The opiate of the masses

In the marketplace of ideas, ie. in a free society, sometimes we try to persuade people out of ideas. We criticize ideas we disagree with; we question ideas we find puzzling; we excoriate ideas we find repugnant; we make fun of ideas we think are silly and we consider this kindo' behavior quite acceptable. In fact, we think it's positively good. We think this is how good ideas emerge to the surface, and bad ideas get filtered out. We might have issues with exactly how this persuasion is carried out: should it be done politely or rudely, reasonably or hysterically, do you really have to bring it up now or later etc. But the fundamental idea of convincing other people that your ideas are right and theirs are wrong is not basically controversial. Except when it comes to religion. But why should religion be any different?

A dialogue in distress: cut and paste from my FB

After the comparably long absence of two years from the Americana, I thought I will be home-bound with my driving skills replaced with India's. OMG, the fear was irrational and here I am navigating through the busy streets of Philly and the highways of Pennsylvania in my SAAB. She is always like that: devotion, loyalty,luxury and thrill (sports)- all rolled into one! LikeUnlike · · Share * Nina Kesav and Joseph Ac like this. * * o Cherian Abraham Its not that. Everyone else heard you were driving and just stayed home. April 24 at 9:00am · LikeUnlike o Prof. Alex Odikandathil Ph.D. Boy, how're you? Still no improvement with your Butler English? April 24 at 9:51am · LikeUnlike o Cherian Abraham Nope. It never took off after being taught by you. Irreparable damage. April 24 at 2:52pm · LikeUnlike o Prof. Alex Odikandathil Ph.D. Most of them took off. You in the 2% that didn't? Breed must be the reason. April 24 at 4:32pm · LikeUnlike · 1 o Cherian Abraham Just 2%? Figures. I suspect others in the Dept had to pull double duty to make up. As for me, I suspect it also has to do with the early morning stops I made at your place on my way home back from Chemistry tuition. Daily dose of your wisdom, that too in the morning, left some long lasting nerve damage. April 24 at 8:46pm · LikeUnlike o Prof. Alex Odikandathil Ph.D. I have not taught one; but thousands and thousands from Ranni to Kozhencherry to Chengannur- advocates, teachers, managers, nurses, doctors, IPS officers, engineers, farmers, business-men and home-makers among them: from pre-degree to the master's level. A complaint of this nature is brought to my attention for the first time. Will make an introspection; at the same time I would advise you for a diagnosis to rule out the cause of the brain damage as ADHD or schizophrenia. Wednesday at 9:28am · LikeUnlike o Cherian Abraham Touched a nerve, haven't I ? :) Wednesday at 9:45am · LikeUnlike o Prof. Alex Odikandathil Ph.D. Knowing about bars, stops, ceasing, desisting, words, deeds/ consequences- all are crucial; so the question is not of touching a nerve, but the soothing of many and I've to stand by my earlier advice.

Here I do endorse Mr. George's and Mr. Mathews's requests to declare solidarity with the Pandanad Immanuel Mar Thoma Church Members in their quest to maintain status quo-
their right to pray in their age-old parish. The righteous among you Marthomites are duty-bound to act honorably regardless of the circumstances or the people involved.. you need to identify yourselves with the members of that parish in their legitimate right to exist.

May I ask where all those fire-brands and stalwarts of liberty who clamoured against the infringement of rights in the Kuwait Mar Thoma Parish are now? The issue at Pandanad is similar; if not identical... they need your support.

With apologies to Dr. Johnson, the Pandanad episode abounds with images which should find a mirror in every mind and with sentiments to which every heart should return an echo.

Please read:
Luke 19:37-41 (NIV)

37 When he came near the place where the road goes down the Mount of Olives, the whole crowd of disciples began joyfully to praise God in loud voices for all the miracles they had seen:

38 “Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord!”

“Peace in heaven and glory in the highest!”

39 Some of the Pharisees in the crowd said to Jesus, “Teacher, rebuke your disciples!”

40 “I tell you,” he replied, “if they keep quiet, the stones will cry out.”

41 As he approached Jerusalem and saw the city, he wept over it.

I would love to hear back from you all,

Adv. Alex Abraham Odikandathil

Child abuse/ neglect

This is something in which we Indians repeatedly err.

Each one of us is surreptitiously convinced that our belief system is the right one and that others should fall in line with it.
The Child Protective Services of America knows that Indians mete out corporal punishment to their children and try to educate them against it by compulsorily sending them to parenting classes, counseling etc. instead of snatching their children in the first instance. Norwegian Government may not be aware of Indian practices and culture/ sub-culture...
but that doesn't matter.
We have to obey the law of the land whereever we are... I, for one, believe that such actions of governments in developed countries are backed by in-depth research and are built on very solid foundations of child-abuse/ neglect studies leading to positive results.
This author knows a Keralite couple, imprisoned in a foreign country on allegations of neglect leading to the sad death of a child though all who know the couple will agree that they are exceptionally good, responsible parents, quite innocent of what happened.
I'm writing this with the intent of arousing consciousness about child rearing and supervision, especially when we are in a foreign country. In the case cited, the parents have to do what they have to do in order to get the children back; no amount of sympathy will alter the situation... its a sad scenario, though.

