Is Pastafarianism real?

Dear Isabel,

Is the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster a real religion, or is it a joke?

Hungry for Answers

Dear Hungry,

The answer to your question is yes.

The first mention of the Flying Spaghetti Monster was made by a man named Bobby Henderson in a letter responding to the Kansas Board of Education’s 2006 movement toward allowing the theory of intelligent design to be taught in science classes as an alternative to evolution. A little background: intelligent design suggests that the best explanation for the existence and forms of life on earth is that they were created by an intelligent being. As a statement of faith, there is nothing wrong with it. However, science classes deal with evidence and facts that can be proven or disproven, not faith. If intelligent design is a scientific theory, it needs to have supporting evidence.

That’s a dry explanation, I’m afraid. Henderson was much cleverer, and funnier. He wrote to the Kansas Board of Education that if the state’s schools were going to teach intelligent design, they needed to teach not just one theory but a variety of theories of intelligent design. He said that he believed that the world was created by the Flying Spaghetti Monster, and he summoned “evidence” that sounds familiar to those who know U.S. fundamentalist Christianity: there are millions of believers (they are secretive, he said, but they exist); they have texts describing how the FSM created us and everything else; and any scientific tests that seem to disprove the existence and power of the FSM are unreliable, because the FSM himself interferes with the tests and renders them invalid.

The “theory” that some wanted Kansas schools to teach was of course the theory that the God described in the Bible created the world and its life forms, and Henderson was spoofing that theory in a very serious joke. He wasn’t criticizing religion or Christianity as such, but pointing out that they are not science and that their “theories,” being untestable and neither provable nor disprovable, aren’t what we teach in science classrooms. He was making a reductio ad absurdum, taking an argument to its logical conclusion in order to show its absurdity: “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 (Pastafarianism), and one third time for logical conjecture based on overwhelming observable evidence.”

At that point, I wouldn’t have said the Church of the FSM / Pastafarianism was a religion. It was a pointed joke about the ridiculousness (and danger) of trying to replace science with religion.

Since then, however, it has taken on some of the characteristics of a religion. It has its own lingo (Pastafarianism; ending prayers with “Ra-men”). People wear clothing and jewelry bearing its emblems. Fans (followers?) of the FSM gather online and come to know each other well, with the affection, squabbles, and mutual support one expects in a religious community. So maybe the irony is that it has become a religion of sorts after all: a religion whose adherents deeply respect the scientific method, but although that may be unusual in the world of religion, it isn’t unique or disqualifying.

There’s lots of other interesting stuff about Pastafarianism, such as its challenges to restrictions on freedom of religion and its theories about pirates, but this response is long enough, so I’ll leave it for another time.

Wishing you well,

Isabel