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| 5/25 |
| 2009/1/6-9 [Reference/Religion] UID:52323 Activity:moderate |
1/6 Any Art History buffs here? I'm trying to find out if people
in the Renaissance used the "golden ratio" to compose their
art work? Do they divide pictures in some magical ratios to
make them look the way they do?
\_ The quick answer is yes; the long answer is that they did, though
not all of them may have done it consciously.
\_ can you provide URL that talks about this? A friend of mine
is asserting that people had no idea what golden ratio was
in those era and they just did what looked good visually.
\_ Google for Fibonacci and the Golden Mean (a video).
\_ iirc, "The Golden Ratio" by Mario Livio includes some discussion
about the use of the golden ratio by Renaissance artists. I think
he has some references to additional reading as well.
\_ Did you just read The Da Vinci Code? You know it's fiction, right?
And that most of the "facts" in it are crap?
\_ http://tinyurl.com/9akvvb
\_ Sure, sure, understood. However, some of the facts were accurate,
insofar as they were presented as facts. -!op
\_ Nope, pretty much everything I read in that book purporting to
be facts were actually wrong.
\_ /shrug. There was an Order of Knights called the Templars.
Opus Dei is a Catholic organization. The Louvre is in
Paris. I don't mean to nitpick, but it's a fiction born
out of lots of facts. That the facts don't fit together as
presented should be obvious from the word "fiction."
\- obviously the large scale stuff is made up, but
the da vinci code is "sloppy" on a lot of quotidian
details. like say somebody set something in berkeley
and said somebody was meeting at the corner of college
and university or said they walked from the i-house to
berkeley marina in 5min or had a 15min coversation
driving from evans hall to the GTU library.
\_ Pretty much everything presented as what the Templars
did or what Opus Dei is is wrong. Simple facts about
the golden ratio are wrong, etc.
\_ Point conceded. How about a nice game of chess?
\_ Yeah, it's a joke. Here's what I noted about it a
few years ago:
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=4801289&postcount=10
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=4801289
-emarkp
\_ Hey, emarkp, can you point me to an historical
mention of Jesus that isn't Flavius Josephus?
All sources seem to point back to FJ, and he's
not exactly unbiased. --erikred
\_ Josephus is the only one off the top of my head
who wasn't a Christian. Justin Martyr wrote
about him circa 100, but he was a convert to
Christianity (I thought by Peter, but now I
can't confirm that, so he's probably third
hand). -emarkp
\_ Josephus is not contemporary with the
events he writes about, so it's hard to
trust his account. --erikred
\- i am not especially knowledgeable
or interested in jebus, but if you
are interested in the historical
evidence, you can look into "the
jesus project" and BART EHRMAN ...
i would say josephus's "issue" is not
so much his temporal distance or his
being a jew rather than an xtian, but
the fact that he very much had an
agenda, and it was not a dispassionate
academic inquiry into the historical
"facts" [i have only read The Jewish
War]. EUSEBIUS is an obvious person to
read, but i dont remember what he says
about the early first cent. You may
also look into PHILO OF ALEXANDERIA
aka PHILO THE JEW but i am not really
familiar with him ... again, i am more
interested in what was going on in rome
and the west than in the levant. of the
great western historians, the greatest,
western historians, the greatest,
tacitus, was not that interested and
says little about the first century
goings on in palestine although there
is some discussion of the events of the
60s. seutonious is a hack so i wont go
on about him. dio cassius has a limited
amount of commentary, but that is even
more removed in time.
i know more about intellectual
and church history than the personal
details about jebus ... if you want
pointers to that stuff, let me know
what kinds of Qs you are interested in.
\_ Kudos to psb and emarkp for the
usual good info. Will be in touch.
--erikred
\- factoid of the day: kudos is
singular. do epong and i have
to split a kudos? :-)
\_ Yes. Knife-fight to ensue.
\_ that's a pretty good rebuttal. I refused to read
the book after a co-worker of mine successfully
argued to others that it was the first book that he
had ever read that actually made him dumber...
getting actual facts and history muddled with
fiction. Everyone else at the table who had read
the book and knew anything about history agreed.
\- if the Vinci Code really made you dumber, you
probably started out dumb [yeah, i know it's
probably just a line from your associate, but
you can see my point too, i hope]. on the other
hand a book like ZatAoMM really is pernicious.
