OK :-)

Ahem. But really, with all of the secrecy and speculation surrounding the Craft, I’m not sure what I expected, but I think I anticipated something more controversial or earth-shattering. I was young and naive.

Those Grand Masters put themselves in an awkward position vis a vis the Church. In 1983, when he was still Cardinal Ratzinger, the current Pope renewed the Vatican ban on Masonic membership that has been in effect since 1738. The stated reasons for the ban are Masonry’s “religious indifferentism,” its “contempt” for ecclesiastical authority and the potential conflict with the sacrament of confession of Masonry’s required secrecy.

I’ve read a lot about Masonry, pro and con, but I am not a Mason myself and I can’t claim to speak with unshakable authority. Masons–and anyone else–should feel free to correct me whenever circumstances warrant it.

As for Brown’s new paradigms, well, a student fresh off the Da Vinci Code once told me, “No, it could be right – you just have to believe that everyone in history has been lying to you.” That’s right – EVERYONE. New paradigms that build off established knowledge are useful and workable, but Brown’s (like most conspiracy theories) are hostile to real knowledge and assume that our ancestors were so incompetent, compared to our new Race of Geniuses, that everything they believed is wrong and that what little they had right they were too weak to pass on in any effective way. Dan Brown has all of Gnosticism’s unfounded, elitist arrogance.

I hope the readers of BB are skeptics enough to call sensationalism and pseudoscience where they see it.

If they really had a handle on majestic workings of the universe you’d think they could do better for themselves than a suite in a dowdy office park, with a sign up front reading “BOOK SALE – UP to 80% OFF.”

It also turns blame inwards on low-income or disadvantaged people. Things suck for you? Guess you didn’t believe enough.

Maybe a fiction work about a ancient, shadowy group of sceptics determined to bring enlightenment to mankind, or at least stop it from being duped so often…..

add some explosions you could probably get a movie deal out of it too.

maybe not.

How is the overly serious response to his books any different than the christian whacko fringe getting up in arms about Harry Potter?

“If you meet the Buddha in the road, kill him.”

Shouldn’t it have been titled something more along the lines of “…The Straight Scoop on Freemasons and Every Other Secret Society To Which I do not Belong as I Perceive it Through my Limited Experience and What I’ve Read From Other Authors That May or May Not Have Had More Experience …”?

Oh well, to each his or her own… Now, if you’ll excuse me I’m gonna go write a book revolving around a book I read about gun repair. I don’t actually own a gun, but I’ve seen them on t.v., and I hardly see how that matters anyway.

Can you substantiate this with documentary evidence that shows American freemasons “detested” Catholicism?

Aren’t you able to correct the article?

They talk about the three pillars of Masonry being brotherly love, relief and truth, but without curiosity, you can’t expect to find truth. And if you find an interesting truth to share, what’s the point sharing it with disinterested parties? Even the so-called old-timers had only the shallowest knowledge of what it was all about.

The Craft is dying of stale blood. The enlightened brothers should have been wise (remember Solomon?) and opened their doors to African Americans and women so many years ago when Masonry was still relevant. The infusion of fresh ideas and minds could have saved those worshipful ‘freethinkers.’ It’s too late now.

Mason died in spirit a long time ago, and it’s still dying in body. In 20 more years, the last of the temples will be what so many of them already are, curious old rental halls.

So maybe I’m a rat, but you see, it’s just that I don’t like riding on sinking ships…

The silly what-if alt history/conspiracy stuff can be a lot of fun, but it really helps if you can write an actual plot and believable characters around it. I may be bitter, as well, that the intellectual hero, a character sadly missing in modern popular entertainment, seems to only appear in ridiculous unscientific dreck.

because they’re fictional stories “based on” actual events, and most people are too dumb or too lazy to bother figuring out what’s fact and fiction. most people are barely bright enough to know that hogwarts, tattooine, middle earth, and the starship enterprise aren’t real, so finding context in things that people have a vague memory of learning, further bastardizes whatever shred of knowledge that they had. It’s like a more plausible version of the ‘national treasure’ movies.

Freemasons donate over one million dollars per day to global charities. Charitable donations and charitable community efforts are the main activity of Freemasons.

“Fact: The Priory of Sion–a European secret society founded in 1099–is a real organization” (a highly debatable proposition) and then goes on to say that “all descriptions of artwork, architecture, documents, and secret rituals in this novel are accurate.”

THE LOST SYMBOL opens with a similar claim about the monuments and buildings in DC; it plugs the work of the real life Noetic Scientist McTaggart, and its last 50 pages read like an infomercial for Convergence and the New Age.

I’m not saying, as Evangelical Harry Potter alarmists do, that Dan Brown is covertly promoting something that’s dangerous to readers’ souls, that his books should be kept out of the hands of children. But I am expressing concern that fake history and woo woo psuedoscience are being packaged for a Bible-sized audience, not all of whom are as critical-minded or well-informed as they might be.

If you are serious about your interest in Free and Accepted Masonry you should do a quick Google search for “Grand Lodge of [insert your state/province/country here] F&AM ” Most Grand Lodge websites list the local lodges under their jurisdiction and provide contact information for the officers of those lodges. You will find that all you have to do is ask, and the doors of freemasonry will be opened unto you.

Here you go ~ boingboingistheshiz@mad.scientist.com

Give me a general area (as specific as you feel comfortable with) and I can offer you contact information to get you started.

All others ~ Feel free to email questions that you may have. Not saying that I have all the answers, but I can probably at least started on the right path to your answer.

Or buy Goldwag’s book. He’s probably got lots of good info in there. I wouldn’t actually know as I’ve never experienced his book, first hand… = )