I've been pretty much stuck in front of the TV over the weekend after a surgical procedure on Friday and managed to spend a whole lot of time watching the documentaries on Discovery and the Learning Channel about the controversies brought up by The Da Vinci Code and the source material it sprung from.

One two hour show was a very complete and enlightening look at the history of the Knights Templar. Man, what a fascinating group. Unbelievable the amount of power and wealth they reached before they were brought down by the King of France and the Catholic Church. It's no wonder they've become such a source of material for the conspiracy theorists and fueled so many imaginations.

Another one of the documentaries I watched was an analysis of the book that I read last year - "Holy Blood, Holy Grail". The first part of the show dealt with putting out the evolution of the theories the book presented. It was wonderful to put actual images and video into the context of the text. Near the end they dealt mostly with "experts" repudiating many of the book's conclusions. What's funny is that the arguments the opposition had to the theories in the book were actually part of the book. It's like they never read it. What attracted me to the style of the authors was that for every conclusion they reached, they gave the side of the critics as well and I thought did a marvelous job of being balanced. One of the arguments was that Jaques Plantard turned out to be a fraud and a charlatan. The authors of the book clearly viewed and presented him as a very suspicious character and were loathe to present him as anything other than one more tiny piece of the puzzle. They delved deeply into what his personal motivation might be for the ruse they suspected and only gave him an ear because of the verifiable things that were included in his wild claims.

The critics jumped all over the authors because they used, as part of their evidence, the Gnostic gospels that described Jesus' tight bond with Mary Magdelene and references to them kissing often. They acted like that was the entire basis for their conclusion they were married and had children. Yet, the HBHG authors clearly told of the ommissions and holes in the scrolls that left sentences incomplete. They filled in much of their theory with corroborating evidence the critics failed to mention. In the end I was left with the impression that the "experts" were not looking at the book with open minds. They sounded like they had their own religious philosophy getting in the way of alternate explanations and possibilities for dogma that had been engrained in them from birth.

The last show I watched (although I fell asleep part way through it) went into the story of Noah's Ark. It ended up with a compelling story substantiated with recent finds of very human story of a man surviving a huge flood and how the story blossomed across cultures.

I am very buoyed by this upsurge in interest in early religious history and think it will be very cleansing for the world. The illogical leaps of faith required to be accepting of most modern religions give man an excuse to throw logic away in their everyday dealings with politics, interactions with their neighbors, ethics, business, and much more. When the spotlight finally gets shone on the absurdities humans have been accepting of for thousands of years, maybe it'll be that spur to once again embrace reason over hype. I also hope that this spotlight doesn't just illuminate Christianity but also burns brightly on Islam. That won't be as easy since many of its followers believe anyone raising questions of the Koran is a candidate for death. I'd like to believe it's a religion of peace but it simply isn't turning out that way as illustrated by the violent fervor directed at the recent satirical cartoons.

Art