Friday, November 23, 2007

What's wrong with this paragraph?

From the novel Angels and Demons, by Dan Brown:

Now the girl in front looked furious. "You're implying Christianity is just some kind of ... repackaged sun worship!"


"Not at all. Christianity did not borrow only from sun worship. The ritual of Christian canonization is taken from the ancient 'god-making' rite of Euhemerus. The practice of 'god-eating' -- that is, Holy Communion -- was borrowed from the Aztecs. Even the concept of Christ dying for our sins is arguably not exclusively Christian; the self-sacrifice of a young man to absolve the sins of his people appears in the earliest tradition of the Quetzalcoatl."

There's something very specifically and obviously ridiculous here. Spot it, my smart friends! I myself was reading so quickly and uncritically that I didn't notice!

Peter T. Chattaway has the answer.

2 comments:

Heather said...

I didn't get it, which is really sad, because as an art major, I studied the Aztecs way more than any human should be required to. But I forgot the little bit about how we didn't discover them for eons...

Gotta love a fallacious argument! Thanks for the laugh.

P.S. You're reading Dan Brown?! *Shudder* Or are you just reading Peter Chattaway's blog which quoted Dan Brown?

Rachel said...

IIRC, I was reading another blog which linked to that entry in Peter Chattaway's blog. I wouldn't waste time on Dan Brown; his books sound like the kind that would actually leave you stupider than you were when you picked them up!

Anyway, I'm glad Dan Brown and I weren't the only ones to miss the glaring error. :)