The Smarmy Carny

As any rational person should realize, The Da Vinci Code is fiction, and not much else. It's just ::amazon("1400079179", "a novel")::, just ::imdb("tt0382625", "a movie")::. Why, then, are many Christians up in arms over the story, if that's all it is? The answer is simple, as Massimo Introvigne points out:

People who ask this question usually have not read the page of The Da Vinci Code titled Fact, where the author, Dan Brown, asserts that "all descriptions of [..]documents, and secret rituals in this novel are accurate" and are based specifically on the fact that "in 1975 Paris’ Bibliothèque Nationale discovered parchments, known as Les Dossiers Secrets" which reveal the story of the Priory of Sion.

Some Christians are arguing that The Da Vinci Code is a positive because it is getting people to think more about early Christianity. In reality, I think that the only thing people will really think about early Christianity is, "Is that true?" This surface-level response to mainstream entertainment will not provoke further discovery of Christ and the actual events of early followers. In addition, many non-Christians will likely believe the fictional "facts" and incorporate them into their already wavering view of Christianity, religion, and God.

So, all things being equal, feel free to believe everything you read/see in The Da Vinci Code if you also readily believed all the "facts" given in movies such as National Treasure, too.

I will not attempt to list the problems in The Da Vinci Code. It is, after all, just a movie. For more information on The Da Vinci Code and its fallacies, check out these informative pages:

• Da Vinci Answers — Josh McDowell's podcast discussing The Da Vinci Code
• "The Da Vinci Code FAQ, or Will the Real Priory of Sion Please Stand Up?" — Massimo Introvigne
• "The DaVinci Scam" — Terry Paige, Houghton College professor
• "The Da Vinci Scam • Decoding Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code"
• The Da Vinci Code Discussed — The Life

One interesting fact regarding the filming of the movie: Westminster Abbey refused to allow filming on location, stating "theologically unsound" premises in the book. Filming was moved to Lincoln Cathedral, whose bell "Great Tom" was silent for the first time since World War II during filming on August 15 - 19, 2005.

Brad Beach raises some interesting questions regarding prayer over at Houghton College's Religion and Philosophy Blog in his post titled "God answers prayer!".

Christians (as well as other religions that include prayer to an omnipotent, omnibenevolent being) tend to deal with the results of prayer in a questionable method. When we pray and the requested end comes to fruition, then the response is obvious: God answered our prayer. What about when we pray and our requests never come about? The common response is that "God's answer was 'No.'"

And how about conflicting prayers? Let's start with a light, inconsequential subject to help make this a bit more accessible. Each year during the Super Bowl, thousands of people are praying for the AFC team to win, and thousands are praying for the NFC team to win. Even if I pray for the AFC team to win and they do, has God answered my prayer? If the AFC team loses, has God answered my prayer with a "No"?

The problem does, in fact, become more substantial once serious, "big" issues are at play. When we pray for a loved one with terminal cancer and they pull out of it cancer-free, we thank God and proclaim that our prayers were answered. What about when a young child has a terminal disease and, despite our prayers, suffers for months and months before dying? Certainly, the "God said 'No'" response isn't appealing at all.

This view of prayer seems to assume that whatever happens after we pray, that is God’s answer to our prayers. If a person is healed, God answered 'yes' to our petition. If the person is not healed, the divine response was 'no'! Is this really how it works? Can we honestly believe that whatever happens is, in fact, God’s answer to our supplications? Under such a construal, is it meaningful to claim that God answers our prayers? Isn’t this simply to interpret every outcome as the divine response to our desperate pleas? Such an interpretation seems to make meaningless the assertion that God answers prayer.

So what then do we do when dealing with "unanswered" prayers of any type? Beach offers some suggestions in his article, which I suggest you read. I suppose much of the answer to this question hinges on your personal resolution to the ::wikipedia("problem of evil")::. However you find solace in the problem of evil, the solution to unanswered prayer should not be too far behind.

Even after this problem has been resolved, I'm not so sure that we are the best judges of what should happen in the world. We humans are certainly not objective, and we're overwhelmingly far from being omniscient or even omnibenevolent. Here's one-third of a (Chinese?) curse: May you get everything you wish for. And here's another well-known English proverb that comes into play: Be careful what you wish for, you might just get it.

Just like I posted last year, Google has again failed to come up with even a non-religious/bunny-oriented Easter Google Doodle to replace their standard logo.

Easter again fails to make the list, losing out to some popular holidays as well as some real off-the-wall ones. The holidays Doodled since last Easter are: "Season's Greetings" (not Christmas, of course!), Thanksgiving, Independence Day, St. Patrick's Day, the Olympics, New Year's, the Lunar New Year, the Persian New Years, the (always rousing) National Library Week, National Teacher Day, Mother's Day Father's Day, Earth Day, Halloween, the anniversary of the Lunar Landing, and the birthdays of Leonardo da Vinci, Frank Lloyd Wright, Louis Braille, Martin Luther King, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Percival Lowell, and Google.

Then again, perhaps Google is just confused and celebrates Passover by "passing over" Easter every year.

This post has been re-posted at Random Fodder, Novac's personal blog.

This week, I got hooked up with Christian Paid E-mails. CPE is a paid-to-read program with a slightly Christian bent to it.

Christian Paid E-mails is only the second PTR program I have enrolled in. From what I can tell, it isn't much different than other PTR programs, except the Christian part. The site uses CashCrusader, just as many PTR sites are using these days.

The site offers a page detailing how to get saved, and click confirmations say "God Bless You Always." Another nice thing is that you can (assumably) click away without worrying about adult sites being listed, though I have noticed that a high percentage of the sites have the oh-so-annoying and not-so-subtle True girls-in-bikinis-and-lingerie banners that have already overrun Hotmail and MySpace.

Members who sign up at CPE for free can get payouts after earning $20. Sign up now, and you'll get a nice little $1 startup bonus, which is always a treat. (There are optional paid memberships that will get you lower payout rates, additional referral links, etc.)

Of course, you can also earn money from referrals. Be one of my referrals, and I can get more money too.

This week's picture is a fun little forum picture that has been passed around.

With membership numbers decreasing due to the bad publicity in the Star Wars movies, it seems that the Dark Side has a new marketing strategy. Now, it seems that they are attempting to foster a more positive image amongst preschool children.

An innocent marketing strategy, or preying on the youth of this country? You decide.

What does baby Jesus have in common with garden gnomes? Both are stolen from lawns.

A Vista city worker found over a dozen baby Jesus figurines on a public baseball field.

The best I can tell is that he found 13 or 14 baby Jesus figurines . . . and by "figurines," I refer to large nativity scene characters, some as large as three feet tall.

Reports vary regarding the number of figurines and their condition. One article states that "none of them had been damaged," while another mentions that some were "unblemished, some were broken, and some had damages that may have predated the heists."

Top-notch detectives assume this is the work of teenagers. Ya think?!? On the other hand, they don't give enough credit to the college students in the area.

The parks supervisor for the area? Chuck Crist. It was meant to be.

As a Christian, I have many times heard complaints about how our society has commercialized Christmas and Easter, holidays that celebrate two of the most important events in history.

Just a thought . . .

Do wiccans, witches, etc. complain about Halloween having become commercialized with all the cute costumes, trick or treating, etc.?