Hidden Wisdom

This - in it's singular way - gem of a comic indicates how much The Da Vinci Code and similar historical nonsense have influenced the public consciousness.

Even if it is no record that not a single sentence gets it right in a comic, it is amazing how to the point and obvious true it all seems. In a medium no one bothers to read with Britannica (or Wikipedia) in the other eye.

In short a masterwork of sneaking in below the radar.

Rest assured The Catholic Church will get around to a good countercomic in a century or two.

Stark discovers irreligion

One of my favs, Rodney Stark (though I must admit some mixed feelings as he sometimes is a bit too hasty) is out with a new book - as is his habit every year.

This time it is about What Americans Really Believe.

One important finding is that the new atheism never really happened.

During the past 63 years, several polls show the percentage of atheists has not changed at all, holding steady at only 4 percent of Americans who say they do not believe in God. Not only is atheism not growing in the United States, the majority of Europeans are not atheists (Ch. 14, "Atheism: The Godless Revolution That Never Happened"). Russia now claims 96 percent of its population believes in God, while a recent poll of China showed that atheists are outnumbered by those who believe in God(s).

In both the 2005 and 2007 Baylor Religion Surveys, researchers found than 11 percent of the national sample reported they had "no religion." Although nearly a third of the "no religion" group are atheists who reject "anything beyond the physical world," the Baylor Religion Survey found that two-thirds of the "no religion" group expressed some belief in God and many of those are not "irreligious" but are merely "unchurched" (Ch. 17, "The Irreligious: Simply Unchurched-Not Atheists"). Delving into the actual religiousness of those who report having no religion, the Baylor Survey found that a majority of Americans who claim to be irreligious pray (and 32 percent pray often), around a third of them profess belief in Satan, hell and demons, and around half believe in angels and ghosts.

The importance of Dawkins and his disciples then may not be so much in converting people to atheism (whatever that is), as to train Christians for public debate. It speaks volumes that The God Delusion is now being used as a textbook at several Christian Schools and Universities.

It has in short proven to be a rare gift to theists, just like the equally badly researched The da Vinci Code.

Another of a myriad of Stark's sometimes surprising findings (which naturally will lead to a lot of checkings and denials), supports one of the most famous things Chesterton never said - When a man ceases to believe in God, he doesn't believe in nothing. He believes in anything.

In short, to be a skeptic, it helps to be a Christian.

The Baylor Survey found that traditional Christian religion greatly decreases credulity, as measured by beliefs in such things as dreams, Bigfoot, UFOs, haunted houses, communicating with the dead and astrology (Ch. 15, "Credulity: Who Believes in Bigfoot"). Still, it remains widely believed that religious people are especially credulous, particularly those who identify themselves as Evangelicals, born again, Bible believers and fundamentalists. However, the ISR researchers found that conservative religious Americans are far less likely to believe in the occult and paranormal than are other Americans, with self-identified theological liberals and the irreligious far more likely than other Americans to believe. The researchers say this shows that it is not religion in general that suppresses such beliefs, but conservative religion.

"There's an old saying that a man who no longer believes in God is ready to believe in just about anything, and it turns out our data suggests it's true. That is to say, religious people don't believe this stuff, but there's no education effect," Stark said.

Among other interesting findings on paranormal or occult beliefs: People who have read The Purpose-Driven Life or any book in the Left Behind series are less likely to believe in the occult and paranormal, while those who have read any book on dianetics or The Da Vinci Code are more likely to believe.

Something we never doubted.

Facebooks

The old "tell me what you read and I will tell you who you are" (or perhaps more often want to be), is getting ever more risky and relevant with the forces of Facebook.

Joe Queenan hits the nail somewhat on the head with his serious tongue-in-cheek analysis of the perils of public self revelation.

But of all the personal information disclosed on Facebook -- and that includes those exquisitely pretentious quotes about the meaning of life -- it seems to me that the section with the greatest potential to catch up with people down the road is "Favorite Books."

Precisely. And what do people read?

