And now for something completely different

POSTED BY: SignyM
UPDATED: Sunday, November 25, 2007 19:14
VIEWED: 15117
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SIGNYM

Friday, November 16, 2007 5:14 PM

ZOUNDS!

Religious scholars mull Flying Spaghetti Monster

Quote:
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.

... An Oregon State physics graduate named Bobby Henderson stepped into the debate by sending a letter to the Kansas School Board. With tongue in cheek, he purported to speak for 10 million followers of a being called the Flying Spaghetti Monster -- and demanded equal time for their views.

"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," Henderson wrote. As for scientific evidence to the contrary, "what 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."

www.cnn.com/2007/LIVING/personal/11/16/flying.spaghettimonster.ap/inde
x.html

You know me: I think one can prove the existance of the Flying Spaghetti Monster about as well as the Judeo Xtian one. But it'll be interesting to see what religious scholars make of this.

---------------------------------
Always look upstream.

LEADB

Friday, November 16, 2007 11:22 PM

I am Flying Spaghetti Monster agnostic.

SIGNYM

Friday, November 16, 2007 11:23 PM

I'm equivocal about Zeus myself. Some people have called me an Azeusist, but I think that's going too far!

---------------------------------
Always look upstream.

STORYMARK

Saturday, November 17, 2007 12:37 AM

I wonder, what does a fundamentalist Spaghetti Monster follower look like?

"I thoroughly disapprove of duels. If a man should challenge me, I would take him kindly and forgivingly by the hand and lead him to a quiet place and kill him."

FREDGIBLET

Saturday, November 17, 2007 1:00 AM

Slobbering drunk and dressed like a pirate at a strip bar.

GEEZER

Saturday, November 17, 2007 3:27 AM

Were I forced to choose a deity, FSM would be right up there.

"Keep the Shiny side up"

ANTHONYT

Saturday, November 17, 2007 9:32 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by fredgiblet:
Slobbering drunk and dressed like a pirate at a strip bar.

Mmm... I wish I could meet a female adherent of this religion.

--Anthony

"Liberty must not be purchased at the cost of Humanity." --Captain Robert Henner

ANTIMASON

Sunday, November 18, 2007 3:40 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by SignyM:

You know me: I think one can prove the existance of the Flying Spaghetti Monster about as well as the Judeo Xtian one. But it'll be interesting to see what religious scholars make of this.

well, although ive been gone awhile.. its nice to see that a faith in God will still come under attack regularly. my question is SIg.. you arent referring to Jesus are you? history has thoroughly and legitimately established, at the very least, his existence. we can debate about the authenticity of his accounts... but for the sake of argument, lets allow recorded history to speak for itself. as far as i know.. spaghetti monster-ism, or anything even comically tangibly related, has come nowhere near as close to changing the face of an entire region(or the world), or forever creating a new philosophy disseminating mans relationship to creation, and thereby its CREATOR. considering our form of constitutional liberty and divine providence is based on judeo-christian theological teachings, it baffles me that so many of you can refer so contemptuously to the bible and its accounts. maybe i should instead be conjuring up unfounded theoretical concepts pertaining to proteins, and their ability to effectively blue-print and design fully functional biological systems from scratch(as the colleges are teaching); perhaps that may improve my perception of reality?

LEADB

Sunday, November 18, 2007 4:24 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by antimason:
... maybe i should instead be conjuring up unfounded theoretical concepts pertaining to proteins, and their ability to effectively blue-print and design fully functional biological systems from scratch(as the colleges are teaching); perhaps that may improve my perception of reality?

Hey Anti, welcome back; hope life has been treating you fairly.

As you know, you are 'selling' to a pretty tough crowd here. You reference historical precedent, etc. You may not have 'read back' some of the more recent appends, but SixString is not even willing to grant validity to any historical text beyond the range of his cognizant perception; and then only accepts what he can verify. This covers anything, not just religion; which makes it difficult for me to know how to comment to some of his observations. Personally, I -don't- know how to deal with that.

I know Sig can and will speak for himself; so just to level set.

Personally, I have no doubt as to Jesus' existence as a human, and as a 'radical' philosopher of his time. And by radical, I mean nothing more than someone whose thoughts were coming up against a status quo; and a status quo I believe needed a radical 'bump in the head.'

I know I quipped earlier I was a FSM agnostic; and I won't say I lied, but I was kidding. In all seriousness I'm FSM atheistic (technically, not the right word; but I'm sure you will get the drift).

One thing I do not like about FSM as an educational tool is it goes 'too far' the other way. Clearly FSM is a strawman constructed in whole for the purpose of making a point. Unfortunately, unless one is careful, one can actually cause an impressionable person to 'shut down' from the opposite perspective, and give no credence to the historical Jesus... or the historical Ghandi or the historical Buddha.

Fact: I will never learn an important life lesson from the 'historical' FSM (perhaps from it's 'adherents' but not from FSM).

Fact: I have learned important life lessons from each of the historical figures I listed above.

A phrase that comes to mind is "Do not throw the baby out with the bath water."

Edit: (sorry, forgot the 'original goal' of my post... picking up.)

Having said that, I believe you would actually weaken your position and play exactly into the fallacious reasoning of the FSM 'advocates' if you start deliberately pushing out 'unfounded theoretical concepts.' The problem is we can probably scientifically disprove such positions; thus by association it weakens your religious arguments. I would suggest you take a different tack.

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ANTIMASON

Sunday, November 18, 2007 4:42 PM

Quote:
Leadb-
Hey Anti, welcome back; hope life has been treating you fairly.

hey thanks Lead; i hope the same for you. i have been quite busy lately, so i appreciate the acknowledgement of my absence

Quote:
Personally, I have no doubt as to Jesus' existence as a human, and as a 'radical' philosopher of his time.

is that not the least we could do? some around here would have us believe that we are without a shred of factual basis. maybe the presence of God himself cannot be proven, but the actual accounts of Israel(not Israel "of the flesh", the artificial nation, but Gods true believers), and the fruition of his message is there for all to see, having truly stood the test of time. to try and make the comparison to an imaginable, historically unfounded spaghetti monster has got to be the definition of intellectual dishonosty

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