It’s all started with an Open Letter To Kansas School Board, sent by a 24-year-old Organ State University graduate, Bobby Henderson, about the Flying Spaghetti Monster (FSM). In the letter, Henderson professed his faith that the world is actually created by a supernatural monster, who is accidently looks like a mass of noodles and meatball. To hide his own existence, he changed the result of every measurement in scientific experiments with his “Noodly Appendage”. And no one have noticed that is because the FSM is invisible and able to pass everything without noticed (Henderson, 2005). In this way, when human scientists tried to measure the age of earth, the amount of decayed Carbon-14 in the artifact is modified by FSM in the scientist back. Also, as the graph below suggests, the global warming is caused by the decrease number of pirates.
The reason Henderson describing such odd fact about a monster made of spaghetti is a satire to the intention of Kansas School to add Intelligent Design (ID) as part of the class context about the origin of life. As Henderson (2005) said: “I think we can all look forward to the time when these three theories (FSM, ID, and Darwin’s evolution theory) 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.”
After the letter was published in 2015, the Church of FSM came into mainstream and educed an energetic discussion in the internet. Many readers send their scoff, saying not only the belief of FSM is ridiculous, even the Evolution Theory is questionable because no one could provide any empirical evidence to prove the credibility of the two. As a response to this challenge in the same way, Boing Boing announced a $250,000 prize to any individual who could provide empirical evidence proving that Jesus is not the son of the Flying Spaghetti Monster (Jurdin, 2005).
Through the hilarious story of FSM, we can see how it intentionally uses some common logic and cognitive mistakes that people easy to make. It seems tend to mock some religious system who built on the basis of self-contradictive fallacies by mimicking the trick they like to use. First of all, the theory is not satisfied the standard for a good theory in many ways. It’s not a falsifiable belief, for the FSM cannot be detected by human eyes, in this way no one could provide any concrete evidence to prove it is not exit. It’s not follow the right logic. The precondition of every suggests it made is based on the fact that FSM made the world. Also, it qualified several characteristics as a pseudoscience. Take their hypothesis on the relation between global warming and the shrink on the number of pirates for example, it uses the science words and method, but lacks peer reviews and rely on not comprehensively data (Ruscio, 2002). Besides, it’s impossible to prove a negative. In this case, it’s hard to list any evidence against the existence of FSM, because there not a way to measure any of its impact or trace.
However, although FSM is made of bunch seemingly convincing statements, many Pastafarianisms (believers of FSM) don’t really fall into the concept traps. They just attracted by FSM with its message of “ending oppression, fighting bigotry, and consuming pasta” (Andrew, 2017). In other words, people just gather and propagandize the doctrine of FSM to against the unordinary believes which trying to pretend as science or truth and passing that uncertified knowledge to kids in school, just like the Intelligent Design Theory. It is a sarcasm like the Russell’s Teapot and calling the attention for the possible cognitive mistakes in today’s worlds, with an adorable and ridiculous story about a monster of pasta and meatball.
Reference:
Andrew, R. (2017). INSIDE THE CHURCH OF THE FLYING SPAGHETTI MONSTER.
Retrieved from: https://www.saveur.com/pastafarians-church-flying-spaghetti-monster
Henderson, B. (2005). Open Letter To Kansas School Board. Retrieved from:
https://web.archive.org/web/20070407182624/http://www.venganza.org/about/open-letter/
Ruscio, J. (2002). Clear thinking with psychology: Separating sense from nonsense. Belmont,
CA: Brooks/Cole-Thomson Learning.
Jurdin, X. (2005). Boing Boing’s $250,000 Intelligent Design challenge (UPDATED: $1
million). Retrieved from: https://boingboing.net/2005/08/19/boing-boings-250000.html
This story is so unfortunately hilarious to me, it very much reminds me of Carl Sagan’s dragon that he keeps in his garage. The fact that people will create religions and groups to support anything they want is incredibly interesting, I guess that’s why we are studying why people have these beliefs! Although, the consuming pasta part of their message does sound quite tasty.
The whole Flying Spaghetti Monster thing has always been one of my favorite memes. Like, this is such an amazing example of scientists being petty, and I just think it’s perfect. But honestly, couldn’t you see our professor (Trish) doing something like this just to prove a point?
I think it is amazing that this idea has now turned into a religion, aka Pastafarianism. I remember being bored in high school one time and googling this. Apparently for $20 you can become an ordained minister in the church.
I can remember people talking about the Flying Spaghetti Monster when I was in high school and my friends and I would laugh about how ridiculous it was. Read your article I was wondering if Bobby Henderson created this religion to prove a point, or because he actually believed in it. Was he just trying to show how it is not falsifiable, much like all other religions?
My roommate told me about Pastafarianism a couple years ago. I wonder where Bobby Henderson got the idea of the Flying Spaghetti Monster and if he was on drugs when it happened. I googled this belief/religion and believers deem it to be a legitimate religion that is not satirical, which is disappointing because I totally would have joined (pasta is my favorite food).
Hello!
This is an interesting topic for your blog post! I have never heard of this before but I found it funny that part of being a believer is consuming pasta! I think this is just a silly concept someone came up with and it took off. I read some of the other comments and apparently you can become a minister of the church? Very funny! I love pasta so maybe I would like to join. Very interesting and comical choice of extraordinary belief!!
Are their legitimately people who are devoted to following the Flying Spaghetti Monster despite its satirical birth? I tried doing a little research to discover more, but the majority of the results were rather tongue and cheek. I honestly would not be surprised if there were indeed a group of zealous followers; although, to me, the idea and even the reasoning of its creation seems outlandishly absurd.
I find it kind of interesting how we state that we should be respectful to every religion but a lot of people take FSM as a joke. In a sense, it makes sense because it kind of had a satirical birth. However, its kinda unclear if Henderson actually believed in FSM or he did it to prove a point to stand against the issues you listed in your post. Overall, it was very interesting and its hard to tell if people actually follow this religion seriously since they added the eating past bit. Almost make it seem like the are making fun of FSM.
I have never actually heard of this story, but this is one of the most ridiculous claims I have ever heard. A monster in the form of spaghetti and meatballs? That seems far0fetched and not exactly scary. Claims like these are made by someone of higher education and people choose to believe it because it’s different and out of the ordinary.