My daughter, who graduated from Harvard in 2006, is constantly drawing my attention to the preferred reading materials of her classmates, ostensibly the future leaders of America. She does this not only because surveying the stratospheric level of post-adolescent glibness is more fun than a barrel of monkeys, or watching the Lakers, but because she believes that American society as a whole has a right to know what lies ahead as the best and the brightest move into leadership roles. By the looks of things, it is not going to be pretty.

The most striking thing about the Favorite Books section is the lack of hesitance to identify less-than-immortal books -- "The Godfather," "The Notebook," "The Da Vinci Code," assorted trash by David Baldacci -- as rave faves. This, coupled with the alarming popularity of the voluble crypto-fascist Ayn Rand, strongly suggests that the Ivies may not be getting the job done, culture-wise, these days.

If not for Ayn Rand it would seem that students almost are like most people. Which is not exactly big news:

I'm not suggesting that young people today are dumber or less sophisticated than their forebears. I am merely saying that because previous generations lacked the technology to make their callowness available for all to see, they have been spared the pain of being ceaselessly reminded of the indiscretions of an intellectually derelict youth.

That is why some of us prefer ceaselessly to remind everyone of the indiscretions of an intellectually derelict middleager, by writing blogs.

Before my daughter went to Harvard, I thought that everyone at the school was a ruthless, Machiavellian schemer who played the game of life like six-dimensional chess, cunningly plotting each move decades in advance. The Favorite Books section of Facebook suggests otherwise. No one whose favorite book is "The Da Vinci Code" is thinking six moves ahead.

It is a rare treat to see the human condition summed up so well in one sentence. Seems like it is not only his daughter who is reading Chesterton.

Bloodline bashing

Mania.com has a good review of the latest Da Vinci Code wannabe, the movie Bloodline, written, directed and produced by Bruce Burgess.

Not the least interest has been tied to the DNA test of the alleged Mary Magdalene discovered in a tomb in the Rennes Les Chatteâu area. Discovered by amateur archaeologist Bill Wilkinson, in true Indiana Jones style, by dropping his video camera down a hole in a clumsy moment. No doubt to outwit the local nazis.

How the test went? Not that good.

The central piece of evidence revealed in Bloodline is a mummified corpse found in Wilkinson’s accidentally discovered tomb, wrapped in a white linen mantle emblazoned with the red cross of the Knights Templar. The linen looks remarkably white, well-preserved, and rot-free for having survived a millennium of dampness at the base of a subterranean cave in the French Pyrénnées.

Open boxes of gleaming polished chalices near the body were similarly unaffected by time and oxidation, not unlike the props on the Pirates of the Caribbean attraction at Disneyland.

Hairs extracted from the head of the corpse (the extraction was not shown on camera) were sent to the Paleo-DNA Laboratory at Lakehead University (Canada) for analysis. According to Barnett and Burgess, the result of Mitochondrial DNA testing revealed a Middle Eastern origin for the deceased (ergo, this could conceivably be Mary Magdalene, although they seemed to have arrived at that conclusion well in advance).

Well - yes and no. The report from Lakehead was shown on camera and identifies the mtDNA sample as belonging to Haplogroup I, which migrated out of the Near East and into Europe between 30,000 and 40,000 years ago prior to the last Ice Age. It is virtually unknown outside of Europe, but is no stranger to the French Pyrénnées. One major subculture belonging to this haplogroup settled in southern France and Northern Spain 10,000 to 20,000 years ago during the period archaeologists refer to as the "âge du Renne", or Age of the Reindeer.

And, perhaps tellingly, this group is called the "Magdalenian Culture" - the name being derived not from Mary Magdalene, but from an excavation site called La Madeleine in the Dordogne region of southern France where its relics were discovered in the 19th century.

But forget all those bothersome dates and inconvenient details that tend to unnerve alternative historians and spoil a good story - "Renne", "Magdalenian" - close enough, right? Why split hairs?

Indeed, just relax and have a good time. It helps if you leave your brain at the door.

More Da Vinci Farce

Just to remind you all that the Da Vinci Code Farce is not quite passé. There is always another commercial cad out there, somewhere. Though unfortunately not over the rainbow.

This time it is about The Da Vinci Coda. It turns out there are musical notes encoded in The Last Supper, if you just look closely enough. How it sounds? Like this.

Not quite Keith Emerson.