Dan Brown’s Origin

Last updated on: August 12, 2019 at 1:58 am by Ben Witherington

Dan Brown’s Origin 2019-07-29T05:29:34-04:00 Ben Witherington

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Dan Brown, of Da Vinci Code fame, a while back (2017) published the fifth installment in the Robert Langdon series, and this one is a whopper— over 500 pages. It may be remembered that his first really famous book, the Da Vinci Code led to all sorts of fact checks and critiques for there were some 150+ historical, religious, etc. errors in the novel, and that novel, like this one began with the pronouncement that all statements about religious, art, architecture, science were accurate. Not so much, and since the novel traded in conspiracy theories etc. with the goal of casting doubt on at least orthodoxy Christianity, one of the critiques amounted to– ‘as for debunking, Dan Brown is flunking’. This novel traverses some of the same territory in regard to religion and science, but on the whole it is a better, and in some ways more carefully written novel. I am not qualified to comment on whether he got computer science etc. right. Here is a summary of the plot of this latest Langdon novel…. courtesy Amazon

“Robert Langdon, Harvard professor of symbology, arrives at the ultramodern Guggenheim Museum Bilbao to attend the unveiling of a discovery that “will change the face of science forever.” The evening’s host is Edmond Kirsch, a forty-year-old billionaire and futurist, and one of Langdon’s first students.

But the meticulously orchestrated evening suddenly erupts into chaos, and Kirsch’s precious discovery teeters on the brink of being lost forever. Facing an imminent threat, Langdon is forced to flee. With him is Ambra Vidal, the elegant museum director who worked with Kirsch. They travel to Barcelona on a perilous quest to locate a cryptic password that will unlock Kirsch’s secret.

Navigating the dark corridors of hidden history and extreme religion, Langdon and Vidal must evade an enemy whose all-knowing power seems to emanate from Spain’s Royal Palace. They uncover clues that ultimately bring them face-to-face with Kirsch’s shocking discovery…and the breathtaking truth that has long eluded us.”

Questions of ultimate origins and our human destiny have of course always intrigued humankind. This particular novel has been out for two years, so I am not telling tales out of school when I say that the computer genius at the center of the story is a very disturbing and yet in some ways inspirational figure. Mr. Kirsch claims to have made discovering that will allow science to eclipse religion as we know or become the new religion of the 21rst century. He claims he has discovered that the ‘laws of physics’ generated the universe. But as Langdon himself muses at one point— who generated those laws? Langdon makes an interesting distinction between patterns, such as patterns in nature, and codes, which require an intelligent mind to produce them— for instance the code we call sheet music with the notes for a symphony on it. As it happens the universe has both patterns in nature, and also codes, which are not explained by the patterns. As the scientist Jastrow said some time ago, he feared that when scientists had finally ascended the mountain of knowledge about the origins of life, they would find theologians sitting at the top saying— I told you so. The story goes on to suggest that AI will replaces humans as the next stage of evolution, or at least the two will combine for the next stage.

One of the themes of the novel, which is quite clearly mistaken is the notion that Christianity is on the wane. I’m afraid Dan Brown has spent too much time in America and Europe and too little elsewhere, for in fact there is incredible growth of the Christian faith in the two thirds world, as chronicled by Philip Jenkins and others. Rumors of our demise in the 21rst century are quite premature. One of the major problems with novels like this is caricature— devout Christian eschew logic and reason in favor of blind faith. While there are some Christians like that, I hardly know any of them. And most Christians do not see an inherent contradiction between most science, and the Christian faith. The attempts by atheists like Hitchens and Dawkins to suggest Christianity is based on myths, is frankly incredible, since Christianity is an historical religion, deal with real people in real places in real time, and that includes people like Jesus, and Paul, and Mary and others….The claims of Christianity are grounded in historical events in persons, not in the fairy tales of Greek and Roman mythology, and the same can be said about Judaism as well. The Jews, as scholars have long noted, were not a myth making people. What myths they occasionally dabbled or used the imagery of, they borrowed from the ANE.

The real problem with godless science and scienceless religion is that both try to globalize the answers to life’s biggest questions— saying each has the exclusive answers to such questions— which is false. The Bible does not attempt to answer scientific questions for a pre-scientific era of believers. It is not a science textbook— to say so is a category mistake! Furthermore, the same can be said about the arrogance, and ignorance of godless science. There is more to life and this universe than chemistry or biology, or astronomy etc. Love, among other things can not be reduced to chemical formulae. So it might be well to remind all, explorers of truth should stay in their lane, and not try to suggest there is only one lane! All truth is God’s truth, wherever it is found, and nature is not defiled by scientific study and inquiry. Indeed, it helps us appreciate God’s intricate creation even more. It is not clear that Dan Brown gets this. I will say however that while he is not the equal of Grisham or a P.D. James, nevertheless this novel is better than many of his in terms of plotting and suspense. And Robert Langdon has some redeeming characteristics. Life however is not just about decoding symbols, indeed it might be better said to be about religiously symbolizing the codes with which God produced all things.

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