Flying Spaghetti Monster is not God, rules mortal judge

[Khaat]

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/04/14 ... tal_judge/

A United States District Court judge has ruled that Pastafarianism, the cult of the Flying Spaghetti Monster (FSM), is not a religion.

Stephen Cavanaugh, a prisoner in the Nebraska State Penitentiary, brought the case after being denied access to Pastafarian literature and religious items while behind bars. Cavanaugh argued that he is an avid Pastafarian, has the FSM tattoos to prove it, and should therefore be allowed “the ability to order and wear religious clothing and pendants, the right to meet for weekly worship services and classes and the right to receive communion” while on the inside.

Prison officers denied his requests on grounds that Pastafarianism is a parody religion.

Judge John M. Gerrard agreed with the prison officers' argument, noting that Pastafarianism was cooked up as a response to Intelligent Design being taught in the State of Kansas. The decision to teach Intelligent Design was justified as it being one of many widely-held religious beliefs about the origins of the Earth. Activist Bobby Henderson devised Pastafarianism Flying Spaghetti Monster as a riposte, claiming that it, too, was a widely-held belief and that it should also be taught in Kansas' schools.

He devised a mythos for the deity and claimed both a wide following and a long history of secret observance for the FSM cult.

The joke has since taken on a life of its own, with religious works being written to put meat(balls) on the noodles of the religion and scientists claiming that long strands of gas trailing galaxies may be the “noodly appendage” referred to in canonical works. Pastafarians have occasionally fought for the right to wear a colander on their heads – such strainers are holy to Pastafarians – and won religious freedom cases in Russia and Austria allowing them to do in drivers' licence mugshots.

Judge Gerrard was not impressed by those offshore cases, quickly deciding that FSMism is a parody, not an actual religion. Nor was he impressed by Cavanaugh, who had a rather poor grasp on Pastafarianism's key texts, which the judge took the trouble to read.

But Gerrard also wrote “This case is difficult because FSMism, as a parody, is designed to look very much like a religion” and therefore worthy of close consideration of how far religious freedoms extend.

Gerrard's conclusion is that the case “is not a question of theology: it is a matter of basic reading comprehension.”

“The FSM Gospel is plainly a work of satire, meant to entertain while making a pointed political statement. To read it as religious doctrine would be little different from grounding a 'religious exercise' on any other work of fiction. A prisoner could just as easily read the works of Vonnegut or Heinlein and claim it as his holy book, and demand accommodation of Bokononism or the Church of All Worlds.”

FSM adherents may not like that reasoning. Reg readers may not either, but will surely at least acknowledge that a judge familiar with Heinlein and Vonnegut is no bad thing.

That Gerrard's judgement is entirely serious in its asessement of FSMism, relevant case law and Cavanaugh's case is surely also admirable. Indeed, the judge has clearly done the best any mortal can be expected to do when confronted with a truth as vast as that of the Flying Spaghetti Monster. ®

I read the story, now have a perverse-yet-serious concern about how far the judge's explanation can ripple:

To read (FSM Gospel) as religious doctrine would be little different from grounding a 'religious exercise' on any other work of fiction.

[Simon_Jester]

Religious texts may be 'fiction' in the sense of being false (i.e. Hesiod's Theogony is not an accurate account of the creation of the world). However, they are not 'fiction' in the normal sense of the word; they're not works agreed to be false by their authors and readership at the time. We may think that the events described in Theogony are myths, but the ancient Greeks took them rather seriously.

So even if you disagree with them, as a genre they should be grouped with, say, inaccurate chronicles of the lives of real historical figures.

[Eternal_Freedom]

As a Pastafarian myself, I felt initially annoyed by this judgement. But based on his reasoning I can't really complain, he's actually done his job properly and not shot it down in a "FSM isn't a real God, only Jesus is" way I was expecting.

[Simon_Jester]

Yes.

Pastafarianism is, frankly, a parody, and everyone involves knows it. Discordianism, likewise. I'm sure we could think of other examples if we so desired.

