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