Thank you.

On Thu, Jan 19, 2012 at 6:56 AM, Shibu Thomas Varughese wrote:

Indian couple have children taken away by Norwegian social workers because they were feeding them by hand

Authorities also complained that the parents should not be sleeping in the same bed as their infants
By David Gerges
Last updated at 4:38 PM on 18th January 2012

An Indian couple have had their children taken away by Norwegian social workers because they were feeding them with their hands and sleeping in the same bed as them.
Anurup and Sagarika Bhattacharya lost custody of their three-year-old son and one-year-old daughter eight months ago after authorities branded their behaviour inappropriate.
The drastic measure led to intervention from the Indian government who contacted Norwegian authorities in an a desperate attempt to return the children.

Parents Anurup, right and his wife Sagarika Bhattacharya had their three-year-old son, pictured, and one-year-old daughter taken away
Norwegian Child Protection Services removed the youngsters from their home in May, 2011, leaving their parents horrified with the outcome of the report.
Father Anurup told Indian television channel NDTV: 'They told me ‘why are you sleeping with the children in the same bed?’.
'(I told them) this is also a purely cultural issue. We never leave the children in another room and say goodnight to them.'

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Anurup added: 'Feeding a child with the hand is normal in Indian tradition and when the mother is feeding with a spoon there could be phases when she was overfeeding the child.
'They said it was force feeding. These are basically cultural differences.'

Authorities complained that Anurup, should not have been sleeping in the same bed as his eldest child.
Their one-year-old daughter is currently staying with a separate family to her brother's temporary carers
Mrs Bhattacharya said: 'My son was sleeping with my husband. They said he should sleep separately from your son.'
The parents have been told that they can only see their children twice a year, for an hour during each visit until the kids turn 18 when they will no longer be bound by the current restrictions under current Norwegian law.
Despite the Indian government's intervention, Norwegian officials are refusing to meet the request for any further explanation.

Authorities complained that mother Sagarika should not have been feeding her children with her hands
Norway's Child Protective Service has come under much scrutiny in the past for excessive behaviour in their handling of child cruelty.
Lawyer Svein Kjetil Lode Svendsen said: 'There has been a report in UN in 2005 which criticized Norway for taking too many children in public care.
'The amount was 12,500 children and Norway is a small country.'
With the Bhattacharyas' visas set to expire in March, they have revealed that they will be forced to stay against their will until the return of their infants.

Mullapperiyar Turning to be a Mass Grave???

This is a grave situation demanding round the clock vigilence and prep on a wartime-basis. Millions of lives are hanging in the balance; still the matter is kept postponed and the multitudinous voice hushed. Procrastination is of little help any more. If the state leaders- ruling and opposition- don't have the political will, call C.K. Janu for our aid; she, for sure, has the ghuts to rescue the state of Kerala and its people in an emergency like this...or ask Hazare to intervene for us.

Thanking you,

Adv. Alex Abraham Odikandathil

See for yourself:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aLJlbCkhek4&feature=related

Experts predict:

Organized religion is driven towards extinction.

