone falsifies history even if it is only his own personal history. Sometimes the falsification is deliberate, sometimes unconscious; put always the past is altered to suit the needs of the present. The best we can say of any account is not that it is the real truth at last, but that this is how the story appears now."
~Joseph Freeman