The Flying Spaghetti Monster is not satire. He is a real deity, made manifest by people’s faith in him. He is best worshipped with a few tablespoons of grated parmesan cheese.
About The Author
BooMan
Martin Longman a contributing editor at the Washington Monthly. He is also the founder of Booman Tribune and Progress Pond. He has a degree in philosophy from Western Michigan University.
Other than not currently enjoying a high level of cultural acceptance, the deity of a Pastafarian is capable of providing all the same demonstrations of agency and influence in the physical world as any God of all the other religions of the world. The Pastafarian deity will perform just as many proven miracles as those other gods.
Pasta has a long history, spanning thousands of years before Christ. For anyone to imply that this is just some Johnny-come-lately gimmick is guilty of pasta heresy, I tell you!!
Hey, Mike, Chapter 468 in “helluva Governor you’ve got there”:
http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/john-kasich-advises-female-student-parties-lot-alcohol/story?id=38429
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Kasich tries to persuade voters with that mouth. The moderate GOP candidate, ladies and gentlemen.
Yeah, because in Kasich’s Ohio, if you have too much to drink and have your rape live-streamed on the web, you’ll have no one to blame but yourself.
Well, gosh, I would quibble with this news story’s claim that the girl who livestreamed the rape could be described as the victim’s “friend”. Call me crazy.
As you know, here’s another incident and notorious aftermath which took place during Kasich’s Governorship:
http://www.cleveland.com/metro/index.ssf/2012/09/rape_charges_divide_football_t.html
“Even Gov. John Kasich gave a shout-out to the football powerhouse when he came to the district to give his state-of-the-state address from the high school auditorium.”
Perhaps this lent a mood of, say, impunity among the Steubenville players and those who supported and surrounded them? The incident happened about a half-year after John came to town.
That possibility doesn’t make Kasich responsible for what happened, but his response after the incident happened didn’t appear to have done much to comfort the victim and the community. That’s normally not the Governor’s job, but this case was particularly notorious and horrible, so it would have been appropriate for the Governor to attempt to help.
Was it determined to be non consensual? I wasnt sure yesterday.
I love these stories; they’ve taken place in States across the nation:
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/pastafarian-wins-wear-colander-driver-license-article-1.243
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I do not share their faith, but I find their guiding spirit delicious, and I’m with BooMan on the parmesan.
great. and pleased to learn that pastafarianism is doing well in Czech Republic
I think they should bring back the Greco-Roman pantheon. They’re the best.
Massively parallel paganism.
Very clever, but not very funny.
It’s actually the same principle, or rather anti-principle, that the Republicans discovered: that tradition means nothing (in congress, for example. But also in religion If it’s not literally in the Bible, as I read the Bible, out it goes. It’s mere tradition. Entirely arbitrary.) In the Brave New World, everything is arbitrary except either (a) science; or (b) the Bible. But those turn out to be arbitrary too, and by that arbitrariness they cancel each other out. The meaning of words is also arbitrary. Social construction.
You can buy into all this if you want to, but it’s built on a reductio ad absurdum. You violate it every time you say something and you expect anyone to know what you mean.
The point isn’t that Pastafarianism is genuine but that all other religions are genuinely sham. Handle with care.
Yeah, all of them…except the one I specifically practice! That one is real, otherwise I’ve been living a lie, and that’s way too uncomfortable to think about!
not at all. and pastafarian beliefs in separation of church and state are strongly held, that’s the point
Separation of starch and state?
TRUE INDEED!!!
trying to cut the carbs….I have, however, enjoyed reporting of people being touched by his noodly appendage.
Its pretty obvious his beliefs arent sincerely held but the troubling part is the court made a legal determination about it.
a legal determination about” whether his(/her?) beliefs are sincerely held?
I didn’t notice that in the linked article, and it would surprise me to learn that it had.
I would have expected to find the legal reasoning underlying the decision to be expressed more along the lines of,
“because it is beyond the scope of the power, authority, and jurisdiction of this court to render judgment on the sincerity of X’s expressed religious beliefs in the absence of any direct evidence to the contrary, we lack any basis to privilege the protection of other religious persons’ expressions over X’s, by allowing their exemptions while denying X’s.”
IOW, if my guesses are right (and I’m too lazy to try to find and read the actual decision, if that were even possible, to confirm/refute them) the decision would flow from just the opposite of “the court ma[king] a legal determination about” whether X’s beliefs are sincerely held, i.e., from its refusal to do so.
A court is clearly on dangerous ground when it tries to determine religious sincerity. But Hobby Lobby goes well beyond that and is truly bad law because it’s about an alleged right to limit the religious freedom of employees based on the beliefs of the employer. As the court moves back toward center, I’d hope that to be among the first cases to be limited or, better still, reversed. Talk about truly horrid, mendacious law.
and troubling flaw of Hobby Lobby was its extension of the legal fiction of “corporate personhood” to the preposterous notion that such a corporate “person” (if “closely held”!) can thus have a “personal” religion, which is then deemed to imbue it with the religious freedom protections of the First Amendment. (The invalid distinction between “closely held” “corporate persons” and other “corporate persons” seems another glaring flaw of legal “reasoning” integral to the first.)
I think the finding of “an alleged right to limit the religious freedom of employees based on the beliefs of the employer” requires and rests on that corporate personhood legal mumbo-jumbo.
This is different:
If Obama is urging Congress to defeat this bill how is it that his State Department is apparently doing power-point presentations of a highly inflammatory diplomatic claim? Which, incidentally, really puts the Saudis in a tough spot. Bluff truly called.
Seems the political establishment and the media has had a snootful and declared bipartisan jihad; one wonders if the fall of the House of Bush is partially responsible for this shift, at least among Republicans.