'Tis the season of faith, but 'tis also the season for realizing that faith is not based on evidence or logic, and wherein, truth is subjective, which is precisely why religion requires faith.
RPK tells us this in his guest column at Free Malaysia Today, in an article titled Standards of evidence.
RPK wrote: Beliefs, in particular religious beliefs, are called faiths — religious faith. The reason they are called religious faiths is because you need to believe based on faith, not based on evidence.
Faith, in a way, can be described as the word to explain lack of evidence. Hence, whenever you fail to prove your beliefs with supporting evidence you classify it under faith. And you can get away with whatever beliefs that lack evidence by calling it faith. It would be considered quite acceptable. [...]
... because faith does not need proof. And I will just have to take your word for it and believe that without question.
And they tell me that slavery has been abolished. Actually religion is slavery.
Joining him on the topic of 'faith' but in a separate article has been Adelyn Yeoh, an undergraduate student in Mount Holyoke College, USA, who also writes for CEKU at http://www.ceku.org. Her article poignantly titled Leaving god informed us:
Faith is the act of believing and religion is the institution through which faith sometimes operates through. Faith can operate without religion. [...]
There were numerous things that did not sit right with me; things that did not seem just or fair, despite what religion claimed. Teachers would often use God as their trump card to get students to do their bidding. [...]
... Religion is used as an additional divisive tool, not just by politicians but also by the average Joe. Overeager evangelical actions carried out by the average person working in the name of faith, despite having good intentions, often upset other parties. The reason for this is often because the evangelist has a presupposed notion of superiority.
... while the tricky Chinese (non Abrahamic) religionists have their even more trickier religions, tap-dancing around the issue of faith, wakakaka.
From the above discussions, I think we have four words to consider in religions (except those tricky Chinese religions), faith, evidence, logic, truth - or indeed, the absence of the latter three.
Whatever, if any blame needs to be apportioned, well, let's blame it on those ancient Egyptians. Note I stated 'ancient' Egyptians, not the current Egyptians who are Arabs. The ancient Egyptians were not Arabs.
An aside, once I had toyed around with a series of posts questioning mainstream biblical narrations, titled 'who was Abrahim?'. I went up to 21 posts but wearied of the amount of reading and cross referencing I had to do, decided to switch to and focus on socio-politics in this blog. But if you like to read them, provided you won't be offended by the liberal discussions of Old Testament biblical characters, you will find all 21 posts filed in Back to Abraham soon! (which I may, that is, return to finish/complete the series)
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| angel stopping Abraham from sacrificing his son Isaac to god alan yeap at Malaysia Today should note this was another case of an angel talking to a prophet and the angel was not even an archangel, wakakaka |
Anyway, why should we blame those ancient Egyptians for the issue of faith versus evidence (proof), logic or truth in religions?
That's because the Hebrews (supposedly the patriarch Abraham) started the Abrahamic religions, with the Hebrews-Israelites-Judeans-Jews inheriting from the ancient Egyptians four things (4 only since we're into stuff of 4 like the above-mentioned faith, evidence, logic, truth), which were:
(a) circumcision - yes, the royalty in ancient Egypt started this, not the Hebrews;
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| I don't like the look of what appears to be a pair of pliers (on right) |
(b) a matriarchal lineage - the Pharaoh's daughter inherits the throne of ancient Egypt which was why the royal brother incestuously married the royal sister in order to keep the kingdom under his rule, as did daddy Pharaoh. Whether they did you-know-what has never been specifically mentioned.
The Hebrews,-Israelites-Judeans-Jews followed/follow the ancient Egyptian system, thus orthodox Judaism practises matrilineal descent for more than 2000 years, where anyone with a Jewish mother has irrevocable Jewish status, regardless of whether mum has converted to another religion. Despite it being under orthodox Judaism, the lineage was obviously more of a racial rather than a religious consideration.
Some reforms occurred in the early 1980's to include patrilineal descent, but by 1986, the Conservative Movement's Rabbinical Assembly rejected patrilineal descent and even warned that any rabbi who does so would be expelled from the Rabbinical Assembly.
