THE 2004 TSUNAMI DISASTER
BY THE
"OMNISCIENT, OMNIPOTENT, DIVINE" GEO-THEOLOGIST?
One would expect Sai devotees to turn to their
know-all guru and God for illumination as to the causes of the undersea
earthquake and consequent tsunami calamities. What would they find?
Sai Baba in the media - Year 2005 (http://web.archive.org/web/20060519042156/http://www.saibabalinks.org/media/2005/saibabainthemedia_2005.htmJanuary 15, 2005)
Shun hatred: Sai Baba
Deccan Chronicle, India
Satya Sai Baba of Puttaparthi said on Saturday that natural calamities like tsunami should not be treated as punishment from the God. ...
So it is all the fault of 'man', not least 'scientists' seeking 'unrestricted enjoyment'. However, since
such major earthquake calamities took place for millions of years before
and during humanity's emergence and are known to be caused by the regular
releases through aeons of vast pressures built up in the gradually-moving
continental tectonic plates, Sai Baba's connection to "man's conduct"
it is really a tough conundrum to solve! This kind of talk may satisfy (and
misinform) poor peasants or cringing servitors, but no one with a smattering
of education can rationalise this away. Click
here to see 'Stark Effects of a Seismic Shift' by Ian Sample, 'The Guardian's
science correspondent.
But wait, could it have been a wrong translation or misquote by Sai Baba's
translator/editor at the time, V.K. Narasimhan? Definitely not, for I often
saw Narasimhan working on translations of Baba's Telugu and Sanskrit and
he explained his process in detail. He was very thorough and generally very
accurate. However, he also told me of numerous things he he omitted and
modified to suppress the worst of Sai Baba's mistakes, confusions of facts
and theoretical absurdities when translating. He was worried about his reputation
if he were found out. This can now be told since poor old Narasimhan died
in 2000.
Just to show that Sai Baba really meant what he said, consider his following
statement about one year later:-
The kind of conduct, to which Sai Baba attributes all the ills of the world, is "spiritual lapses". How spiritual lapses cause Nature to cause calamities is what Sai Baba cannot explain. That the earth loses its physical balance (too much weight on one side!) is presumably also a result of 'spiritual lapses'? ("Only He knows!"). He is as ignorant of plate techtonics and the shifting continents as he is of incredibly accurate modern measurement techniques of gravity aided by sattelite. He can tell of no observable or other precise connecting links which anyone can believe in (except perhaps Indra worshippers and the like). It is all postulation and arises from the primitive pre-scientific misunderstanding of causes of man's afflictions, whether it be illnesses like leprosy, or otherwise avoidable accidents, or anything the empirical causes of which were unknown to our relatively very ignorant and superstitious forefathers and the many and various faulty 'religious tenets' they have handed down to us.
Still uncertain whether Sai Baba can be so ignorant, vague and pompously absurd? Try the following for size then:-
Such a gifted account of how droughts and floods occur! This super-simplistic distortion of the idea of ecological balance would not even be accepted by elementary school students nowadays. One could forgive Sathya Sai Baba his profound ignorance of undisputable facts and lack of standard education were it not for the arrogant and all-knowing manner with which he uses these falsehoods to try to impress his listeners and even to cow people into submission to his 'spiritual teaching'. He has also pointed out that "the Lord" sets examinations! See how he justifies calamities....
Sathya Sai Baba was the victim of a vague report of an earthquake that was to hit Puttaparthi, causing people to flee. See Earthquake Alarm in Puttaparthi