Let's see now. The Da Vinci Code is complex and implausible. Christianity is simple and implausible. Maybe both are wrong and there wasn't a divine Christ.
If you think it's implausible, JIm - as I did for most of my life - then you probably haven't got a good understanding of it. Reading in philosophy was a big help.
I think I have a good understanding and it was science not philosophy that drove me to my conclusion.
But scienced does not stand alone, does it? Identity, time, substance - those are philosophical contructs, not scientific ones.
"The Christian Gospel offers a coherent, comprehensible account of reality that invites the assent of faith."
HAHAHAHAHA
You'd all like to think that wouldn't you....Fortunately for those of us who seek truth, the christian gospel is anything but coherent.....
The Bible is like a Rorschach inkblot test: you can see just about anything you want in it. That is why Christians themselves cannot agree on such things as masturbation, premarital sex, contraception, abortion, divorce, homosexuality, stem cell research, euthanasia and the death penalty.
Indeed, how easy it is to believe a comfortable lie than to accept an unsatisfying truth.
The local Calvinish Reformed Church held a community meeting along the lines which you suggest on the Sunday after the Da Vinci Code movie was released. I didn't go as I really haven't bought into the hype regarding Dan Brown's work--that kind of conspiracy theory garners a little less interest for me than the apocryphl (sp.) gospels that suggest that while Jesus died the Christ stood on the next hill over and laughed (The gospel of Thomas I think, though, really, it could be any of the many noncanonical and gnostic gospels), that is I'll read them if its required for course work otherwise I won't bother with them.
Completely unrelated, but I've recently stumbled upon an Australian ex-Jesuit (he spent 22 years training to be a Jesuit missionary, leaving the religious life in 1970 over a disagreement with a number of contemporary changes in Vatican policy) whose work you may find interesting. His name is Greg Denning and he deals mostly with the 'Ethnohistory' of the Stranger-Native relationship in the Pacific. His focus is on how the various ritualistic ceremonies, habits, ect of the "Stranger" (usually Europeans) and "Native" (usually Polynesian) were interpreted and how those meetings shaped future meetings, present memories, and past lives. I found his short bio in his book "Preformances" to be especially inspirational. I warn you, though, he is post-modern/post-colonial in all the best of ways avoiding the fallacies of both theories and coherently going forward with the jems hidden within their misunderstood and often misrepresented exteriors :D
Cheers.
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