I'm posting this discussion as its own thread because I've seen a lot of visceral hatred of Dan Brown and all things appurtenant thereto, and I frankly don't understand it.

From what I can tell, people hate Dan Brown for one of the following reasons:

1. He writes fiction but pretends that some of it is true or based in truth

2. He plays on the ignorance of the general populace to sell books

or

3. He slanders the Roman Catholic Church and traditional Christianity.

Let's take these points in reverse order:

Allegations of Slandering Christianity

First of all, this point shouldn't be relevant in modern society. Enough books, movies and television shows have been made that are far more slanderous or libelous from a standpoint of faith than Dan Brown's little books. The Last Temptation of Christ is just as unorthodox, The Jesus Mysteries claim that there was no historical Jesus and your standard Jack Chick comic strip is more rabidly anti-Catholic than the lot just mentioned. Furthermore, Dan Brown's notion about Jesus and Mary Magdalene is simply a regurgitation of ideas and beliefs that were around in 300 AD (with the exception of the Merovingian bloodline claims, which are just silly). Regardless, given the composition of this website, I don't think this is the primary reason your average RAFhOle doesn't like Dan Brown.

Allegations Dan Brown Uses Ignorance to His Advantage

Good for him! People who choose to remain ignorant deserve a good fleecing every now and then. Furthermore, I don't see how Dan Brown in this regard is different from thousands of writers who print books for the gullible public which are NOT in novel form but which purport to "document" alien encounters, seances with spirits, the Loch Ness Monster, the Yeti, hollow earth theories, Illuminati conspiracies and the like. Dan Brown does admit that his book is a work of fiction. He isn't like John Edward, who claims he can speak with dead people for money, or even like your garden variety psychic or astrologer, the vast majority of whom are almost certainly quacks.

Allegations Dan Brown passes off Fiction as Fact

Basically, from what I can tell, the problems that people have in this regard is that he states that the Priory of Sion is centuries old, when in fact it is clearly not, or a few other points like that. The simple fact is that a lot of the material that he references to make his work of fiction are really in existence. I own a critical edition of the Nag Hammadi library in English and Coptic and there is indeed a Gnostic text where Jesus and Mary Magdalene are said to be more than just friends and that they would kiss one another in front of the disciples. There is a gnomon in St. Sulpice.

Yes, Brown misstates some things and exaggerates the importance of other things. On the other hand, how is he different from virtually ever writer of fiction out there? Hell, let's take an example of a movie that I like - The Mummy with Brendan Fraser. As someone with a love of Egypt, the film is about maybe 2% accurate in its portrayal of Egypt (if that). The sequel was even worse, though admittedly some of the errors that I found the grossest were the result of the studios asking Egyptologists about constructed original forms for words rather than New Kingdom vocalizations, which led to silly pronunciations like "yamun" for what should have been "aman" (indeed, the Amarna Letters confirm this pronunciation and scholars have written that there is no dispute about this pronunciation, nor has there been for over 50 years).

The point is that I'm used to this in entertainment.

What am I missing?