Angels and Demons Book Review

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  • 7/31/2019 Angels and Demons Book Review

    1/5

  • 7/31/2019 Angels and Demons Book Review

    2/5

    At times Brown seems to be having fun with us. In the early few pages once Langdon

    arrives at the physics lab, Kohler, the director is showing him around and they pass a

    wind-tunnel experiment where a woman is floating in the room.

    Friction, Kohler said. Decreases her aerodynamics so the fan can lift her. He

    stared down the corridor again. One square yard of drag will slow a falling bodyalmost twenty percent.

    That was it. That one quick sentence, and author Brown tweaks or kids with us by

    dropping a dramatic hint:

    He never suspected that later that night, in a country hundreds of miles away, the

    information would save his life.

    I dont really care for that sort of cheap tool of trying to peak our interest in what

    comes, but Brown seems to like that sort of device.

    For me the more interesting parts of the book have to do with one historical story and

    one theological / philosophical theme.

    The historical story is that of the Illuminati. On Browns account this was a secret

    organization founded by Galileo and other scientists after Galileos trial. They form

    this secret society so that on the surface they can do what Galileo did, denounce his

    scientific theory in order to save his life, but at this secret level they can continue their

    scientific world and at the same time quietly and secretly battle the power of religion

    to interfere with science.

    Historians of such groups, like Robert Langdon, our super hero, had thought the group

    had simply died out over the years, where it had, for some centuries, hidden itself

    inside the Masonic movement, something even most Masons didnt know.

    Now it seems they never really faded away, and now, with their possession of the

    anti-matter, they are in a position to do something about this conflict.

    Brown details a history of this group. His treatment is quite persuasive and one finds

    oneself coming to think that this group might well be historical, and might really bewhat Langdon tells us it is. When that happened I had to quickly bring myself up short

    and say: whoa, wait a minute, this is a book of fiction, and Dan Brown is not Robert

    Langdon At times that phenomenon, the bringing me to the edge of thinking of this

    as HISTORY, not FICTION, almost made me want to get on the web and see what

    was there about the Illuminati. Happily I resisted. First of all, to do the sort of

    historical research to figure out whether this was pure Dan Brown fiction or rooted in

  • 7/31/2019 Angels and Demons Book Review

    3/5

    something historical, would have taken much more time than I was willing to spend,

    and probably involve skills I dont have.

    However, there was a second major theme about which I do know a good deal and do

    have lots of the skills. The central theme of religion versus science.

    The central question is of the existence of God, and the origins of the cosmos. This isone question, not two in Dan Browns formulation. The battle is between the religious

    folks, especially in this novel, the Roman Catholics, who following scripture, believe

    God created the cosmos out of nothing, and the scientific community which tends not

    to believe in such a creating spirit, but is working on scientific explanations for the

    origins of the cosmos. The Big Bang theory wont work as a solution since it puts off

    the question where did the matter come from that went bang. Even some Catholic

    theologians could accept The Big Bang, but still hold that God created the original

    matter and caused the bang to bang.

    One of the theses put forward in the novel is that this work of Vittoria Vetra and her

    father with anti-matter, might be close to a solution to this old question in a way that

    satisfies BOTH the scientific community and the religious community, so that the old

    split between religion and science would be seen as bogus.

    And, on the novels hypothesis, this explains the Illuminatis involvement, since they

    are bitterly opposed to religion and wouldnt want this accommodation to come to

    fruition.

    Throughout the novel there is a running sub-theme of this question about the possiblecompatibility of scientific and theological understandings of the origins of everything,

    the cosmos, this planet Earth and the people on it. Kohler, the director of the physics

    lab sees these questions a being historically theological and religious questions, but

    increasingly scientific ones:

    And these answers are in a physics lab?You sound surprised.

    I am. The questions seem spiritual.

    Mr. Langdon, all questions were once spiritual. Since the beginning of time,

    spirituality and religion have been called on to fill in the gaps that science did notunderstand. The rising and setting of the sun was once attributed to Helios and a

    flaming chariot. Earthquakes and tidal waves were the wrath of Poseidon. Science has

    now proven those gods to be false idols. Soon all Gods will be proven to be false

    idols. Science has now provided answers to almost every question man can ask. There

    are only a few questions left, and they are the esoteric ones. Where do we come from?

    What are we doing here? What is the meaning life and the universe?

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    Langdon was amazed. And these are questions CERN is trying to answer?Correction. These are questions we are answering.

    The novel uses an omnipotent narrator, and Brown allows the discussion of these

    topics to remain at the surface and with a rather strong bias to the view that the

    scientific views on the question of the origins of the cosmos are inadequate.

    On another issue he does the same sort of trivial move. Langdon asks the camerlengo

    (aide to the Pope) how is it that can God be both omnipotent and benevolent given

    what happens to people in the worldthis is a version of the problem of evil

    argument: How could a good God allow such suffering in the world.

    The camerlengo cites parenting and yet claiming even a good parent might let a child

    skateboard, when he might get hurt. Langdon answers that he would allow it but give

    the child some guidance and then let him learn on his own. The camerlengo replies:

    So although you have the power to interfere and prevent your childs pain, you

    would choose to show you love by letting him learn his own lessons?

    Now, that reply might work to solve the problem of the benevolent parent allowing

    his or her child to use a skateboard, but it utterly ignores the question of a God who is

    not only supposed to be benevolent, but also omnipotent. And in the case the

    camerlengo sites, the child is willful about the skateboarding. The interesting cases are

    when people who do everything their God has asked, yet great misfortune, even death

    come to them. An omnipotent God would know this an, were the God truly

    benevolent, wouldnt seem to be able to allow this to happen.

    In another place one of the theologians attacks the positions of science:

    Who is the God science? Who is the God who offers his people powers but no moral

    framework to tell you how to use that power? What kind of God gives a child fire but

    does not warn the child of its dangers? Science textbooks tell us how to create a

    nuclear reaction and yet they contain no chapter asking us if it is a good or bad idea.

    This too is a trivial reply. It already assumes what it asks, namely that there must be

    an absolute and external source of this knowledge. However, it is evenTHEOLOGICALLY possible that the human beings must choose what is morally

    good and acceptable in the face of a world where we humans do know for sure what

    the answers to such questions are.

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    The frustration for me with this sort of theological / philosophical argumentation

    which Brown presents is that he gives it the appearance of sophistication, but the

    discussions remain at the level of the trivial.

    It leads me to suspect the same situation may well be true of the scientific questions

    involved, but that Im just not sophisticated enough in science to know where the lackof seriousness occurs.

    Despite these quarrels, the novel, while perhaps not intellectually exciting, is certainly

    an excellent thriller. I read the 571 page book in about 3 days, and that is reading with

    some serious attention, not racing. I kept wanting to know what would happen next,

    and spent hours in my comfortable reading chair, nice glass of wine next to me, and

    enjoyed being transported into a world of dangerous fiction which Id never want to

    participate in, but had lots of fun reading about it.