\_ I don't think it's so much that he's dumb as
that he forgot all the stuff that he learned
in college 10 years prior (or my other friend
who forgot everything he learned in Catholic
school). He remembered the facts, but they
became hazy with time, and then DBrown got
got inserted into the haze. Kind of like a
virus inserting itself into the code. So I
guess he's dumb in a single-cell sort of way. |
| 5/25 |
|
| tinyurl.com/9akvvb -> www.amazon.com/Holy-Blood-Grail-Illustrated-Shocking/dp/038534001X The Messianic Legacy, spent over 10 years on their own kind of quest for the Holy Grail, into the secretive history of early France. What they found, researched with the tenacity and attention to detail that befits any great quest, is a tangled and intricate story of politics and faith that reads like a mystery novel. It is the story of the Knights Templar, and a behind-the-scenes society called the Prieure de Sion, and its involvement in reinstating descendants of the Merovingian bloodline into political power. The authors of Holy Blood, Holy Grail assert that their explorations into early history ultimately reveal that Jesus may not have died on the cross, but lived to marry and father children whose bloodline continues today. The authors' point here is not to compromise or to demean Jesus, but to offer another, more complete perspective of Jesus as God's incarnation in man. The power of this secret, which has been carefully guarded for hundreds of years, has sparked much controversy. For all the sensationalism and hoopla surrounding Holy Blood, Holy Grail and the alternate history that it outlines, the authors are careful to keep their perspective and sense of skepticism alive in its pages, explaining carefully and clearly how they came to draw such combustible conclusions. Product Description SPECIAL ILLUSTRATED EDITION WITH EXCLUSIVE NEW MATERIAL "One of the more controversial books of the 20th century." Now this lavishly illustrated collector's edition features exclusive new material plus dozens of full-color photographs, drawings, symbols, architecture, and artwork, making it a dazzling feast for the eyes as well as the mind. Based on decades of research, filled with eye-opening new evidence and stunning scholarship, this authoritative work uncovers an alternate history as shocking as it is believable-as it dares to ask: Is the traditional, accepted view of the life of Christ in some way incomplete? Is it possible Jesus was married, a father, and that his bloodline still exists? Is it possible that parchments found in the South of France a century ago reveal one of the best-kept secrets in Christendom? Is it possible that these parchments contain the very heart of the mystery of the Holy Grail? According to the authors of this extraordinarily provocative, meticulously researched book, not only are these things possible-they are probably true. So revolutionary, so original, so convincing, the most faithful Christians will be moved; here is the book that has sparked worldwide controversy, now newly updated and beautifully illustrated for the collector's shelf. The plot has all the elements of an international thriller." learn more) Browse and search another edition of this book. First Sentence: We believed at first that we were dealing with a strictly local mystery-one confined to a village in the south of France. Holy Blood, Holy Grail (Mass Market Paperback) First off, I have never read "The Da Vinci Code." Let's get that out of the way right from the start since it seems most people who read "Holy Blood, Holy Grail" did so because of the enormous popularity of the Brown book. No, I read "Holy Blood" because I love reading about conspiracy theories--UFOs, the Kennedy assassination, Britney Spears's success--anything that concerns the unexplainable. I actually came across this title about six years ago when I was reading several books about British Israelism, and only recently picked it up after accidentally stumbling over it on one of my Internet excursions. When I began describing the contents of this book to a family member, she quickly mentioned "The Da Vinci Code." I now see that Brown's book apparently borrowed its plot from "Holy Blood, Holy Grail," thereby bringing this esoteric theory about Christ, the Merovingian dynasty, and Mary Magdalene to a new generation of readers. I will say that Baigent's book is the grandest conspiracy theory I have ever read. There are conspiracy theories, and there are CONSPIRACY THEORIES. "Holy Blood, Holy Grail" is the mother of all conspiracy theories; fifty stories tall and decked out in neon letters with sprinkles on top. If any of this is true, western civilization as we know it is undone. The mystery examined in this book first came to public attention roughly a century ago, when an obscure French priest named Berenger Sauniere assumed his post in the village of Rennes-le-Chateau in Southern France. The priest uncovered some ancient, mysterious documents in an abandoned church near his village. Intrigued, he took them to the local bishop, who then instructed Sauniere to head to Paris and consult some "experts" there. When the priest returned to Rennes-le-Chateau, things were definitely different. He suddenly had at his disposal millions of francs, leading to several extensive and bizarre building projects in the area. When the Catholic authorities questioned his expenditures, Sauniere brazenly defied the inquiries. Surprisingly, the Church did nothing to the man