During the course of my residence at the chatterbox (which I currently am at home and missing dearly and thus blogging about), we discovered this spiffy new religion called the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster. I was supremely delighted, if only because I have decided that the next time I get a new form with those pesky religion fields to fill in, I'll have something exciting to put in instead of the old boring '-', 'nil', 'n/a', or 'quasi-buddhist' or 'OS X' or 'shapely legs'.
(I have renounced temporarily OS X as my religion because I recently discovered even the Computer Care Centre can't do anything about its Unable to Webcast sickness.)
So.
What am i exactly talking about? The FSM is a branch of the Intelligent Design religions, and it has thousands of followers. Wikipedia has a description of the Flying Spaghetti Monster (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flying_spaghetti_monster), of which i quote:
--The central belief is that there is an invisible and undetectable Flying Spaghetti Monster, which created the entire universe "after drinking heavily."[2] All evidence for evolution was planted by the Flying Spaghetti Monster, in an effort to test Pastafarians' faith; a form of the Omphalos hypothesis. When scientific measurements, such as radiocarbon dating, are made, the Flying Spaghetti Monster "is there changing the results with His Noodly Appendage."[5] ...
--The Pastafarian belief of heaven stresses these two points: (1) it has beer volcanos as far as the eye can see, and (2) it has a stripper factory."[11]...
--The official conclusion to prayers is "RAmen", contained in certain sections of The Gospel of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, and so on. It is a portmanteau of the Semitic term "Amen" (used in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam) and Ramen, a noodle. ...
--The first public exposure of the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster and its eponymous deity can be dated to January 2005, when Bobby Henderson sent his open letter regarding the FSM and the teaching of intelligent design in science classes to the Kansas Board of Education. Henderson suggested that his theory and intelligent design had equal validity, stating "if the Intelligent Design theory is not based on faith, but instead another scientific theory, as is claimed, then you must also allow our theory to be taught, as it is also based on science, not on faith."[5]
The Church also has an equally spiffy logo which looks startlingly like my crabby and crabby II, which only serves to assure me that I am destined to become one of its worshippers. I fantasize of starting schools of teaching featuring my own takes of its Gospel. Just like Christianity has its Protestants, Catholics and such, the FSM could have Bolognaise, Carbonara, Herbs n' Cheese and so on.
Oh my, religious fervours do make people hungry...
