Smoking and the Da Vinci Code

CIGARETTES AND RELIGION: Some Interesting Parallels Between Da Vinci Code, the Adoption of Christianity and Smoking

What does Inner Quitting/Cigarette Seduction have in common with the Religious blockbuster, the Da Vinci Code? At the coreŠŠa lot more than you'd think.

Both books are about decoding an old mystery. The Da Vinci Code¹s intention is to help understand the real story of Christianity so that you might think you are in control of your belief system. Ours is to help you understand the real story of smoking so that you can take control of your habit and hopefully quit.

At a deeper level it gets more interesting. While both books use an amalgam of fact and deduction to get to the mysteries of belief, the Da Vinci Code is mostly nonsense. Yet, over 17 million people have been willing to ignore historical scholarship because it reflects a message they WANT to believe.

Likewise, we will show there is a similarity to the adoption of religion and smoking with its selection of brands. When people want to believe something, because of personal benefit, the truth is usually ignored.

In Da Vinci Code, the claims made about Jesus¹ life that are simply not supported by any historical fact Š..scholars, like the eminent Professor Bart Ehrman will tell you there are only 4 actual references to Jesus Christ in his lifetime. All are matter-of-fact citations that a certain religious man existed who had some kind of following and absolutely none of them come close to supporting the key assertions of the Da Vinci Code.

The truth about tobacco is just as distorted. People have known about their addictiveness since they were discovered in the 16th Century. We have suspected they dangerous and known about cancer for over 50 years (we can even show cancer references that are 140 years old). But generations of smokers have ignored this for reasons they find more personally meaningful.

In some ways it relates to the adoption of religion and of early Christianity in particular, and its similarity to the adoption of cigarette brands in the way they fulfilled the latent and overt needs of their prospects.

With Da Vinci Code, the issue is simply that due to sexual and other scandals people have developed a mistrust of the Catholic Church. In a world where women have experienced more power and freedom it is inevitable they want to see not only reflected in religion, but that it is part of its origins. Da Vinci Code addresses this by arguing that Christianity was really a feminine religion which was suppressed by Nicean Conference in the 4th Century. But this just isn¹t true, just as his claims about Jesus not being a single rabbi (there is no evidence that he was consecrated while the Essenes were an example of a community of unmarried rabbis at the time). He
also ascribes to Gnosticism, and for that matter paganism, a feminine meaning which just wasn't there....However, most book buyers are women and so the story fills a need.

But what about cigarettes and Christianity?

Let's keep in mind that people smoke in full knowledge of their dangers. It happens to be part of the attraction. We have researcher's reports on this since the 1950s and there are plenty of anecdotal references to make this issue clear. Naturally, you don't hear of these when the issue shows up in courts but that is because neither side wants to dwell on the point not the tobacco companies for exploiting self-destruction nor smokers from seeking it out. It is the truth we conveniently overlook.

In Christianity, the truth we conveniently overlook is that the early Church was founded by Paul who never met Jesus and avoided meeting the surviving apostles. That means he never actually knew what Jesus had said since the gospels had not yet been written. Nevertheless, he is responsible for some of the first books of the New Testament, Act and Epistles which precede the gospels. This is an important point because the gospels define the teaching of Christianity and the most influential gospel, John's was written approximately 70's after Christ's demise and long after Paul had established the early religion.

So what was Paul conveying that was arguably more powerful than Christ's actual teachings since it preceded their adoptionŠ.and why would it relate to smoking?

It was the death and resurrection of Christ. Paul the zealot had a vision on the road to Damascus that told him that the world was coming to end and that salvation would come by the act of accepting the death and resurrection story of Christ and submitting to the power of God. Although he was well versed in the old Bible, he believed that knowledge and rules wouldn't help...only the submission to this greater being. In other words, the acceptance of sacrifice as a means to redemption is what started the religion of Christianity. The actual teaching came much later with the
writing down of the gospels and the other books of the New Testament canon. And by the way, the world hasn't come to an end yet...but you never know!

Cigarettes too, are an act of sacrifice and submission. If people have been smoking for all these years in full or even partial knowledge that they are damaging and addictive, what is the benefit? The answer, of course, is in the brands. Even the absence of brands or cheapie pseudo-brands can be understood as derivatives of the initiating brands (few people start with non-brands).

The key difference between religion and smoking is that, cigarettes submit you through addiction to a contemporary image drawn from the culture of the marketplace. In religion, you are submitting yourself to the ultimate force, God. But in many respects these are only differences in degree.

What Inner Quitting/Cigarette Seduction, Da Vinci Code and Religion itself have in common is that we accept the principle of sacrifice for gain. Da Vinci Code may ask us to suspend rational discourse in return for a more agreeable view of the Christianity. Cigarettes may represent easy sacrifice for easy gain and the gain may be far more ephemeral than eternal life, but the principle is the same. We don't mean to pick on Christianity, smokers belong to all religions and in all cases there is a parallel between their brands and their nation's blend of religion and culture. So if you are a smoker looking to quit, or just interested in the phenomenon, take the
journey with us as we peel back the story and introduce you to the inner
story and the way to quit...for good.