Information Related to "Editorial: Unscrambling the Meaning of Life"
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Discovering
and interpreting secret codes has become immensely popular. Dan Brown's
work of fiction, The Da Vinci Code, has sold millions of copies,
and a movie with the same title was released on May 19. Doubleday Publishing
claims that The Da Vinci Code is "the bestselling adult novel
of all time within a one-year period" (March 19, 2004, www.csmonitor.com/2004/0319/p11s01-bogn.html).
And with immense success often comes similar-sized controversy. The book's false assertions—which in the story are discovered by a Harvard code specialist via clues in Leonardo da Vinci's works—have prompted a number of religious writers to counter Brown's portrayal of early and modern Christianity.
Some of the assertions considered to be most offensive include those stating "that Jesus was not divine, that he married the Mary Magdalene of the New Testament, had a child with her, that the bloodline survived in France, and that the church conspired for millennia to hide the truth" (www.danbrown.com/novels/davinci_code/articles/thriller_instinct.html).
While we trust that the readers of Vertical Thought will not be easily duped by the fictitious ideas found in the book, what worries many religious leaders is that millions of people will read the novel or see the movie and think the story Brown has told is true. Some see this as an opportunity to explain the truth, while others suggest that the best approach is to keep quiet because increased controversy only leads to greater sales of the book.
Ironically, while much of the world's attention is consumed by controversy surrounding a fictional book and movie, a very real issue—the meaning of life—remains a mystery to all but a few.
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