This post is in response to an Open Page piece in The Hindu of May 19, 2013 [1]. So, you are asking why I am not responding to the piece in the original medium, pages of The Hindu. The answer lies in my fidelity to Bayesian probability! In recent times (to be taken as about 5 years) I have submitted any number of Letters to the Editor, and more than a few articles for Open Page and also to the “Net only” Viewpoint of the paper, but all in vain. The prior probability is zero, in that sense. Hence my response in my space, open access to all who care to read.
The author Matthew Adukanil starts out with a catchy assertion: Faith’s “address has changed.” From what to what must be the text of the piece, I figured, wrongly as it turns out. Where was faith originally reposed? Adukanil implies faith goes hand in hand with religion. But the way he said this brought a smile to my face. “True, fewer people go to church. Few (sic) believe in God. Few (sic) profess a religion. But it does not follow that faith is dead.”
The way I understood the above is, faith has more than religion going for it. It is only fair that I should listen to the writer on what these could be.
Then comes the rant.
Beyond religion and God, it is Richard Dawkins who stands for faith these days, says the writer. Dawkins has written a “new gospel liberating those who were ‘oppressed by the teaching of the Church.’”
People put faith in the “prophets of the media” who called the death of the world on December 21, 2012. The day came and went, but the world did not go anywhere, at least not go extinct. Faith suffered, only to rise like a phoenix from the ashes.
Faith in the “doomsday cult leader Pereira dos Santos in Brazil”, who exhorted his followers to drink poison (citing what, the writer does not say). The police saved the faithful. The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown finds honorable mention in the list of who deserves our faith.
Teachers abuse your faith. You cannot have faith in overprotective parents. “Ponzi schemes” seek your faith and you are too generous, with your faith as much as with your money.
On the other hand, SMS, email and Facebook friends are repositories of your faith. “[G]lamorous male friend on Facebook” (you cannot get any more specific on this, can you?) is trustworthy and hence deserves your faith. Email friends intimate you when you have won “$1,000,000 in a lottery in the US.” What more should a friend do for you?
Now, you would understand why I called it a rant. I found no rhyme or reason, no continuity, no cogency in what was written.
Perhaps he was saying that people should disabuse themselves of the notion that anything other than religion and God deserve their faith. Indeed, this is how he finished the piece, citing the “dogged musicians on the fast sinking Titanic who went down playing ‘Nearer my God to Thee’ in the final moments of the disaster.”
It is truly surprising that he would implicitly advise those sexually abused children to put their faith in the leaders of the Church – who indeed were their abusers – and through them in God. The point is all those instances of faith being taken advantage of by all and sundry as cited by the author vanish into thin air against the horrors of Church leaders. And, the writer is silent on that kind of abuse of faith. That silence makes the article empty.
This is why I titled this post “What exactly is the point?”
Raghuram Ekambaram
References
1. Faith is alive, Matthew Adukanil, The Hindu, May 19, 2013 (http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/open-page/faith-is-alive/article4728010.ece)
The author Matthew Adukanil starts out with a catchy assertion: Faith’s “address has changed.” From what to what must be the text of the piece, I figured, wrongly as it turns out. Where was faith originally reposed? Adukanil implies faith goes hand in hand with religion. But the way he said this brought a smile to my face. “True, fewer people go to church. Few (sic) believe in God. Few (sic) profess a religion. But it does not follow that faith is dead.”
The way I understood the above is, faith has more than religion going for it. It is only fair that I should listen to the writer on what these could be.
Then comes the rant.
Beyond religion and God, it is Richard Dawkins who stands for faith these days, says the writer. Dawkins has written a “new gospel liberating those who were ‘oppressed by the teaching of the Church.’”
People put faith in the “prophets of the media” who called the death of the world on December 21, 2012. The day came and went, but the world did not go anywhere, at least not go extinct. Faith suffered, only to rise like a phoenix from the ashes.
Faith in the “doomsday cult leader Pereira dos Santos in Brazil”, who exhorted his followers to drink poison (citing what, the writer does not say). The police saved the faithful. The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown finds honorable mention in the list of who deserves our faith.
Teachers abuse your faith. You cannot have faith in overprotective parents. “Ponzi schemes” seek your faith and you are too generous, with your faith as much as with your money.
On the other hand, SMS, email and Facebook friends are repositories of your faith. “[G]lamorous male friend on Facebook” (you cannot get any more specific on this, can you?) is trustworthy and hence deserves your faith. Email friends intimate you when you have won “$1,000,000 in a lottery in the US.” What more should a friend do for you?
Now, you would understand why I called it a rant. I found no rhyme or reason, no continuity, no cogency in what was written.
Perhaps he was saying that people should disabuse themselves of the notion that anything other than religion and God deserve their faith. Indeed, this is how he finished the piece, citing the “dogged musicians on the fast sinking Titanic who went down playing ‘Nearer my God to Thee’ in the final moments of the disaster.”
It is truly surprising that he would implicitly advise those sexually abused children to put their faith in the leaders of the Church – who indeed were their abusers – and through them in God. The point is all those instances of faith being taken advantage of by all and sundry as cited by the author vanish into thin air against the horrors of Church leaders. And, the writer is silent on that kind of abuse of faith. That silence makes the article empty.
This is why I titled this post “What exactly is the point?”
Raghuram Ekambaram
References
1. Faith is alive, Matthew Adukanil, The Hindu, May 19, 2013 (http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/open-page/faith-is-alive/article4728010.ece)
2 comments:
As soon as I started reading the article in question, I realised it didn't deserve any serious reading and gave up except for a quick skimming... You have judged it rightly as rant.
And, the problem is, Matheikal, these are the types that get published in that Open Page, meaning it is open to rants.
RE
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