Posted on 01/09/2014 12:32:23 PM PST by nickcarraway
It wasn’t his flashy suit or fresh haircut that people noticed when new Pomfret, N.Y. Town Council member Christopher Schaeffer was sworn in last week -- it was the colander he wore on his head.
Schaeffer was wearing the spaghetti strainer atop his dome because he is a minister with the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster.
"It's just a statement about religious freedom," he said. "It's a religion without any dogma."
According to its website, the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster really started to take off in 2005.
"Our ideal is to scrutinize ideas and actions, but ignore general labels," the website says.
"Some claim that the church is purely a thought experiment, satire, illustrating that Intelligent Design is not science, but rather a pseudoscience manufactured by Christians to push Creationism (the doctrine that God created the universe) into public schools. These people are mistaken. The Church of FSM is real, totally legit, and backed by hard science. Anything that comes across as humor or satire is purely coincidental."
Members of the church are called Pastafarians.
"Most of us do not believe a religion -- Christianity, Islam, Pastafarianism -- requires literal belief in order to provide spiritual enlightenment," the website reads. "That is, we can be part of a community without becoming indoctrinated. There are many levels of belief."
Pastafarian or not, Schaeffer plans on making the citizens of Pomfret proud.
"Mostly, I'm just looking forward to making sure that the town is run smoothly and we meet the needs of all of our citizens," he said. "If anybody ever has any concerns or questions, I hope they contact me, because I want to make sure that everyone is represented."
The church called Schaeffer’s choice of headwear “encouraging news.”
It’s a hate group I guess.
They probably have garlic bread and spaghetti sauce for communion. I could go for that...
Ahhhhh....there’s nothing funnier than an atheist with a strainer on his head. He was trying to catch his brain, but it slipped through.
A spaghetti priest got elected in a town named for “french-fries” (pomme-frittes). Sounds perfectly normal to me.
“I’m just looking forward to making sure that the town is run smoothly and we meet the needs of all of our citizens,” he said.
Well good for him, I hope he provides good service to the citizens of his town. It doesn’t matter what religion he is, even though this sounds like something out of Monty Python.
They demonstrate the absurd by being absurd, much like America's favorite talk radio host.
It’s not a religion - it’s a way to ridicule Christians. Kind of like blackface directed towards Christians.
I prefer the Church of the Green Chile Enchilada Troll. Believers and non Believers get the same burning sensation /sarc
Freedom to act like a bitter, spiteful idiot.
Yes, a major shift is occurring, but not the one many people assume. Advancing naturalism (the belief that nature is all there is) produces both expected and unexpected effects. The Harris poll found that belief in Darwin’s theory of evolution increased to 47 percent, up from 42 percent in 2005
As a result, some will crow that “Science is winning over superstition!” But it isn’t. Between 2005 and 2013, belief increased in
– ghosts from 41% to 42%
– UFOs from 35% to 36%
– astrology stayed the same at 29%
– witches decreased significantly from 31% to 26%
– reincarnation increased from 21% to 24%
While the noted increases are small, we should expect declines nearly across the board instead, if the “science wins” thesis were correct. (The one exception is UFOs; as a “sciencey” belief, they correlate with naturalism despite lack of evidence.) Further, we would expect young people (18–36) to reject ghosts and reincarnation more strongly than older people (68+) do.
And they don’t. On the contrary, younger folk believe in ghosts at 44% to seniors’ 24%. In UFOs at 36% to 30%. In astrology at 33% to 23%. In witches at 27% to 18%. And in reincarnation at 27% to 13%.
In short, naturalism offers liberation, not from the bonds of superstition but from the burden of rationality. And we must address the fact that increasing numbers of young people are embracing that liberation. More.
That’s awesome. I wonder if 500 years from now people will have forgotten the joke and pastafarians will actually be a serious thing. Hope not.
I think he’s a few meatballs short of linguini lite !!
Plastic is too informal for such a solemn event - he should have gone with a nice shiny stainless steel strainer.
God will not be mocked...
we’ll just let Him take care of stuff like this,
He’ll do a better job of it than we could ever do.
Wrong. It is like blackface directed towards all religions.
You say that like it is a bad thing.
Perhaps. But he does seem to be clever and funny which is a very refreshing change from the sanctimonious a-holes that infest politics these days.
“...it’s a way to ridicule Christians.”
Do you think so? Maybe it’s just a mockery of all religion.
I feel like I heard something about this just the other day, it really rang a bell when I read your post. But I can’t remember where or what it was about.
Do you remember “The church of the sub-genius”? That was a thing for a while, in the 80s I guess. I never really got it, people used to talk about a guy named Bob Dobbs, some silliness like that. I should ask my old lefty friend on facebook, I bet he’d remember.
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