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.”
Why doesn’t he just become a Scientologist?
Eventually, so many of the attributes of the Flying Spaghetti Monster have been rendered incoherent, the person is actually just applying the name ‘Flying Spaghetti Monster’ to God... which isn’t very powerful.
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From where I sit, that was the FSM’s entire point, at least back in the days when it first appeared. The IDers did everything they could to remove God from the equation. But as you say, so many of the attributes of the Designer (in this case) were rendered incoherent, the person is actually just applying the name ‘Designer’ to God.
I don’t believe the FSM argument was ever intended to be the subject of scholarly debates. But that method of debate, using your opponent’s own logic against them, is quite powerful.
For the record: I am not a pastafarian.
Well, designer is simply another name for God, but does not carry the religious overtones, since the Intelligent Design argument does not argue for any particular deity. It only serves as a supportive argument for general theism with some limitations. It doesn’t seem unfair to want to limit the designer’s designation simply to ‘designer’, since God in common parlance means the Christian God, and ID cannot be used to demonstrate the Christian God in particular.
Now that's using your noodle...
I blame Oprah for a lot of this. Seriously, the New Age movement is connected to this and she is probably one of the biggest promoters of New Age.
Thanks for posting this. I’m glad to discover this site.
I think that might have been a Robert Anton Wilson thing. I remember Bob and the Church of the Sub-genius, though. He smoked a pipe.
“I think that might have been a Robert Anton Wilson thing.”
Yes, that sounds familiar.
It occurs to me that I could be the founding member of a local outfit.
That’s pretty darn witty, double entendre(s) and all. Clang!
” I wonder if 500 years from now people will have forgotten the joke and pastafarians will actually be a serious thing”
The photo of him being sworn with the colander on his head will be the oldest surviving artifact from the church making him the first Pope of Spaghetti.
I hear they really love pasta.
lol
Which one?
Mankind has imagined and invented thousands of Gods.
Yes, and God addresses that very fact many times in His word and by His Word. (Jesus Christ)
Your motivation here is obviously just to bait and see if you can get a rise out of somebody.
God tells us “not to cast pearls before swine” so, I won’t bother.
I will assume that you are a good person but are cynical and bitter because of your hardened heart. I will pray for you.
Church of the Sub-Genius started out actually being pretty funny, albeit weird. It’s gotten weirder, and unfunny, several years ago. IMHO
I really never knew much about it, I never really “got it”. There was a lot of stuff I didn’t get back in the 80s; and by the 90s I was totally out of the loop of hep.
I doubt I’d ever have thought of it again except for this thread.
Please don't do that. I've already had about all the attention from god that I can withstand.
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