Dan Brown, The Lost Symbol & Freemasonry….
I just finished “The Lost Symbol” by Dan Brown and was fairly nonplussed. It is a mildly compelling read – urged on more by chapter progress than by real story. There are several very small chapters which encourage continued reading – which is an interesting mechanism itself.
The story is fairly predictable (with the occasional interesting twist) but of more interest to me was reading another bout of classical Dan Brown logical fallacy. The man has a terrific way of convincing you that enough of what he is saying is true or fairly plausibly true and then the rest just coasts along. By stating at the beginning of the book that X, Y and Z are all true and really exist – he creates the illusion of the extension of truth by continuing to imply that anything to do with X, Y or Z is also true.
This is the great logical fallacy of Dan Brown and his work. Most importantly for someone like me, the fallacy of the facts that he presents for Freemasonry and the Craft in general is astounding. Not only are his facts about the fraternity patently wrong and most likely derived from the internet (I realize he did interview people at several D.C. lodges and Grand Lodge of D.C.) but he uses miniscule bits of true facts to entice the reader to believe everything except the characters themselves are real.
Now, weaving fact and fiction in a story is one thing… but coming out at the beginning of the book and making an assertation that broad topics that you are about to discuss are factual (that is the implication at least) is just misleading and damaging. Of course, because of Masonry’s long-standing tradition of not commenting at all – Brown’s book will stand on its own as a terrific fictional expose. Who knows, in some dark conspirator circles I am sure they are talking about how he is marked for death now.
Counter-intuitively it seems that membership is growing within the ranks of Masonry, including here in California, but the truth will out in the end as we find out how many of these men were “Dan Brown” masons versus ones where Masonry actually sticks for life.
At least I have one comfort in all of his ramblings: The true secret of Freemasonry remains hidden, untarnished and – for now – incommunicable.
http://www.danbrown.com/#/theLostSymbol