Maybe one of the 'lost 10 tribes of Israel' migrated to and took up residence in Negeri Sembilan (or perhaps Padang)? wakakaka.
(c) monotheism - again yes, it was the heretic Pharaoh, Akhenaten (formerly Amenhotep IV) who was the first person to worship only one creator god, way way before the Hebrews knew about YVWH.
Pharaoh Akhenaten was called 'heretic' because in polytheistic ancient Egypt, one was considered a heretic for crazily worshipping only one god, wakakaka;
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| Pharaoh Akhenaten and Queen Nefertiti and daughters praying to their One G-D, Aten |
(d) while the general scholarly position thus far has been that the Hebrew script came from the Phoenicians, some have asserted that it was from the ancient Egyptians, who possessed three types of scripts, namely hieroglyphs, hieratic and demotic. Whichever, the ancient Egyptian script doesn't have vowels which the Hebrew Torah (bible) seems to follow, where a striking example would be the Tetragrammaton YVWH.
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| hieroglyphs |
The story has it that when Moses was instructed by his god to see the Pharaoh, he asked who should he say sent him? His god then revealed his name as Yahweh. But the Jews didn't want to take the name of their god in vain, so they refused to say aloud Yahweh, but instead Adonai (Lord). Subsequently when the Jews introduced vowels into their script, they used those from the Adonai word, a, o and again a, in YVWH, giving them Yahowah (Jehovah). The Torah remains vowel-less.
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| hieratic script |
Thus the Hebraic vowel-less script for god sometimes is seen in English as G-D, probably the work of Hebrew wannabes.
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| demotic script |
... which brings us to my post title of B-D.
Okay lah, I am t'ng k'oui (chong hei), meandering like a lazy willow & bamboo-lined Karnafuli* river across the Plains of Chitchat-tagong (no, not the one in Bangladesh), wakakaka.
* polite mispronunciation, wakakaka
Now, what does B-D stand for or tell us?
Firstly, we may assume that the vowel-less letters has god-like qualities because of their resemblance to the Hebraical G-D. Please have a bit of faith here lah, wakakaka;
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| faith as taught by the church |
Secondly, remember that having faith obviates the need for evidence, proof, logic etc, including the truth, wakakaka;
Thirdly, B-D has assumed a disproportionate significance in the politics of Malaysia right at this moment and we should pay heed to it;
Fourthly (the final of our four thingy's), sceptical kaytee as usual wishes to examine the political evangelism that's promoting the new 'god' B-D, wakakaka.
Okay, let's start off with the D of B-D where D, placed second, is more recent that B.
D = Deepak or Deepak Jaikishan, the carpet
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| Deepak Jaikishan |
Today he is the very epitome of credibility, integrity and reliability and various other '-bilities'.
No, don't blame him, unlike someone wakakaka he didn't reinvent himself. Others have done that for him where Mr Deepak Jaikishan now possesses a fresh sweet smelling persona like a newly washed, rinsed, starched, blued and expertly ironed gleaming white shirt.
He has become the very fount of truth, and if you by any remote chance don't see this, please have a bit of faith lah, wakakaka.
We now come to none other than Mr "Neutral", our dear Mr Americk Singh Sidhu, who has written an article for Malaysiakini titled Only one man stands to gain from Bala's second SD where he means the sole beneficiary of the 2nd SD would be Najib Tun Razak.
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| (l) Americk Singh Sidhu, (r) Sivarasa Rasiah (PKR VP & MP Subang) |
Kaytee being an avid admirer of Mr Americk Singh Sidhu, chiefly for his "neutrality" and civic-consciousness, have written a
I believe Mr Americk Singh Sidhu hasn't written for Malaysiakini before though he most certainly had been interviewed by them in 2009, as per Malaysiakini's article titled Lawyer: Najib 'linked' to Bala's disappearance - and that's why I admire him more than ever, for taking the trouble to write for Malaysiakini on his assessment of who benefits from the 2nd SD, namely Najib Razak, a person he had already suspected in 2009 of been"... somehow linked to the disappearance of P Balasubramaniam."
