The Flying Spaghetti Monster – Not in Kansas Anymore

Of course it is one of the most quoted lines from any movie – “Toto, I’ve a feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore.”  In fact, it is quite useful in everyday life (the others from the movie being somewhat less useful – “Oh! What a world! What a world!” and “Where do you want to be oiled first?” for example).  But the line about Kansas is useful now.  The Flying Spaghetti Monster, central in a dispute in Kansas over two years ago, is coming to San Diego.  We can hardly wait.

 

The Kansas dispute, regarding the Kansas School Board attempting to mandate the teaching of Intelligent Design and declaring evolution to be a whimsical theory with no real evidence supporting it, was covered in these pages at the time, and on August 28, 2005 in this item dealing specifically with the Flying Spaghetti Monster (also known as the Spaghedeity).  We’re dealing with a parody religion (perhaps) called The Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster and with its unified system of beliefs – “Pastafarianism.”

 

The religion was founded in 2005 by an Oregon State physics graduate, Bobby Henderson, to protest the decision by the Kansas State Board of Education to require the teaching of intelligent design as an alternative to biological evolution.  He sent an open letter to the school board saying he himself believed in a supernatural creator, but he knew it was the Flying Spaghetti Monster – no deep eyes, no beard, to white robe, no halo – just spaghetti and meatballs.  And he made what he said was a reasonable demand – he called for the “Pastafarian” theory of creation to be taught in science classrooms –

 

I think we can all look forward to the time when these three theories are given equal time in our science classrooms across the country, and eventually the world; One third time for Intelligent Design, one third time for Flying Spaghetti Monsterism, and one third time for logical conjecture based on overwhelming observable evidence.

 

Fair is fair after all.

 

And one can see this is a modern version of Russell’s famous teapot.  Well, maybe that teapot isn’t famous, but Bertrand Russell put it this way –

 

If I were to suggest that between the Earth and Mars there is a china teapot revolving about the sun in an elliptical orbit, nobody would be able to disprove my assertion provided I were careful to add that the teapot is too small to be revealed even by our most powerful telescopes. But if I were to go on to say that, since my assertion cannot be disproved, it is an intolerable presumption on the part of human reason to doubt it, I should rightly be thought to be talking nonsense. If, however, the existence of such a teapot were affirmed in ancient books, taught as the sacred truth every Sunday, and instilled into the minds of children at school, hesitation to believe in its existence would become a mark of eccentricity and entitle the doubter to the attentions of the psychiatrist in an enlightened age or of the Inquisitor in an earlier time.

 

In his 2003 book A Devil’s Chaplain, Richard Dawkins riffed on that –

 

The reason organized religion merits outright hostility is that, unlike belief in Russell’s teapot, religion is powerful, influential, tax-exempt and systematically passed on to children too young to defend themselves. Children are not compelled to spend their formative years memorizing loony books about teapots. Government-subsidized schools don’t exclude children whose parents prefer the wrong shape of teapot. Teapot-believers don’t stone teapot-unbelievers, teapot-apostates, teapot-heretics and teapot-blasphemers to death. Mothers don’t warn their sons off marrying teapot-shiksas whose parents believe in three teapots rather than one. People who put the milk in first don’t kneecap those who put the tea in first.

 

Indeed.  But Henderson was not out to point out the endless silliness and misery religion has given us – he was just proposing a series of the beliefs in reaction to the common arguments by the Intelligent Design enthusiasts.  The canonical beliefs of Flying Spaghetti Monsterism are set forth the Open Letter To Kansas School Board and the Gospel of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, which you can find at Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster where Henderson’s is described as a prophet. (The links sometimes work, and sometimes don’t.)  There’s no burning bush that talks, no gold tablets in a hillside in Palmyra, New York.  You just have to believe.  Prophets are often without honor in the own land.

 

What do you have to believe?  The central belief is that there is an invisible and undetectable Flying Spaghetti Monster, and this Flying Spaghetti Monster created the entire universe “after drinking heavily.”  As for evolution, all evidence for evolution was planted by the Flying Spaghetti Monster, in an effort to test Pastafarians’ faith – just like the Kansas School Board was arguing, with the wrong God.  You see, when scientific measurements like radiocarbon dating are made the Flying Spaghetti Monster “is there changing the results with His Noodly Appendage.”  It’s the same argument the creationists and the ID folks use, after all.

 

Since Kansas things have evolved.  We get more detail.  The Pastafarian belief about heaven is that it is a fine place – it contains beer volcanoes and a stripper factory, while hell is pretty much the same, except that the beer is stale and the strippers have VD.  And the religious text of the Pastafarian religion is called the Loose Canon (ouch!) and in place of the Ten Commandments, it contains the Eight I’d Really Rather You Didn’ts.  And all prayers end in “Ramen” not “Amen.”

 

And you should know Pastafarians celebrate “International Talk Like a Pirate Day” on the 19th of September each and every year.  That has to do with global warming.