even though he was a lowly priest. Moreover, he often received visits from Parisian bigwigs, people a man in Sauniere's position couldn't possibly know. When the priest died his secret apparently died with him. Not according to the authors of "Holy Blood, Holy Grail." Taking the Sauniere mystery as a starting point, the book proposes a shocking theory about the very origins of Christianity and nearly every secret society during the last 1000 years. By looking at such diverse historical events as the Albigensian heresy, the Crusades, Freemasonry, and Christ's crucifixion, "Holy Blood, Holy Grail" posits that Berenger Sauniere discovered documents referring to a mysterious secret society called the Priory of Zion, an organization composed of elites in European society who believe that Jesus Christ was married to Mary Magdalene, fathered children, and probably didn't die on the cross. Instead, they believe Jesus went into hiding while his family sailed for Gaul. Ultimately, Jesus' offspring married into the local population, thereby helping to form the Merovingian dynasty. Although these monarchs ultimately lost power, the bloodline of Jesus survived into succeeding generations. One descendant of the Messiah was Godfroi de Bouillon, the crusader who captured Jerusalem from the Saracens during the First Crusade. The Knights Templar, that band of knights dedicated to fighting for Christ, was in actuality a branch of the previously mentioned Priory of Zion. When the Europeans lost Jerusalem to the Saracens, the two organizations split and the Templars went to their doom. European history, according to "Holy Blood, Holy Grail," has since been a titanic struggle for power between the Catholic Church and the Priory of Zion. The documents discovered by Sauniere, along with additional information unearthed by the authors in France's National Library, have shown that men such as Leonardo Da Vinci, Isaac Newton, Nicholas Flamel, and Jean Cocteau have served as Grand Masters of the Priory of Zion. Imagine what would happen if incontrovertible evidence emerged proving a descendant of Jesus walked the earth today. There are so many things explored in this book that it is impossible to summarize them all. Most people would have a serious problem with the findings of "Holy Blood," and for the most part, they would be right. The authors often make extraordinary leaps from one piece of evidence to another. For example, the book claims that "The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion," the notorious anti-Semitic tract which influenced National Socialism, was originally a document concerning the truth about the Merovingian bloodlines. I don't buy this argument in the least, but that doesn't mean I reject this book completely. I thought the commentary on the Gospels was, with a few exceptions, well done, liberally employing creative reasoning and an intelligent eye for detail. I will when the Priory of Zion steps forward with proof. Predictably, the arrival of "Holy Blood" on bookshelves in the early 1980s provoked a storm of controversy. The Church excoriated the authors for the views expressed in the book, as did history scholars and theologian... |
| boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=4801289&postcount=10 emarkp emarkp is offline Guest Join Date: Jun 1999 Quote: It's a novel. True enough, but Dan Brown is publicly quoted as saying The DaVinci Fiasco is truth. Quote: As to the book being 'riddled with assertions about early Christian history', do you really believe that Jonah was swallowed by a whale? That all of the other supposed historical events related in the bible are anything but stories made up by the storytellers of the time, with some basis in the actual historical figures of the time? That's the definition of an historical novel, as I understand it. The examples you mention are not "early Christian history". They're Jewish mythos, which is included in the Christian mythos. Early Christian history includes things like the ecumenical councils--The DaVinci Travesty in particular mentions the Council of Nicea (or Nicaea) which happened in 325 AD. That council has minutes, and is part of factual history, not part of disputed belief. Here's how Dan Brown describes it in The DaVinci Disaster: Quote: "Indeed," Teabing said. During this fusion of religions, Constantine needed to strengthen the new Christian tradition, and held a famous ecumenical gathering known as the Council of Nicaea." Sophie had heard of it only insofar as its being the birthplace of the Nicene Creed. the date of Easter, the role of the bishops, the administration of sacraments, and, of course, the divinity of Jesus." "My dear," Teabing declared, "until that moment in history, Jesus was viewed by His followers as a mortal prophet... "Jesus' establishment as 'the Son of God' was officially proposed and voted on by the Council of Nicaea." You're saying Jesus' divinity was the result of a vote?" The Council of Nicea was all about the Arian Controversy--Arius proposed the idea of Jesus as divine, but of lesser divinity than the Father, that there was a time when Jesus "was not." The Nicene Creed was one of the results of the council, which coined the greek word "Homoousious" (commonly translated as "consubstantial") with the Father. Additionally only 17 of the roughly 300 bishops present initially refused to sign it, with eventually only 3 objecting. These are facts of history, not mythos, and not opinion. Dan Brown makes