Dan Brown's portrayal of Christian history in "The Da Vinci Code" is inaccurate.

Hello! Thank you for an interesting choice of topic. To begin with, it was a few years ago I read the novel, thus I am not l so sure as to how many, you might say, extraordinary claims he has presented in his novel nor in which way he has presented these claims. It is, after all, a fictional novel, so even though there might be a kernel of truth in most of his claims - for obviously he is a smart guy and he knows what he is talking about - it may be muddled with fictitious elements so as to might make it seem untrue. Frankly, I don"t have the time to read the whole novel to find out his exact intentions - but I might do one day - so I will focus only on the claims as you have portrayed them here in the first round. The first claim is about whether Jesus was married and had children is, of course, completely fictitious so how exactly did you reckon we would debate that topic? Thus, I"ll choose not to debate this topic. When it comes to the third topic, this is a fictitious claim as well. Even though there is some difference of opinion as to how religious Leonardo Da Vinci was, I can find no evidence whatsoever that would suggest that he was intentionally undermine the Catholic Church. For that reason I will choose not to debate this topic. I will, however, debate the third topic. I will present my contentions in my next rounds, but before I do that I will start with a prelude that gives an outline to the topic at hand by presenting what we are actually debating about: the Catholic Church and its governing body, the Vatican. during the 15th and 16th century, expressing any belief that was against the position that the Catholic Church held - atheism for that matter - was regarded as heresy. If you were discovered to hold such beliefs, you were held for trail as a heretic, not by an adversarial judicial system that we have in place today in which the court plays the role as an impartial referee and where the defendant has the right to an attorney, but by an inquisitional system in which the court - in this case consisting of cardinals appointed by the pope - played an active role in the investigating of the crime for the sole purpose of unveiling cases of heresy. Since the court was determined to strike down heresy no matter what and since they wielded immense power whereas the defendant was in no way able to defend his or her case against a religiously fanatical court, the defendant was practically forced to confess. In order to cover the expenses of the preliminary hearings, the defendant was confiscated by much of his or her property. You could be essentially be charged for heresy by anyone. The identity of whomever had pressed charges against you were classified for the defendant, so there was no accountability whatsoever for that person. Once you were escorted by means of violence and gagged, you were taken to the inquisition chamber for closer examination. If that weren"t scary enough, in reality, you had no actual means to defend yourself against the overzealous court. If you denied the charges put against you during the first hearing, the defendants were imprisoned for several months. The dungeons were located underground where the inmates were bound in stocks or chains, essentially unable to move about. The prisoners were starved and often held in solitary confinement with no contact with the outside world; usually the rooms had no light or ventilation, so the sense of solitude must have been rather poignant during their stay. Besides that miserable faith, the horrifying torture chambers that occasionally awaited the defendants were sufficient to strike terror in the bravest of men or women. Not only did they have to endure the dread of not knowing when they were going to be tortured next, they were also aware of the risk of either perpetual incarceration or death at the stake. If you had not confessed during your first hearing, the chances for your acquittal was virtually impossible. The inquisitors were sanctioned to use any means of terror and intimidation in order to extract confessions from their prisoner. This included horrifying devises used to inflict pain by, for instance, slowly dismembering and dislocating the body. Even those who managed to escape with their lives, were physically and/or mentally maimed for the rest of their lives, driven mad by the confinement and the torture they endured. Many willingly committed suicide in order to save themselves from the callousness of the inquisitors. While this may seem as an overload of information pertaining to one particular misdeed by the Roman Catholic Church, it is a rather striking one and it tells a lot about its character during the course of history. you might ask yourself, if the Vatican is able to go to such extreme lengths to counteract heresy that it deemed as threatening to the Roman Catholic Church, then why wouldn't"t it suppress scientific findings that went against the catholic paradigm and which, in extension, would threaten the credibility and the power of the Catholic institutions? The inquisition is but one of numerous crimes against humanity that points to the unscrupulous manner of the Catholic Church when it comes to efforts to the usurping of power and the eradication of whatever it deemed as a threatening to the institutional power of the church. Apart from the Inquisition, this includes a long list of abhorrent acts committed by the power-hungry Catholic Church such as: the Crusades against Muslims, pagan Slavs, Orthodox Christians, Mongols, Cathars, Hussites and political dissidents of the Pope; the leading role of the Catholic Church in the dissemination of antisemitism, such as the several series of homilies in the later half of the fourth century by the Archbishop of Constantinople, John Chrysostom, against the Jewish people, that eventually led to their ejection from Granada in 1492 by Ferdinand and Isabella; etc. These as just a few of the horrendous crimes that the Vatican has been responsible for in order to assert its power. Thus it is no question whatsoever in my mind that it would endeavor to suppress scientific truths that ran contrary to the teachings of the Catholic Church if that were to threaten the Catholic institution. I will expound upon this matter in my next rounds since this is just a prelude or an introduction to the discussion at hand. 1. http://en.wikipedia.org... 2. http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk... 3. http://www.biblicalstudies.org.uk...