This has to happen in at least nine countries – Ireland, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Netherlands, Austria, Czech Republic, Finland and Switzerland. All organized religions will vanish eventually from nine western-style democracies, a team of mathematicians predict in a paper based on census data stretching back to a hundred years.
They can’t make a prediction about the United States because the U.S. census doesn’t ask about religion, lead author Daniel Abrams said. But nine other countries provide enough data for detailed mathematical modeling, he asserted. “If you look at the available data, ‘unaffiliated’ is the fastest-growing group" in those countries, he remarked. “We start with two big assumptions based on sociology,” he explained.
The first is that it’s more attractive to be part of the majority than the minority, so as religious affiliation declines, it becomes more popular not to be a churchgoer than to be one, he said – what Abrams calls the majority effect. “People are more likely to switch to groups with more members. Social networks will have a powerful influence, he said. “Just a few connections to people who are (religiously) unaffiliated is enough to drive the effect,” he added.
The other assumption underlying the prediction is that there are social, economic and political advantages in being unaffiliated with a religion in the countries where it’s in decline – what Abrams calls the utility effect.“The utility of being unaffiliated seems to be higher than affiliated in western democracies,” he said. Abrams and his co-authors are not passing any judgment on religion, he’s quick to say – they’re just modeling a prediction based on trends. “We’re not trying to make any commentary about religion or whether people should be religious or not,” he explained.
" I became interested in this because I saw survey data results for the U.S. and was surprised by how large the unaffiliated group was,” he said, referring to a number of studies done by universities and think tanks on trends in religion. Studies suggest that “unaffiliated” is the fastest-growing religious group in the United States, with about 15% of the population falling into a category experts call the “nones.” They’re not necessarily atheists or non-believers, experts say, just people who do not associate themselves with a particular religion or house of worship at the time of the survey.
Abrams had done an earlier study looking into the extinction of languages spoken by small numbers of people. When he saw the religion data, his co-author “Richard Wiener suggested we try to apply a similar technique to religious affiliation,” Abrams said. The paper, by Abrams, Wiener and Haley A. Yaple, is called “A mathematical model of social group competition with application to the growth of religious non-affiliation.” They presented it this week at the Dallas meeting of the American Physical Society.
Only the Czech Republic already has a majority of people who are unaffiliated with religion, but the Netherlands, for example, will go from about 40% unaffiliated today to more than 70% by 2050, they expect. Even deeply Catholic Ireland will see religion die out, the model predicts. “They’ve gone from 0.04% unaffiliated in 1961 to 4.2% in 2006, our most recent data point,” Abrams says. He admits that the increase in Muslim immigration to Europe may throw off the model, but he thinks the trend is robust enough to withstand some challenges.
“Netherlands data goes back to 1860,” he pointed out. “Every single data that we were able to find shows that people are moving from the affiliated to unaffiliated. I can’t imagine that will change, but that’s personal opinion, not what the data shows.” But Barry Kosmin, a demographer of religion at Trinity College in Connecticut, is doubtful. “Religion relies on human beings. They aren’t rational or predictable according to the laws of physics. Religious fervor waxes and wanes in unpredictable ways,” he said. “The Jewish tradition that says prophecy is for fools and children is probably wise,” he added.
And Abrams, Wiener and Yaple are not the first to predict the end of religion. Peter Berger, a former president of the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion, has said, “People will become so bored with what religious groups have to offer that they will look elsewhere.” He said Protestantism “has reached the strange state of self-liquidation,” that Catholicism was in severe crisis, and anticipated that “religions are likely to survive in small enclaves and pockets” in the United States. He made those predictions in February 1968.

To share; to give

I remember how fascinated I was when I read about the Dead Sea for the first time. As you may probably recall, the Dead Sea is really a lake and not a sea at all.

Its so high in salt content that the human body can float easily in/on it. You can almost lie down on its waters and read a book! The salt content in the Dead Sea is as high as 35% - almost ten times the usual ocean water. And all that saltiness has made sure the non- existence of any life in the Dead Sea- no fish, no vegetation, no sea animals: nothing lives in the Dead Sea.

And hence the name, Dead Sea.

While the Dead Sea has remained etched in my memory, I don't seem to recall reading about the Sea of Galilee in my younger days. So when I heard about the Sea of Galilee and the Dead Sea and the tale of the two seas... wait a minute... I was intrigued.
It turns out that the Sea of Galilee is just north of the Dead Sea. Both the Sea of Galilee and the Dead Sea intake water from River Jordan. Yet they are very, very different.

Unlike the Dead Sea, the Sea of Galilee is pretty, resplendent with rich, colorful marine life. There are lots of plants... lots of fish too. In fact, the sea of Galilee is home to over twenty different species of fishes.

Same region; same source of water : yet while one sea is vigorous with life, the other is dead- but why?

Here, apparently, is the reason. The River Jordan flows into the Sea of Galilee and then flows out. The water simply passes through the Sea of Galilee in, then out - and that keeps the sea healthy and vibrant, teeming with marine life.

But the Dead Sea is far below the mean sea level, that it has no outlet. The water flows in from the River Jordan but does not flow out. There are no outlet streams. It is estimated that over a million tons of water evaporate from the Dead Sea on any given day. Leaving it salty and too full of minerals- unfit for any marine life.

Let me repeat!
The Dead Sea takes water from the River Jordan, and holds it. It does not give out.
And the result?
No life springs forth.

Just think about it.
Life is not just about getting. Its also about giving. We all need to be like the Sea of Galilee.

We are fortunate in having wealth, knowledge, love and respect. But if we don't learn to give, we would all end up like the Dead Sea. Love and respect, wealth and knowledge- all could evaporate, like the water in the Dead Sea.

If we maintain the dead sea mentality of merely taking in more everything... the result can be disastrous. Its a good idea to make sure that in the sea of your own life, you create outlets... not one but many. Give vent to love, respect and wealth along with your other intense feelings... its capable of cooling you down.
Make sure you don't just get, you give too.
And may you open the floodgates to happiness.

Enjoy your week-end,
Love,
Prof. Dr. Alex Abraham Odikandathil

Share; give.
Experience life.
Experience the magic!