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| P Balasubramaniam |
But naughty naughty Bala just had to spoil that chilling and mysterious picture of strange disappearance by telling us via Malaysiakini that he had since his 'disappearance' been back to Malaysia a couple of times.
Anyway, Mr Americk Singh Sidhu tells us in his article that 7 paragraphs (No's 8, 25, 28, 49, 50, 51 and 52) of the second SD were intentionally extracted from the first SD and retracted by denial.
'Intentionally'?
Anyway, he stated:
It may be an unfortunate coincidence that each and every paragraph so traversed in the second SD specifically bore reference to Najib. Nothing of all the other personalities mentioned in the first SD was referred to. Only the details relating to Najib were set out in the second SD and retracted.
This, by a very rudimentary analysis, would lead any reasonably minded person to surmise that the personality standing to benefit from this partial second SD retraction must have been the one whose name had been mentioned in the paragraphs referred to above. There is no logical reason why anyone else would have been interested.
This, by a simple process of deduction, indicates that Najib or someone close enough to him, entrusted or vested with an interest to maintain and preserve a favourable public perception of him, must have been instrumental in the organisation of a very rapid attempt to stifle what must have been perceived as a formidable threat to his pending ascension to the position of prime minister.
"It may be an unfortunate coincidence that each and every paragraph so traversed in the second SD specifically bore reference to Najib."
Well, if you go over my post Will 'neutrality' of Mr 'Neutral' be neutralised? you'd find lots and lots and lots of "coincidences", wakakaka. Poor Mr Americk Singh Sidhu, plagued by coincidences.
But alas, kaytee being kaytee, always inquisitive and trying my best to think outside the box, and known for my silly efforts as akuai-lan knia (wakakaka), had previously posted in Who killed Altantuyaa Shaariibuu? the following queries, in particular with focus on the event of the second SD:
Then,
... in stepped Balasubramaniam. Incidentally, if Bala were to die tomorrow, whether by assassination or ‘accident’ or even sickness, who will be the principal suspect?
... in stepped Deepak Jaikisian. Incidentally, if Deepak were to die tomorrow, whether by assassination or ‘accident’ or sickness, who will be the principal suspect?
If Bala submitted a statutory declaration damning a person, and then, within 24 hours withdrew the accusations via a 2nd SD, purported out of fear though he prepared the original SD for 2 months with resolution and courage, who will be the principal suspect?
Would the twin packed SD's be known as the 'deadly double whammy'?
More importantly, will both Bala and Deepak then be safe?
Hmmm, perhaps from the principal suspect, but not necessarily from others who want the principal suspect to emerge as the principal suspect, wakakaka!
Good Lord (no pun intended), bloody kaytee has the unmitigated effrontery to suggest a different take to that by much admired Mr Americk Singh Sidhu, in suggesting the main beneficiary of the 2nd SD might not be Najib, au contraire, because (borrowing Mr Americk Singh Sidhu's erudite words)it would lead any reasonably minded person to surmise thatNajib Razak must be the person who had ordered the 2nd SD, ...
... regardless of the fact that B (= Balasubramaniam) had waxed and waned and then waned and waxed in his courageous resolution to tell the so-called truth ...
... as in his confessed (and understandable) fears when making alleged omissions in the original police report ..... then gathering up (and admired) courage and steeled resolution in the 4 months of drafting the 1st SD ..... then collapsing 24 hours in his courage after the release of the 1st SD (what the ...?) which gifted us with his 2nd SD ..... then working his courage up again to pester the MACC into reopening his case (dei aneh, pordah!) ..... then ..... you fill up the blanks from here, okay? ........
When you punch someone kau kau, the most effective killer strike would be a one-two double punch lah! Pow!
Thus one SD attacking a bloke, then followed immediately by another indirectly attacking same bloke, POW! and POW again! and Najib would have trouble weaselling out of that.