 

The argument is that “global warming, earthquakes, hurricanes, and other natural disasters are a direct effect of the shrinking numbers of pirates since the 1800s.”  You say correlation does not equal causation?  Oh, ye of little faith!  The letter to the school board has charts and tables – as the number of pirates decreased global temperatures increased.  QED.  According to the Pastafarian belief system, pirates are “absolute divine beings” and the original Pastafarians – and their image as “thieves and outcasts” is misinformation spread by Christian theologians in the Middle Ages and Hare Krishnas.  You say complexity we have not yet figured out shows intelligent design by a divine being?  These folks say the disappearance of “the fun-loving buccaneers from history” and the subsequent increase in global temperatures proves those pirates were the good guys – just look at the charts.

 

So what makes sense?  See this – Niklas Jansson’s adaptation of Michelangelo’s The Creation of Adam showing the Flying Spaghetti Monster in its typical guise as a clump of tangled spaghetti with two eyestalks, two meatballs, and many “noodly appendages.”  One may be valid as the other.  Take your choice.

 

But to heck with Kansas – the Flying Spaghetti Monster is coming to San Diego.  The Associated Press, in an item from Friday, November 16, says so –

 

When some of the world’s leading religious scholars gather in San Diego this weekend, pasta will be on the intellectual menu. They’ll be talking about a satirical pseudo-deity called the Flying Spaghetti Monster, whose growing pop culture fame gets laughs but also raises serious questions about the essence of religion.

 

The appearance of the Flying Spaghetti Monster on the agenda of the American Academy of Religion’s annual meeting gives a kind of scholarly imprimatur to a phenomenon that first emerged in 2005, during the debate in Kansas over whether intelligent design should be taught in public school sciences classes.

 

So, supporters of intelligent design hold that the order and complexity of the universe is so great that science alone cannot explain it and the critics see that as faith masquerading as science – as Henderson first put it, “We have evidence that a Flying Spaghetti Monster created the universe. None of us, of course, were around to see it, but we have written accounts of it.”  In short, there’s no more scientific basis for intelligent design than there is for the idea an omniscient creature made of pasta created the universe.

 

The Kansas School Board gave up, but the way.  But pasta is forever, and three young scholars at the University of Florida who study religion in popular culture decided now was the time, and the American Academy of Religion’s annual meeting was this place.  It was time to nail the pasta to the door.  They got to talking, and eventually managed to get a panel on this matter on the agenda at one of their field’s most prestigious gatherings.  So we get this – “Evolutionary Controversy and a Side of Pasta: The Flying Spaghetti Monster and the Subversive Function of Religious Parody.”

 

Samuel Snyder, one of the three Florida graduate students who will give talks at the meeting next Monday, along with Alyssa Beall of Syracuse University, explains it this way – “For a lot of people they’re just sort of fun responses to religion, or fun responses to organized religion. But I think it raises real questions about how people approach religion in their lives.”

 

So, if you’re in San Diego and can talk your way in, don’t miss Snyder’s specific talk – “Holy Pasta and Authentic Sauce: The Flying Spaghetti Monster’s Messy Implications for Theorizing Religion.”  Gavin Van Horn offers this – “Noodling around with Religion: Carnival Play, Monstrous Humor, and the Noodly Master.”

 

Is it all a joke?  The AP offers this –

Indeed, the tale of the Flying Spaghetti Monster and its followers cuts to the heart of the one of the thorniest questions in religious studies: What defines a religion?

 

Does it require a genuine theological belief? Or simply a set of rituals and a community joining together as a way of signaling their cultural alliances to others?

 

In short, is an anti-religion like Flying Spaghetti Monsterism actually a religion?

 

Yeah, it probably is.  It’ll do.  It has all the necessary and sufficient conditions, doesn’t it?

 

And that led to this –

 

Joining them on the panel will be David Chidester, a prominent and controversial academic at the University of Cape Town in South Africa who is interested in precisely such questions. He has urged scholars looking for insights into the place of religion in culture and psychology to explore a wider range of human activities. Examples include cheering for sports teams, joining Tupperware groups and the growing phenomenon of Internet-based religions. His 2005 book “Authentic Fakes: Religion and American Popular Culture,” prompted wide debate about how far into popular culture religious studies scholars should venture.

 

Tupperware groups?  People will worship anything.

 

And we find out that Lucas Johnston, the third Florida student, argues the Flying Spaghetti Monsterism “exhibits at least some of the traits of a traditional religion – including, perhaps, that deep human need to feel like there’s something bigger than oneself out there.”

 

He recognized the point when his neighbor, a militant atheist who sports a pro-Darwin bumper sticker on her car, tried recently to start her car on a dying battery.

 

As she turned the key, she murmured under her breath: “Come on Spaghetti Monster!”

 

QED – there is something bigger out there.  Raman.

 

It should be noted that the site BoingBoing back in 2005 made this offer – “We are willing to pay any individual $250,000 if they can produce empirical evidence which proves that Jesus is not the son of the Flying Spaghetti Monster.”

 

They still have their money, and people still make comments on their site –

 

I am offended that Pastafarianism is being called a parody! We might as well call all religions parodies in that case!

 

“Toto, I’ve a feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore.”