Good God, y'all.
Sunday, June 13, 2010
While the verdict on City Harvest's iconic pastor is still out on whether funds have been misused, I'm sure it hasn't escaped those who've read the papers that new controversy has emerged over the issue of plaguarism in the Pastor's blog posts, which had previously been compiled into books put on sale.
If you haven't already read the news, here's a link. ST's print edition also noted that there was even a 400-word passage from the same book that had been cleanly copied by the pastor.
Said the pastor in an apology on his webpage, "we could have been more careful to credit any source of inspiration used."
Why 'could'? "Could" happens to be word used when people approached for a request don't particularly want to carry it out, but still want to come off politely. (Yeah, I could...) It is also used if the person who has been approached may be unable to successfully carry it out because of factors beyond his or her control. ( I could do it...) This situation is neither of them.
"More careful"? More like plain 'could have been careful'. Being more careful could have been an instance where the source was wrongly credited. At least then, you can see effort was put in to trace origins.
(He does this again when he says, in another sentence, "...certain entries of the Daily Devotion series, my sources were not properly credited.")
Finally, what is 'inspiration' when things are copied wholesale? Merriam-Webster defines inspiration as "the act of influencing or suggesting opinions", certainly not acting like a secondary school student looking for material chunks from Wikipedia.
There are so many flaws to a feeble excuse in just a thirteen-word sentence.
To make him sound even more like a secondary school student, he apparently also mentioned that "...there was never any intention to give readers the impression that entire contents were written by him", which is like a student of that caliber reasoning "I never said that the paragraphs were mine, I just put my name there at the top left hand corner where it asked for 'name'."
(Btw, if you check out the website, he does just that; 'Kong Hee' in a swirly, glowing letterhead)
The excuse to all of this is written here, "This series was originally meant only for internal circulation among the members of my church. As such, there was an oversight in not quoting the sources of some portions that borrow from the writings of other Christian authors."
I don't see where the "As such" fits in when the 'internal circulation' in question are 33 000 followers whom I assumed look to the Pastor for spiritual and guidance in their lives.
A guest pastor then asks for City Harvest churchgoers to stand by the Pastor once more, saying "Trials could be the best opportunity for a revival in your life." Given his ability to sidetrack the point of contention so neatly, he should consider becoming a politician. Or maybe the church pays better.
Of course, you can clearly see why some City Harvest members still stand up for their Pastor. As the 43 year old follower Justina Choon puts it,
"Its just a lack of citation. He just has to add the citations in future."
Labels: opinion, religion
posted by joseph at 10:46 AM