a hash of most of his presentation of history. Furthermore, the characters presenting the information (like the "Teabing" character in the above quote) are supposed to be professors--the most learned in their field. Hence, the authority figure in the book is presenting this misinformation in a matter-of-fact way someone who "knows his stuff". As a result, many people believe the laughable statments of "fact" in The DaVinci Doot. In his agonizing discourse about phi (the golden ratio) Brown pens the following tripe: Quote: "PHI's ubiquity in nature," Langdon said, killing the lights, "clearly exceeds coincidence, and so the ancients assumed the number PHI must have been preordained by the Creator of the universe. Early scientists heralded one-point-six-one-eight as the Divine Proportion." "I'm a bio major and I've never seen this Divine Proportion in nature." "Ever study the relationship between females and males in a honeybee community?" And did you know that if you divide the number of female bees by the number of male bees in any beehive in the world, you always get the same number?" Langdon fired back This of course is wrong (as well as painful to read). In any hive there are many workers (sterile females) a single queen (fertile female) and a handful of drones (males). Specifically, drones are only produced when the queen needs to mate (which happens once in the queen's lifespan) and she only mates with roughly 10-20 drones (whereupon the drones immediately die). The real "phi" in the story of bees is that because males are born from unfertilized eggs (hence they have a father and no mother) the ratio of ancestors of a male bee to that of a female bee approaches phi. This isn't that surprising: a female bee has the same mother as a male in the colony but additionally has a father. That produces the recursion relation which results in a mathematical sequence whose limit is phi. Brown also gets other things hideously wrong: Quote: Women, once celebrated as an essential half of spiritual enlightenment, had been banished from the temples of the world. There were no female Orthodox rabbis, Catholic priests, nor Islamic clerics. Holy men who had once required sexual union with their female counterparts to commune with God now feared their natural sexual urges as the work of the devil, collaborating with his favorite accomplice... Not even the feminine association with the left-hand side could escape the Church's defamation. In France and Italy, the words for "left"--gauche and sinistra--came to have deeply negative overtones, while their right-hand counterparts rang of righteousness, dexterity, and correctness. To this day, radical thought was considered left wing, irrational thought was left brain, and anything evil, sinister. In his attempt at the Grand Unified Women-Hating Theory, Brown screws up again. The left brain is actually the rational side, the right the irrational/emotional side. And he continues to claim that every element of Christian history or symbolism is designed to crush "the divine feminine". He also claims the olympiad cycle was based on the cycles of Venus, etc. Quote: It doesn't represent itself to be historically accurate Yes it does. From the book FAQ: Quote: HOW MUCH OF THIS NOVEL IS TRUE? The Da Vinci Code is a novel and therefore a work of fiction. While the book's characters and their actions are (obviously) not real, the artwork, architecture, documents, and secret rituals depicted in this novel all exist. These real elements are interpretted and debated by fictional characters. While it is my own personal belief that the theories discussed by these characters have merit, the choice to agree or disagree with the characters' viewpoints is entirely that of the individual reader. My hope is that the ideas in the novel serve as a springboard for people to discuss the important topics of faith, religion, and history. Not the word I'd choose--gullible or uninformed might be better. " And that requires rebuttal/refutation/correct/what have you. The guy's in the tin-foil-hat part of society and he's got millions of people reading his rubbish. I can point to any number of counterexamples of people who are deeply involved in their religion (even in positions of leadership) who get zero compensation (in cash or kind) for what they do (oh yeah, I'd be one of them). |
| boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=4801289 emarkp emarkp is offline Guest Join Date: Jun 1999 Quote: It's a novel. True enough, but Dan Brown is publicly quoted as saying The DaVinci Fiasco is truth. Quote: As to the book being 'riddled with assertions about early Christian history', do you really believe that Jonah was swallowed by a whale? That all of the other supposed historical events related in the bible are anything but stories made up by the storytellers of the time, with some basis in the actual historical figures of the time? That's the definition of an historical novel, as I understand it. The examples you mention are not "early Christian history". They're Jewish mythos, which is included in the Christian mythos. Early Christian history includes things like the ecumenical councils--The DaVinci Travesty in particular mentions the Council of Nicea (or Nicaea) which happened in 325 AD. That council has minutes, and is part of factual history, not part of disputed belief. Here's how Dan Brown describes it in The DaVinci Disaster: Quote: "Indeed," Teabing said. During this fusion of religions, Constantine