I like investigating things like this. Everyone has a belief system, in fact, usually several. Some believe in a particular messiah or champion, others believe only in science. But everyone has a belief system, which is really a mental model of their world. To me, religion is just a model of the universe, just like science. "Religion" is just a label, just like "science" is, both are models of the laws of the universe. Some models are better than others, they do a better job of describing that which the observer wishes to understand. At least, that's my view.

But my focus here is on the Priory of Sion. I was thinking about our recent discussions about fraud, and I couldn't help but mention this here. The Priory of Sion is a fraud. Its creator, Pierre Plantard, even admitted it. So why the fuss about the Da Vinci Code? I mean, I love stories like that, about the Knights Templar, the Illuminati and secret knowledge. But there are enough real truths to uncover that one doesn't have to fabricate them to make a good story.

It's kind of disgusting, really. Not bad, turn your stomach disgusting like but just stupid. To learn the truth of what part Mary Magdalene may have played in Jesus' life, that's interesting to me. Comparing the various religious thoughts of the area, Zoroastrian, Hebrew, Christian, Islam, that's interesting. The Qumran and Nag Hammadi texts are interesting. Comparing them with canonized texts and hypothesizing why the canonized texts were chosen over the uncanonized ones is interesting. To know the role of the Knights Templar is interesting, to know why they were killed. The mysteries and artwork of the Rennes-le-Château are fascinating. What isn't interesting, is fabricating a story, or basing a book on a known fake. That's not interesting at all.

What makes this particularly distasteful to me is the following thought: A few hundred years ago, Galileo tought Copernican theory, that the Sun is the center of the solar system and the Earth orbits it. He used his telescope and observed many things that verified the theory and disproved the older Ptolemaic System, and so published what he found. The Vatican filed an Inquisition and imprisoned him for it, censoring his work and attempting to discredit him. They did not apologize for their mistake for hundreds of years, until 15 years ago.

Galileo was guilty of no fraud, and in fact, discovered an important truth. If you consider God to be the creator of the Universe, then you must surely see that to understand the Universe better is to better know the nature of God. Galileo saw the nature of God more clearly than the Pope or anyone in the Vatican. They owe him a debt, because his model of God and the Universe was better than theirs, he taught them wisely. And in fact, the Vatican itself was guilty of fraud, of using subterfuge, faked evidence and false testimony to make their case. Similarly, here in the Priory of Sion, the Da Vinci code and all those like it we see another popular deception, and a lot of money is made pushing this fraud.

Now I'm not saying that I think it's bad that the book was written. I'm not really saying anything. It isn't the kind of thing I think is particularly ugly, no more than a good fiction novel. I'm just thinking out loud here. It's funny to me, how easily deceived most people are, and how willing they are to buy a story just because it fascinates them or gives them an emotional charge. Oddly enough, once you hook a man with a story, he'll defend it even without any real knowledge. That's how propaganda works. Paint the first picture in the public mind, paint it vividly and repeat it often. Fact is invented out of thin air.

Fiction:

• Priory of Sion website
  
• A Hermeticist's Point Of View, a Pierre Plantard interview

• Priory of Sion, exposed
  
• The Priory of Sion Hoax
  
• The Grail Quest and The Destiny of Man
  
• The Knights Templar
  
• The Nag Hammadi Library, religious texts from Nag Hammadi
  
• The Book of Thomas, probably the most famous of the Nag Hammadi texts
  
• The Book of Philip, an interesting text, mentions Mary Magdalene and her relationship with Jesus
  
• The Gospel According to Mary Magdalene

The best person to discover is Joseph Campbell, I know he writes about myth and the human archetype of belief but he manages to put it all in perspective. Where these belief systems originate and what they mean.
And a person who'se theories have been discredited to some extent is about to make a huge comeback in research into human behaviour; Sigmund Freud.

Brown's novel uses old tales much like the conspiracy tales based on the Illuminati stories - I can't see condemning Brown for producing a sucessful entertainment vehicle - I think it's incumbent upon the reader to realize it's a novel and not immediatly assume it's entirely factual - I think people who've raised hell about Brown's book are missing their own role in the situation.

The texts found in Qumran are interesting. They are real texts of antiquity and what is said in them is fascinating enough. There is no need to exaggerate them by adding false stories. What's weird is how many people are fascinated by pseudo-science that blurs the distinction between fact and fantasy. This also shows how easily politicians can do the same thing, spreading propoganda that is adopted as public mindsets.

As I said in my post, I'm not particularly upset about the book. In fact, I enjoy it. I dig stuff like this. But my point is that people are easily deceived by propoganda if it is fascinating or emotionally charged.