Inkanta
Group: Admins
Posts: 1453
Joined: Feb. 2000 |
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Posted: Feb. 08 2006, 20:57 |
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| Quote (Alan D @ Feb. 08 2006, 03:11) | | Quote (Inkanta @ Feb. 06 2006, 18:30) | | Dan Brown actually discusses the novel on his website, located here. |
Just wanted to say that Inkanta's link is well worth clicking on if you're at all interested in these Da Vinci Code controversies. After all the debate, it's no bad idea to find out what the author himself thinks about it! |
Indeed, Alan! I also read Timshen's link, which was interesting.
For another "reasoned response" see the article that appeared in Skeptic, though quite frankly I am skeptical of the Skeptic.  This should be a really helpful article, but I found issues with it. I pass it along as an exercise in critical reading, perhaps.
When reading an article in an area in which I am not an expert, which is virtually all areas of human knowledge, I look for certain things: 1) the background of the author that makes her/him/them an authority, 2) the way the article is laid out (e.g., is it logical? does the conclusion match what s/he/they said in the beginning they were going to do? is objective reasoning used? is it impartial? what is the bias? who is the audience?), 3) how does the content match up with anything I already know including information contained in other sources? 4) the references that are cited--are they from peer-reviewed or refereed journals? scholarly? who is the publisher? 5) date?-sometimes important--depends.
Well...those are a few key points, anyway, and I realise they're similar to how I look at websites.
Although I don't know anything about the author (maybe I missed it on the website) other than he wrote a book published by Prometheus Books, there is much information about the magazine and it's founder and editorial board. They even have an anthropologist amongst them. So what is my problem? The statement he makes about matriarchal societies (i.e., that none ever existed) and about feminism (I am no expert on feminist theory, but it would appear neither is he and there are no reliable supporting references in his bibliography): "All known human societies, past and present, are “patriarchal” in the sense that formal leadership both in society and in the home is predominantly associated with the male. “Women’s Studies” classes claim many exceptions, but those claims do not survive critical scrutiny." That is just hog-wash and fails to understand what it means for a society to be partriachal or matriarchal. I could spend paragraphs going into this and giving some examples and explaining them in great detail. I'd start with the Haudenosaunee/Iroquois, but I'd drag us way too off topic. When I finally get to my favorite university library (which happens to be Franciscan--great collection of religious resources and indexes) to round up whatever it was I was going to look up on philosophy, I'll look for some scholarly, well-cited papers on the DC. -- cos this was the only thing I came up with quickly online in a scholarly articles database (it's not a very comprehensive one, though):
Cohen, Mariam. The Da Vinci Code Dynamically De-Coded.
Source: Journal of the American Academy of Psychoanalysis and Dynamic Psychiatry 33, no. 4 (2005): 729-740. Sounds fascinating, eh? (Well..to me.) 
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"No such thing as destiny; only choices exist." From: Moongarden's "Solaris."
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, Mike secretly had this amazing ability to communicate with aliens. So Mike is a prophet and is also able to communicate with higher intelligence 
, now I know Mike has cracked the hidden code about them I'd like to invite Mike to turn on my Yuletide lights, Later on this year. 
