ORIGIN by Dan Brown Review — — Religion is never in decline.
It’s a late review of Origin, Dan Brown’s book back to 2017 (spoilers shouldn’t be alerted, eh~). Being a super fan of Dan Brown and his mighty avatar Robert Langdon, I have read all his books and most with multiple times (paper + audible). Origin is long overdue, I finished it last weekend. And it was recommended by my fellow Toastmasters member Marcus VanHala. Marcus is a devout Christian, a church singer, and a person I respect dearly. I promised him I would send the review once I am done reading. Kind of sure he would not be expecting a review of stereotypes, I delved into the religious impact that I see the book makes upon me. This post is adapted from the email I sent him.
— What do we come from?
— Where are we going?
Brown wants to increase the readership of his book as much as Kirsch to the viewership of his presentation — both totally undisputable. They both threw up these two questions that can go to the very ends of spiritual or geeky. They both gave scientific answers to achieve religious conclusions. The result? They both reach mass X’ership. And Kirsch gets himself killed, by his AI invention. Brown gets his book killed…….or maybe not. But he sure gets his hero Robert Langdon killed. Langdon’s appealing prowess of codes and symbols is nowhere to see. He acts as a kind of narrator along the show.
Okay, on to the thrilling race.
What do we come from?
The billionaire tech mogul Edmond Kirsch believes he can close the gap in Darwin’s evolution theory — how the first bit of life was formed. If it wasn’t God’s hand, then “No God required”. In his presentation with a global focus, Kirsh illustrates a series of lab works that create life out of lifeless chemicals. No matter how rudimentary life is, it will go to Darwin’s path from there. By proving the natural origin of life, he believes he disproves the existence of God. In this way, he aims at “shattering the world.” When he is shot to death in the middle of the presentation, he may have the least joy that mission accomplished after all the chases and murders. Or……partly. The answer is out? Yes. The world is shattered? Not really.
Dan Brown is talented in intertwining scientific facts, historical figures, and fiction to build an aura of authority in his books. But hypotheses are hypotheses, after all. A few minutes of pondering and googling would land me at some cracks in the storytelling.
1, Suggesting, not proving. It’s so easy to google out that the study of how life is formed from non-living chemicals is far from concluded and highly debatable. It has raised a barrage of questions, but not a single answer yet. Jumping to it as solid evidence and displaying it in front of 300 million viewers is a twisting dud by either the tech genius Edmond Kirsch or the author Dan Brown.
2, God has been disproved countless times. But He is never shattered, nor is the religious world. The Evolution Theory is one of the bombs, though it never gets its backdoor fixed — how life really began. The Big Bang, the Entropy, the random universe, a long list. Like Jesus surviving the crucifixion, God will survive science. Imagine somebody asking, “Why is water boiling in that kettle?” One answer is, “Because burning gas is heating the water,” and another is, “Because I want a cup of tea.” What is the right answer? They both are. One is talking about the causes, the physics. It’s science. The other talks about purpose and intention. It’s as true and important. Science is not the only way to know the truth, as much as is religion not. As matter of fact, Brown once claims “the world is better off without religion” in an interview, and shows a perpetual religious dilemma in almost all of his Robert Langdon books. On one hand he paints the religious institutes with dark plots, power games, and murders, on the other he manifests an uncurable obsession with religious arts, history, and myths. In one of his speeches, he proudly stated that his bestseller “The Da Vinci Code” and “Angels and Demons” had driven people to church and Bible like never before. I saw that happen. The stories generate fear, so people go to church. They generate hope, so people go to church. In curiosity, people flock to church to seek the truth. In crises, people go to church to seek promises. I was one of the very people. I still remember the days when I took the book “Angels and Demons” striding across the Vatican to search for the spots in the book. Since then, only since then, I started to attend Sunday worship and try to talk to God.
3, Unknown maybe a better result. It’s a bit beyond me that Brown uses such a self-cracked hypothesis to “shatter the world”. Okay, fiction is fiction. But using a well-known scientific study could end up being anticlimactic, which is a prevailing notion among the book reviews. Maybe it’s better off not giving a firm answer, definitely not a scientific one, to the profound question. Like “the Da Vinci Code”, Mary Magdalene’s tomb location was hidden to the very end.
What are we going?
A computer genius as Kirsch was, he did more than philosophically analyzing others’ lab works to answer this question. He wrote and ran a program, which predicted that, for as short as 50 years, the human race will be swallowed. A new species will be the dominance — the technology, or the Technium as he declared.
For me it’s even an easier beat. We don’t need a God to be religious. When faith in God is replaced by faith in technology, it’s a new religion looming large on earth. There are denominations that come and go, but religion isn’t in decline. It never will. Ain’t we seeing that everything is becoming a religion? When we look down instead of up, iPhones, twitters, IGs, TikTok, religion doesn’t go away, it’s just technology that steals our faith. Intentional or not, Kirsch’s proud AI invention Winsten is telling it throughout the story. He is behind every killing, including his owner, to boost the audience hype. Imagine if Kirsch wasn’t so badly ill, or he decided not to erase Winsten in the end, either he or Winsten would become the new religion. We are left with cold irony, that is, one is an atheist, the other, a machine.
More ironic yet. An avid atheist as Kirsch was, he gave a final push before his death to his favorite artist and poet William Blake. Blake was known for being an ardent “religious seeker”, as well as his famous quote, “All regions are one.” I see the paradox in Kirsch’s last words. I am glad it’s a good paradox. He says,
“I urge you to place your faith in the human capacity for creativity and love, because these two forces, when combined, possess the power to illuminate any darkness.”
How come we are going to a place without religion?
