- Authors: Reimundus Raymond Fatubun
- From: Department of Languages and Arts Cenderawasih University
Abstract:
Religion and science have been at odds with one another for centuries. This situation may be seen openly in scholarly discussions either through books, journals, seminars, conferences, etc. or through the mass media, electronic or printed. Persons from the literary world are not exempt from revealing their thoughts and views through their oppositions or support for either side. The Church has been attacked for her views about science, at least, since Galileo Galilei. There have always been secret societies even since the antiquity ? since ancient Egypt or Hebrew believed to have possessed certain secret knowledge in building great structures we still witness today. In our modern world, there is a secret society, in opposition to the Church, called the Illuminati, the enlightened ones, which is actually a united form of all the other known secret societies since the antiquity. The Illuminati, according to The New Grolier Webster International Dictionary (Encyclopedic Edition, 1971, p. 477), there are two definitions: (1) persons possessing, or alleging to posses, superior enlightenment; a name for various sects or societies which claim to possess superior enlightenment. Both definitions apply to my discussion. Dan Brown, the controversial bestselling mystery-thriller American novelist, for one, has brought up this battle between religion and science also as an issue in his thriller Angels and Demons (2000). He is one of the novelists who has taken the (Catholic) Church to be one of his issues in his literary works. But why does he do this? Is there a hidden agenda behind his literary work for some certain purposes? The killings in the novel are carried out mostly by the Assassin. But who is this Assassin? Using New Historicism, this paper is trying to present how this novel is an example of the works of an accomplice of Lucifer, through the Illuminati.
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