use Perl

• Thoughts (Score:1)

  by chromatic (983)

  There are a lot of people who consider themselves Christians who don't consider themselves Roman Catholic, so I'm not sure that Pullman's work is as particularly offensive as a whole as people outside of both groups might believe. However, I found the ending of the whole trilogy to be a letdown. Perhaps people take offense to the ineffective resolution of a great story.

  As for Dan Brown, my understanding is that he lifted the conspiracy almost wholesale from a lesser-known 1982 novel called Holy Blood, H
  • Re:Thoughts (Score:2)

    by davorg (18)

    Unless you're making a deliberate point about the quality of the research, I should point out that The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail (as it was originally titled - another pointless US renaming) is not intended as a novel. The original authors intended it (and it's many sequels) as serious historical research. Many people disagree with them :)
    
    And you're right - Foucault's Pendulum is far superior to either The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail and The Da Vinci Code.
    • Re:Thoughts (Score:1)

      by chromatic (983)

      I haven't read Holy Blood, Holy Grail, so I can't comment on it with much authority. From what I've heard, though, anything that feels the need apologize for unsupported theories with phrases such as "This may be the case, but we can't prove it" is much closer to a novel than serious research of any kind. Perhaps my sources were both subtle and clever.

      (I originally thought it was French, with the obvious pun of sang real and san greal.)
• Yep, nothing new (Score:2)

  by jdavidb (1361)

  Brown merely recycled a good bit of vintage conspiracy theories and a plot I know I have heard before

  Thank you. It is gratifying to me to hear that people outside of the religious context I'm familiar with are able to detect this. This book is absolutely nothing new, and I'd add it's neither factual nor interesting, to boot. I eagerly anticipate it blowing over as previous incarnations have and as it already appears to be doing.

  And this is odd, because there are few who enjoy a good thumping of Bi

  --
  J. David works really hard, has a passion for writing good software, and knows many of the world's best Perl programmers
  • Re:Yep, nothing new (Score:2)

    by davorg (18)

    This book is absolutely nothing new,

    No argument from me there.

    and I'd add it's neither factual nor interesting, to boot.

    Well, we can debate its factual accuracy, but I doubt anything useful will be added to either side of the argument :)

    But I can't agree that the theory isn't interesting. Whether it's true or not, I find the idea that the church has consistantly lied about its own origins for so long to be completely fascinating.

    I eagerly anticipate it blowing over as previous incarnations have an
    • Re:Yep, nothing new (Score:2)

      by pudge (1)

      I don't know much about what the Catholic Church says its history is, and I don't really care. I know that there are very few lies to be found in the history of the church taught in scholarly Protestant circles (partially, I suspect, because much of that history is also Catholic history, and the Protestants don't mind making the Catholics look bad, when it is appropriate :-).
• St. Augustine (Score:2)

  by gizmo_mathboy (782)

  I think I like St. Augustine the most because he was a bastard of a sinner before he converted. I also like him because he didn't presume to know the will of God, i.e. he was very scared of what would happen to him in the afterlife. On his deathbed he was very concerned about whether his sould was saved or not.
  
  I like that thought. Then again I'm somewhere between and agnostic and an atheist, but I do like to read Augustine and Aquinas (not so much Aquinas because his grasp of Aristotle totally eclipses min