In my opinion, all these critics are lookin at the Dan Brown phenomenon incorrectly.My view is that our culture is starved for intellectual discussion abt the big questions of our time. We no longer undstd the signs & symbols that were once intuitively obvious to our forbears. We are torn between the impulses twd faith & spirituality on the one hand, & science & technology on the other. The more logical & technological our society becomes, the more some of us crave spirituality and return to past values. The more some conclude that God is dead or irrelevant, the more others find themselves returning to churches or mosques etc..
The more globalized and materialistic our cultures become, the more small grps seem attracted to the most illogical, untenable, extremist, and dangerous religious dogmas. We are supposed to be living in the info age, yet we dunno if we are being lied to abt basic facts. We knw more & more abt what happened microseconds after the BIG BANG, yet we still know nothing abt what happened b4 it. We are plunging headlong into a new millennium that is qualitatively different fromt he two millenia prior. We desperately wanna talk abt the experience, but there is no forum for doin so.
Thats why Dan Brown's bks give us the chance to engage in some of the discussion, albeit it may not be the most profound discussion, but what it lacks in profundity it makes up for in accessibility. In most of our daily lives, its not easy to fit in reading a book from cover to cover, thinking abt it, talkin abt it, & becoming stimulated to do additonal readings, but ANGELS AND DEMONS & DVC, have caused millions of ppl to go thru that process.
Dan Brown says some intriguing & tantalizing things abt antimatter, entaglement theory, and 21st century cosmology.
He gives you a start.
He gets you interested- but doesnt tell you everything you want to know.
Thats what the good book does!
