Posted on 12/13/2007 12:45:57 PM PST by SubGeniusX
E-mails offer Polk school officials a view of the origin of life they say is just as valid as intelligent design.
LAKELAND | The Flying Spaghetti Monster has stretched its noodles to Polk County.
The Flying Spaghetti Monster, or FSM, is a satirical group that pokes fun at intelligent design. It first emerged in 2005 during the debate in Kansas over whether the belief should be taught in science classes.
The group has sent dozens of e-mails to Polk County School Board members demanding that the idea of a Flying Spaghetti Monster creating the world receive classroom equal time with other views. The e-mail campaign began after four of seven board members said in November that they supported teaching intelligent design in addition to evolution.
While the idea that a Flying Spaghetti Monster created the world lacks backing in the scientific community, the point, according to those promoting the satire, is that neither does intelligent design.
FSM dates to 2005 when Oregon State University physics graduate Bobby Henderson sent a letter to the Kansas School Board saying "there are multiple theories of intelligent design."
"I and many others around the world are of the strong belief that the universe was created by a Flying Spaghetti Monster," Henderson wrote.
"It was He who created all that we see and all that we feel. We feel strongly that the overwhelming scientific evidence pointing towards evolutionary processes is nothing but a coincidence, put in place by Him."
Polk board members' support of intelligent design came to light after they learned the proposed science standards for Florida schools listed evolution and biological diversity as one of the "big ideas" that students need to know for a well-grounded science education.
Evolution, the theory that organic life developed and diversified through small changes over millions of years, is opposed by some evangelical Christians and Orthodox Jews who believe in a literal biblical interpretation of the Earth's creation. Intelligent design holds that living organisms are so complex that they must have been created by some kind of higher force.
E-mails to board members can be seen on the Flying Spaghetti Monster Web site at www.venganza.org.
Here's one of the e-mails:
"I agree that children should be exposed to all sides of a scientific debate, but it is my fear you may leave out a theory that is equally as valid as traditional Intelligent Design," said one.
"I am of course referring to the Flying Spaghetti Monster. I'm sure you all know that the theory of the Flying Spaghetti Monster has much greater support in the scientific community than traditional Intelligent Design. You would therefore be doing a grave disservice to the students of Polk County, and science in general, if you were to leave this ever so important theory out of your curriculum."
Most School Board members declined comment, or did not return phone messages when asked about e-mails or telephone calls from supporters or detractors of the proposed science standards.
Board member Frank O'Reilly, who supports the new science standards, said he received about 50 e-mails from FSM supporters. "It's a lot," O'Reilly said. "Most of them are from the spaghetti monster."
In an e-mail, Henderson said he can't explain the idea for the FSM.
"I tell people it was combination of lack of sleep and divine intervention," Henderson said. "But the church has evolved into what it is today."
Henderson said he put out the open letter in 2005 to the Kansas School Board as a joke and it "snowballed from there."
Now, Henderson said there are more than a million Google results for Flying Spaghetti Monster.
"No telling where we will be in 10 years, 100 years, 1,000 years," Henderson wrote. "I heard Christianity started as a joke, too ... so who knows?"
Henderson said about 95 percent of the 60,000 e-mails he's received are positive.
He keeps his home address a secret and has had a "few death threats'' that he was concerned about.
"But the majority of Christians don't have a problem with our Church," Henderson wrote. "We try to be as tolerant of their beliefs as they are of ours."
Known as Pastafarians, Flying Spaghetti Monster supporters dress up as pirates. The Web site sells shirts, iPod covers and car stickers.
Currently on the Web site, the Flying Spaghetti Monster is wearing a Santa Claus hat.
Conservative voices outside of Florida also have chimed in on the science standards debate.
CitizenLink.com, an arm of the James Dobson-led group, Focus on the Family, urged its readers to take action to include intelligent design in the classroom by e-mailing the state.
So far, at least one state board member said she will vote against the new standards. Donna Callaway said she will vote against the proposed standards because evolution "should not be taught to the exclusion of other theories of origin of life," the St. Petersburg Times reported.
The state vote, which was planned for January, will likely be in February because two public meetings about the proposed standards were added in January.
The first meeting will be Jan. 3 from 5:30 to 7 p.m. at The Schultz Center for Teaching and Leadership in Jacksonville, 4019 Boulevard Center Drive.
A second meeting will be Jan. 8 in Miramar from 5:30 to 7 p.m. at Everglades High School. 17100 S.W. 48 Court.
The new standards have been praised by scientists. (To see the proposed standards go to www.flstandards.org.)
Lawrence S. Lerner, professor emeritus of physics and astronomy at California State University in Long Beach, who has examined science standards in the various states, has graded Florida's proposed standards as a B+.
Lerner, who gave the previous standards an F, said that the proposals have the potential to be among the best in the nation.
"It's an enormous improvement," Lerner said. "The (current) standards were poorly written and bad all along."
The inclusion of evolution into the standards was imperative, Lerner said.
"When you ignore evolution, it is like trying to teach physics without Newton's Law," Lerner said. "It (evolution) is dealt with quite well (in the new standards)."
No faith needed; the process is demonstrated mathematically in this online lecture: Making Genetic Networks Operate Robustly: Unintelligent Non-design Suffices, by Professor Garrett Odell.
I present to you the single cell. Chocked full of evidence of ID. There are loads of scientific journals exploring it's complex design. (note: they don't call it a complex evolution)
Yes but these cases I have found that when I have went and dug deeper, that the men did say what they are quoted.
Take it or leave it I guess as you will.
You might be on to something there. Take it to Al Gore and see if he’ll give you a grant and help you make a docufilm.
Give it your best shot.
Your research, please? The loads of scientific journals you are discussing just happen to all support evolutionary theory. The prescence of the word “design” does not mean there is a single “designer”.
That's one of the most ridiculous statements I've seen in a while and is easily disproved. There is only a 1.5% difference in the DNA of a human and a Chimpanzee.
Long Live the Flying Spaghetti Monster!
You do realize that you are delusional, don't you?
I think it is hilarious how hopelessly stupid and bigoted the whole spaghetti monster meme makes skeptics appear.
I say keep it coming.
It is hilarious.
Nope, not at all. I do believe you are however, as well as your Gore god, who draws heavily on wrongheaded evolutionary theory in his noble peace prize winning film.
Nope, not at all. I do believe you are however, as well as your Gore god, who draws heavily on wrongheaded evolutionary theory in his noble peace prize winning film.
If you can't come up with anything but insults and delusional comments post to someone else.
“I always thought that it was meant to specifically mock people who had a belief in God....”
The vast majority are atheists, yes...
AHAAHAHAHHAHAHAHA, ok, ...breathing.....wow. You are one funny, funny dude. That is an amazing bit of logic you've strung together.
For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. For it is written:
"I will destroy the wisdom of the wise; the intelligence of the intelligent I will frustrate."
Where is the wise man? Where is the scholar? Where is the philosopher of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not know him, God was pleased through the foolishness of what was preached to save those who believe.
Jews demand miraculous signs and Greeks look for wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, but to those whom God has called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For the foolishness of God is wiser than man's wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than man's strength.
Amazing how we are using technology to discuss how God destroys it.
Here’s one I believe you might find more to your liking, I think that it would behoove you to check out “The Origin of the Species” and read it Darwin clearly states this. It is rather difficult to find on the net because the sites supportive of evolution run scared from defending what is the fact of their argument relating to the origin of life that is to hard to explain , just as you are doing. It is part of the Theory of Evolution.
http://www.vision.net.au/~apaterson/science/darwin_critique1.htm#DARWIN’S%20THEORY
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