Whereas even blatantly absurd, synthetic, and ridiculous religions (e.g. Scientology) have at their core texts that are not joking, that were not intended as a joke by their original authors, and which are not interpreted as a joke by their readers. That are meant as a serious account of relevant and fundamental truths.*

They may be spectacularly incorrect or inaccurate nonfiction, but they are not fiction.
_______________

*Caveat: in the specific case of Scientology, it is of course possible that the whole thing is a scam with the central leadership knowing it perfectly well. However, since Scientology has existed for a generation or two, it seems relatively unlikely that its leadership could perpetuate the idea 'we are tricking everyone else, and we were tricking you until you joined the senior leadership' without schisms breaking out among new recruits to the senior leadership.

[Khaat]

The Scientology pyramid scheme has, I must imagine, a "don't ask, don't tell" tenant. Senior positions benefit to the extent that they have more incentive to not reveal the inner workings/"secrets" to their donors followers.

I'm not sure that the "intent of parody" renders it "not religion" in this case, specifically when the judge calls out "work of fiction" as being his benchmark to disregard it.
"Jedi" have the same position in this regard: their entirely fictional origin has become their philosophy for daily life. And if "philosophy for daily life" isn't the purpose religion serves, what the hells is?

[Simon_Jester]

I think "intent of parody" is sufficient grounds to declare something "not a real religion."

It may not, however, be necessary.

In general, I think it's fair to say that any religion whose origins are explicitly fictional is "not real" until such time as it has attracted some reasonable measure of organization and real-life existence.

[Tribble]

As a Pastafarian myself, I felt initially annoyed by this judgement. But based on his reasoning I can't really complain, he's actually done his job properly and not shot it down in a "FSM isn't a real God, only Jesus is" way I was expecting.

While this specific ruling makes sense, I'll bet that some fundamentalists will try to use it as a precedent: "(insert religion here) is a parody religion since the only true religion is Christ. Anything else is a deliberate parody". Not saying that they'll get anywhere, but I'm sure they'll try.

[Terralthra]

Tenants are people who lived in a building. Tenets are important philosophical beliefs.

[Flagg]

The bible is fiction! More at 11! This judges ruling has no meaning. Just like the bible.

[Simon_Jester]

There's a difference between 'false' and 'fiction,' Flagg.

You can reasonably argue that the Bible is false. You cannot, however, argue that it was written as a work of fiction. Or that it was intended that way, or that it is generally interpreted by its readers that way.

Whereas with the Jedi from Star Wars, or the Bene Gesserit from Dune, or from the church of the Seven in Game of Thrones, or from the beliefs promulgated by Michael Smith in Stranger in a Strange Land... One can argue exactly that.

[Bedlam]

Could you argue that the intent of the author doesn't matter in a sort of 'death of the author' way?

If there was a god then there would be nothing to stop it from influencing a mortal in a way that they would write what they thought was a fiction which was in fact the truth.

In addition after enough time has passed how can you judge the intent of the author? A story about Zeus killing his father may have originally been intended as a fiction to lead an uprising against the old order, after enough time it could be taken literally, but we don't know the original intent of the author.

[NecronLord]

The thing is though; the reason prisoners religious rights are protected is because of the emotional and psychological harm being denied access to religion does; it's cruel.

I'm unconvinced that anyone takes the FSM seriously enough that denial of their regular observances (!) would cause them distress beyond 'losing an argument.'

[Channel72]

You can reasonably argue that the Bible is false. You cannot, however, argue that it was written as a work of fiction. Or that it was intended that way, or that it is generally interpreted by its readers that way.

It's a certain percent false. Probably like 80% false. The other 20% is likely mostly true, i.e. stuff regarding historical exploits of certain Hebrew kings and mundane details about things like temple administration in the more recently written books during Persian times, as well as broad strokes about historical happenings in the Ancient Near East after about 800 BCE.

Also a lot of stuff which was definitely written with an intent to deceive is today considered true and sacred by certain religious groups. Like for example, the book of Enoch or other pseudepigrapha, which is self-evidently known to be false by the original author, is now taken as part of Holy Scripture in various Ethiopian churches.

