Flying Spaghetti Monster

The Flying Spaghetti Monster or FSM is a deity with followers of the known as Pastafarians (a term modeled after "Rastafarians"), the "religion" is called Pastafarianism.

History
The Flying Spaghetti Monster either revealed itself to, or was simply invented by, Bobby Henderson as a parody of Intelligent design, similar to the Invisible Pink Unicorn. The FSM first came to public notice when Henderson wrote an open letter to the Kansas School Board, which was considering adding Intelligent Design to the curriculum, arguing for the inclusion of the FSM by echoing many of the arguments used by Intelligent Design advocates-.

Although the FSM is particularly absurd, and there is no evidence for its existence, the same can be said of God and of the "Designer" of Intelligent Design (ID). Thus, Henderson argues, if a school district chooses to teach ID in the classroom, it ought to teach about the Flying Spaghetti Monster as well so that students can hear all viewpoints and make up their own minds.

The deity
The Flying Spaghetti Monster is depicted as a knot of spaghetti, flanked by two meatballs, with eyes on stalks. Such a depiction is merely a guess, as the FSM is invisible to all known forms of scientific detection. The FSM is not actually made of spaghetti, but chooses to appear as such, as he really, really likes pasta.

The FSM is said to be capable of altering measurement results to make the world appear older or otherwise different from the way it really is. Thus, a scientist may carbon-date an artifact as being 10,000 years old, but:
 * [W]hat our scientist does not realize is that every time he makes a measurement, the Flying Spaghetti Monster is there changing the results with His Noodly Appendage.

This illustrates the problem of trying to do science without methodological naturalism.

FSM lore includes a creation myth, and a graph showing an inverse relationship between global temperature and the number of pirates in the world, which serves to illustrate the flaw in assuming that just because figures correlate they must be causally connected.

In 2006, Henderson published the first book about the FSM, The Gospel of the Flying Spaghetti Monster. A second, online book, published on the internet by a multitude of authors from around the world called "The Loose Cannon"( The Loose Cannon official site) is the Pastafarian version of the bible (which also parodies the bible).

Pastafarian Beliefs
Pastafarians hold very few beliefs universally, but all followers of the FSM hold that pirates are sacred, and that global warming in linked to the declining number of pirates worldwide (this parodies churches that keep making up correlations and saying they are causation, such as "less people believe in our god, so X is happening!'). Pastafarians also celebrate a holiday called "holiday" around the same time as Christians celebrate christmas, and when and how they celebrate holiday is up to them (pastafarians have thanked the Bush administration and Wal-Mart for helping to promote holiday,giving Bush a little FSM magnet to put on his limo.This parodies the War on Christmas. ). Pastafarians believe that the universe was created by the FSM while drunk, resulting in the imperfections in the universe.Pastafarian heaven has a stripper factory that produces whatever strippers you like, and a beer volcano that produces whatever beverage you like, alcoholic or non-alcoholic.The Pastafarian hell has two levels, the "upper" layer of it being reserved for bad people, where they do manual labour, with a redemption system, where they eat cheap pasta, with poor meat in the sauce. The "Lower" level is reserved for people such as Hitler, where people do the most manual of labour, such as sewage cleaning, again, with a fair redemption system. Most Pastafarian beliefs are parodies of intelligent design, Christianity, or other things of religious significance, or promote common sense, reason and tolerance. The holy day for pastafarians is Friday.

External link

 * Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster
 * Parody Religions