needed to strengthen the new Christian tradition, and held a famous ecumenical gathering known as the Council of Nicaea." Sophie had heard of it only insofar as its being the birthplace of the Nicene Creed. the date of Easter, the role of the bishops, the administration of sacraments, and, of course, the divinity of Jesus." "My dear," Teabing declared, "until that moment in history, Jesus was viewed by His followers as a mortal prophet... "Jesus' establishment as 'the Son of God' was officially proposed and voted on by the Council of Nicaea." You're saying Jesus' divinity was the result of a vote?" The Council of Nicea was all about the Arian Controversy--Arius proposed the idea of Jesus as divine, but of lesser divinity than the Father, that there was a time when Jesus "was not." The Nicene Creed was one of the results of the council, which coined the greek word "Homoousious" (commonly translated as "consubstantial") with the Father. Additionally only 17 of the roughly 300 bishops present initially refused to sign it, with eventually only 3 objecting. These are facts of history, not mythos, and not opinion. Dan Brown makes a hash of most of his presentation of history. Furthermore, the characters presenting the information (like the "Teabing" character in the above quote) are supposed to be professors--the most learned in their field. Hence, the authority figure in the book is presenting this misinformation in a matter-of-fact way someone who "knows his stuff". As a result, many people believe the laughable statments of "fact" in The DaVinci Doot. In his agonizing discourse about phi (the golden ratio) Brown pens the following tripe: Quote: "PHI's ubiquity in nature," Langdon said, killing the lights, "clearly exceeds coincidence, and so the ancients assumed the number PHI must have been preordained by the Creator of the universe. Early scientists heralded one-point-six-one-eight as the Divine Proportion." "I'm a bio major and I've never seen this Divine Proportion in nature." "Ever study the relationship between females and males in a honeybee community?" And did you know that if you divide the number of female bees by the number of male bees in any beehive in the world, you always get the same number?" Langdon fired back This of course is wrong (as well as painful to read). In any hive there are many workers (sterile females) a single queen (fertile female) and a handful of drones (males). Specifically, drones are only produced when the queen needs to mate (which happens once in the queen's lifespan) and she only mates with roughly 10-20 drones (whereupon the drones immediately die). The real "phi" in the story of bees is that because males are born from unfertilized eggs (hence they have a father and no mother) the ratio of ancestors of a male bee to that of a female bee approaches phi. This isn't that surprising: a female bee has the same mother as a male in the colony but additionally has a father. That produces the recursion relation which results in a mathematical sequence whose limit is phi. Brown also gets other things hideously wrong: Quote: Women, once celebrated as an essential half of spiritual enlightenment, had been banished from the temples of the world. There were no female Orthodox rabbis, Catholic priests, nor Islamic clerics. Holy men who had once required sexual union with their female counterparts to commune with God now feared their natural sexual urges as the work of the devil, collaborating with his favorite accomplice... Not even the feminine association with the left-hand side could escape the Church's defamation. In France and Italy, the words for "left"--gauche and sinistra--came to have deeply negative overtones, while their right-hand counterparts rang of righteousness, dexterity, and correctness. To this day, radical thought was considered left wing, irrational thought was left brain, and anything evil, sinister. In his attempt at the Grand Unified Women-Hating Theory, Brown screws up again. The left brain is actually the rational side, the right the irrational/emotional side. And he continues to claim that every element of Christian history or symbolism is designed to crush "the divine feminine". He also claims the olympiad cycle was based on the cycles of Venus, etc. Quote: It doesn't represent itself to be historically accurate Yes it does. From the book FAQ: Quote: HOW MUCH OF THIS NOVEL IS TRUE? The Da Vinci Code is a novel and therefore a work of fiction. While the book's characters and their actions are (obviously) not real, the artwork, architecture, documents, and secret rituals depicted in this novel all exist. These real elements are interpretted and debated by fictional characters. While it is my own personal belief that the theories discussed by these characters have merit, the choice to agree or disagree with the characters' viewpoints is entirely that of the individual reader. My hope is that the ideas in the novel serve as a springboard for people to discuss the important topics of faith, religion, and history. Not the word I'd choose--gullible or uninformed might be better. " And that requires rebuttal/refutation/correct/what have you. The guy's in the tin-foil-hat part of society and he's got millions of people reading his rubbish. I can point to any number of counterexamples of people who are deeply involved in their religion (even in positions of leadership) who get zero compensation (in cash or kind) for what they do (oh yeah, I'd be one of them). |