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Posted

This is classic - love it.

 

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/sep/18/documentary-follows-pastafarians-strain-for-recognition

 

Some time next year, the European court of human rights will decide on the case of a Dutch woman who feels unfairly treated because her country’s highest court has told her she cannot wear a plastic colander on her head for her ID photo.

It may combine Mienke de Wilde’s plea with that of an Austrian former MP, Niko Alm, who proudly wears the offending kitchen utensil on his official documents but now insists his country recognise Pastafarianism – the faith both follow – as a religion.

Watching the pair closely is Mike Arthur, an independent American film-maker whose smart, funny but above all thought-provoking documentary, I, Pastafari, about the world’s fastest-growing faith premieres in the US in October.

All in all, it is shaping up to be quite a big few months for the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, whose believers wear strainers on their heads in homage to their deity, strive to be nice to pretty much everyone, and conclude their prayers with “r’amen” rather than “amen”.

It sounds, of course, like a joke. On one level, it is. But for Arthur, who has spent three years working on his film, and for many Pastafarians who believe their faith embodies some profound – and profoundly important – principles, it is a lot more.

“We live,” says Arthur, sitting in an Amsterdam cafe, “in the age of unreason. We no longer value the best idea, but the loudest idea. From Brexit to Trump, we applaud blind faith and are sceptical about overwhelming observable evidence.

“The problem is that rationality is just no match for irrationality. That ship sailed in 2016. People now don’t change their minds, they double down on their irrationality, and using facts, science and reason to contest the unreasonable is simply driving us all further apart. Maybe it’s time to try a different approach.”

 

A different approach is, undeniably, what Flying Spaghetti Monsterism offers. The church was founded in 2005 by Bobby Henderson, at the time a 25-year-old US physics graduate, as a response to Christian fundamentalists demanding the teaching of creationism in Kansas school science classes. Its name is a portmanteau of pasta and Rastafarianism.

In an open letter, Henderson argued that if intelligent design was to be taught alongside evolution, so should the belief that, with the aid of His Noodly Appendages, an invisible and undetectable Flying Spaghetti Monster created the universe, probably after drinking heavily (thus explaining its many flaws).

Like other religions, the church has a gospel and, rather than commandments, eight “I’d really rather you didn’ts” (two having been lost). These suggest ways to live your life happily without infringing on others’ rights to do the same – a morality based on harmonious co-existence, nonjudgmental conduct “and generally not being a dick”.

Henderson’s basic point, expertly if satirically made, was that since intelligent design was every bit as much of an evidence-based theory as the unshakable belief that the world was created by an omniscient flying monster made of spaghetti, nothing should be taught in science classes bar science.

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