Howard Dial went to great lengths to defend his faith from the very silly and very popular phenomenon we call “The Da Vinci Code.” But Mr. Dial seemed a bit confused, a bit torn, in the article.

First, he describes the book as a double fiction. This very confusing term is, apparently, one he created for the article. The meaning is unclear, even after reading the article twice.

What I think he was getting at is the fact that Dan Brown wrote a book that is set in a realistic world. That is, he wrote a book of fiction set in a fictional world created from representations of mostly real places, history, and people.

Brown writes speculative fiction, so this is to be expected. But he also took real things, like the debunked Priory of Sion and the uninteresting Opus Dei, muddled some of their fact and his fiction together, and threw it all in his story.

This he did, like every other speculative fiction writer from Wilde to Koontz, to make an interesting device for the story. I, for one, feel that he failed miserably.

“The Da Vinci Code” is no more interesting, imaginative, or challenging than anything by J. K. Rowling or L. Ron Hubbard. Exciting? Sure, a bit. But, like Harry Potter, the book is so cliched as to be predictable, contains zero depth, and provides the reader with nothing interesting to think about.

At any rate, as Mr. Dial explains in the article, about 20 seconds’ worth of Google searching is more than enough to separate fact from fiction. If you’re not Web savvy, you can check a book out from your library, or purchase one from the same store that provided your copy of “The Da Vinci Code.”

Yet Howard Dial commits 31 paragraphs to the supposed issue at hand. I wonder how much faith Dial has in the average American. I simply cannot figure out why the book bothers Dial so much. Then again, I can’t figure out why anyone, anywhere, finds the book threatening or, for that matter, even worthy of national attention.

Adding to the confusion is Dial’s strange, and apparently spotty, knowledge of Christian history. He wrote, “Human beings did not put the Bible together,” apparently ignorant to the importance of the Church and Her councils to foundations of the Christian religion.

Yet, later on it is conceded that Dial is well aware of the effects of the ancient Catholic councils, as they voted against the teachings of Arius. Again, I think the confusion can be sorted out.

Dial is right when he says that if Jesus was God incarnate, he was so before the Catholic fathers voted to make this idea an official teaching of the Church.

Also, if the books of the Bible paint a coherent picture, tell the same truth throughout time, they have done so from the instant they were penned. That is, before the Church debated on and compiled the book, the story was already written.

This is logical. This cannot be disputed. But neither can one dispute that human beings wrote and compiled the Christian Bible, or any other book. It could not be any other way. The questions of fallibility and inspiration have naught to do with the questions of authorship.

If you have any further questions on inspiration, please see your father, mother, rabbi, priest, preacher, or pastor for help.

Whatever you do, don’t look to a book marketed for and sold in the fiction section of your book store, or a flashy movie starring Tom Hanks.

Jason Crain
Fayetteville, Ga.

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