Thus one SD attacking a bloke, then followed immediately by another indirectly attacking same bloke, POW! and POW again! and Najib would have trouble weaselling out of that.
Okay next, in Mr Americk Singh Sidhu's article, he cleared lawyer Arunampalam from drafting the second SD based on Deepak Jaikishan's revelation that "Arunampalam was there basically as a stooge for the person(s) behind these shenanigans."
Hey man, to reiterate, Mr Deepak is the very epitome of credibility, integrity and reliability and various other '-bilities' where he now possesses a fresh sweet smelling persona like a newly washed, rinsed, starched, blued and expertly ironed gleaming white shirt.
B-D, the new G-D of "truth".
B-D, the new G-D of "truth".
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| Maat, Egyptian Goddess of Truth |
But Mr Americk Singh Sidhu dismissed the idea that Mr Cecil Abraham was the mysterious lawyer who drafted it, and urged the Bar Council to move their collective behind and get on with finding that mysterious lawyer?
Once I read somewhere, yes I did chance upon, Mr Americk Singh Sidhu's most eloquent praise of a fellow lawyer (I wonder whether it was Mr Manjeet Singh Dillion?) which was in the most elegant erudite effusive English prose, wow! I had then deemed the words in his praise as so beautiful that I wish I have a friend who would praise me in similar fashion. Sob, well, never mind!
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| Cecil Abraham |
Of course Mr Americk Singh Sidhu would never ever have used such vulgar words as 'behind' - it's just peasant kaytee taking liberties with his blogger's license.
Indeed, as Terence Netto (who himself has a way with words, wakakaka) penned in Malaysiakini's Deepakgate - musings on the law and the lawyerly:
Americk Singh Sidhu, laid it on copiously when he praised fellow legal practitioner Cecil Abraham's integrity which he said was a byword among lawyers in the latter's 40 years of service to the Malaysian Bar.
Americk said he could not conceive that someone of Abraham's vaunted stature would countenance the drawing up of a false statutory declaration such as carpet trader Deepak Jaikishan had indicated was the case with Balasubramaniam's second SD that reversed the sensational avowals contained in his first.
Given the gravity of the contents of his first SD, elements of which shed light on the 2006 murder of the Mongolian woman Altantuya Shaariibuu, there was no taking the matter lightly.
Days have passed since Americk unequivocally vouched for Abraham's probity, but Abraham himself is seemingly unperturbed by the brouhaha, holding his counsel in the face of a hail of imprecations. […]
This silence [by Mr Cecil Abraham] is possibly the choice of one who seems intent on tiptoeing through a frightful thicket, mindful or not of what the poet Dante said about the hottest places in hell being reserved for those who in times of great moral crisis maintain their neutrality (read: silence).
I wonder whether it has been due to Mr Americk Singh Sidhu's admiration of Mr Cecil Abraham's 'vaunted stature' or just an oversight that he didn't opine about Mr Abraham’s elegantsilence as he did so about, among others, Najib Razak’s reticentsilence in his Malaysiakini article Only one man stands to gain from Bala's second SD as follows:
… the circumstances surrounding this whole issue which I believe necessitates an explanation, especially in light of the recent revelations made by Deepak, all of which have yet to be disputed by the individuals named or implicated.
This reticence, unfortunately, only lends credence to these aspersions.
I suppose I can presume he has more ... er ... faith in Mr Cecil Abraham than in Najib Razak.
As I had penned in my concluding paragraph of my post Faith & salvation:
Faith! As my matey John used to tell me when my faith in his promise falters, “kaytee, have faith in me, trust me, after all I’m a lawyer.”
Hah, faith and hallelujah to B-D the new G-D of "truth".
And BTW if you don't like a vowel-less B-D, I'm afraid I can't help you. You have to choose a vowel yourself to insert into the name of the G-D of "truth".
You can do it lah, have faith in yourself, wakakaka.
You can do it lah, have faith in yourself, wakakaka.
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