Posted by
Jack Fisher on Friday, May 15, 2009 11:05:38 AM
Following up on the success of the "Da Vinci Code," a new film adaptation of a popular Dan Brown book "Angels & Demons" was released recently. It follows the further adventures of Robert Langdon, a respected academic who specializes in symbols, as he gets caught up in a battle between the Vatican and the mysterious Illuminati. One side is an age old religious institution and the other is an age old academic institution, symbolizing a percieved conflict between science and religion. It's meant to be a powerful and thrilling story, but it highlights a gross distortion of the truth.
It's a story that's nothing new. For decades religious zealots have claimed that an elaborate conspiracy of secular academics is plotting to overthrow religious institutions. For decades conspiracy theorists have claimed that religious institutions are plotting to overthrow secular society, replacing all science and reason with their own narrow dogma. It tells a great story and it's a great rallying cry for ideologues seeking attention. But as with all conspiracy theories, the truth is not so spectacular.
It is a fact that the Illuminati were a real organization. But it's nowhere near as powerful as Dan Brown describes in his book. It was originally an academic circle founded by Adam Weishaupt on May 1st 1776 in Baveria. Their purpose seemed ominous. They intended to overthrow the Vatican and the conservative Kingdom of Baveria and replace it with a liberal republic based on the ideas of the Enlightenment. It was secretive and it did have a number of influencial members that even included some ruling princes at the time. But like all secret societies, it didn't last. The organization fell apart in 1790. Other incarnations emerged over the years, but none had any of much coherence beyond a small inner circle of people with little or no influence in world affairs.
While the real story is barely a footnote in history, conspiracy theoriests with active imaginations love to tell stories about how secret organizations secretly control every government and are bent on global domination. Religous zealots love it as well because it gives them something to scare people with and gain supporters. Creationists groups like AnswersInGenesis and the Institute for Creation Research will tell a similar story about how science conspires to suppress religion (or truth as they call it) and ignores evidence they claim proves their dogmatic beliefs. Ben Stein made a movie that laid out this idea in "Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed" by trying to show that any questioning of evolution was shunned. But in order to make this point, he has to do things like lie, quote mine, and mislead viewers. Pretty much is entire movie has been debunked and the poor reception by critics and average moviegoers show his message didn't get through.
From Dan Brown to Ben Stein, conspiracy theories always run into the same problems. They ignore reality. It's appealing for some people to live in a world that's more fanciful than it really is. But this is pure self-delusion, nothing more. The debate between science and religion is not some epic war people make it out to be. It is an ongoing series of disagrements between two things that operate under different principles. Religion deals with the supernatural, superstition, and personal beliefs. Science deals with reason, logic, observation, and experimentation. It's only natural they would conflict with one another because they operate so differently. But just because they are in conflict, that doesn't mean there is some vast, underground war going on between them. Reality still is reality, regardless of what books say. People can expect to be entertained by movies like "Angels and Demons" and "Expelled" but they can't expect to be enlightened.