I'm all for people writing in a spirited and presumption-challenging way, but this from Sathnam Sanghera really takes the meringue:
[A] bit of me dies whenever young people say that they want to study philosophy at university. There is a naive view that three years spent pondering questions such as "Why does God allow bad things to happen to good people?" and "Why are we here?" will help you to understand the meaning of life, when the truth is that philosophy is the most whimsical and self indulgent of academic pursuits, raising more questions than answers and too often being an exercise in intellectual showing off for those involved.
That is one piece of philistine ignorance the man should come to be, at the very least, embarrassed by. He doesn't like those particular questions? Then he can exchange them for others. There is no area of human activity or research - ethical, political, natural-scientific, you name it - in which there are not philosophical questions to be asked and answered that are of both interest and importance, and that will engage some goodly proportion of people with enquiring minds. Philosophy doesn't have to be everbody's cup of tea; but it is bound to be somebody's so long as there are human minds and a world - and cups and tea. Furthermore, philosophy doesn't confine itself to asking about the meaning of life (though there's nothing wrong with that question either, for those who want to think about it). It asks about pretty well everything. Philosophy is one of the triumphs of humankind. How can a thoughtful person say something as dumb as what Sanghera says here? There's a question for you.