The point is it's complicated. How documents are perceived as true or false by their authors and followers changes often, and varies by degrees. The best we can say is that with FSM, it's likely that 100% of adherents know it to be false, but just think it's funny and/or insightful as a form of argument-by-parody.

[Soontir C'boath]

The problem is, they should have taken FSM to a whole different thing and level and turn it into:

[Simon_Jester]

Could you argue that the intent of the author doesn't matter in a sort of 'death of the author' way?

If there was a god then there would be nothing to stop it from influencing a mortal in a way that they would write what they thought was a fiction which was in fact the truth.

That's why I brought up three different conditions. NecronLord nailed the third one- even if the authors were joking when they wrote it, you still have the condition that the worshippers aren't joking when they read it. The Flying Spaghetti Monster doesn't qualify, and let's be honest here, it really doesn't.

By contrast, despite the fact that it's not really any more plausible as a religion and was created by an experienced fiction writer, the Scientologists DO take their religion seriously, it's not a complete joke to the low-level devotees of the religion.

But if a religion doesn't have serious devotees and a serious founder or leader, it's a joke and a parody and it's foolish for us to pretend otherwise.

[Zeropoint]

As a Discordian Pope, I have to ask why you think that the fact that something is a joke means it can't also be serious.

[Simon_Jester]

Because we have to have some legal standard that separates "protected religion" from "non-protected personal opinion."

For 'religion,' a reasonable dividing line would be something like:
1) The religion is not treated as a serious proposition by a supermajority of its self-proclaimed practitioners
2) The religion is based in source material whose author explicitly constructed it as fiction or, more extreme yet, an outright joke
3) The religion does not call for significant sacrifices even from its relatively devoted practitioners (i.e. a few hours a week and substantial time and resources is 'serious,' reading a book and occasionally attending a drunken get-together is not)
4) The religion has no observances or rituals that take place on a tight enough schedule for failing to practice them to have any real consequences in the eyes of the practitioner.

[Zeropoint]

You raise some interesting points, but:

1) The religion is not treated as a serious proposition by a supermajority of its self-proclaimed practitioners

The vast majority of Christians, for instance, pay lip service to the religion but don't behave any differently from non-believers from their culture. They're not any more moral and certainly don't appear to "treat as a serious proposition" the idea that Someone is watching them and holding them accountable for their actions.

2) The religion is based in source material whose author explicitly constructed it as fiction or, more extreme yet, an outright joke

We have absolutely no way of knowing what was going through the minds of anyone who wrote any of what's now regarded as the Bible. In any case, I fail to see how the sincerity of the author's belief is a requirement for the sincerity of the follower's belief.

3) The religion does not call for significant sacrifices even from its relatively devoted practitioners (i.e. a few hours a week and substantial time and resources is 'serious,' reading a book and occasionally attending a drunken get-together is not)

Christian churches might like their members to sacrifice significant time, money, and resources, but this is in no way required for someone to call themselves a Christian and have their claim given due consideration.

4) The religion has no observances or rituals that take place on a tight enough schedule for failing to practice them to have any real consequences in the eyes of the practitioner.

Christianity has no observances or rituals that have any real (in the sense of "observable" or "verifiable") consequences of any kind. If you're going to insist on the "in the eyes of the practitioner" clause, well, how do YOU know what practitioner thinks? And again using Christianity as an example, most Christians don't seem to think that missing church now and then is a big deal.

And finally, remember that EVERY religion was new, weak, and small once. How would YOU like it if a judge told you that YOUR religion "wasn't real" and that YOUR religious beliefs didn't deserve First-Amendment protections because your religion wasn't mainstream enough?

My position is simple: be consistent. Either give special accommodations to ALL belief complexes which call themselves "religions", or to none. Don't pick and choose based on whether YOU think that SOMEONE ELSE'S religious beliefs are "sincere enough".

[Lord Revan]

Something I'd consider important to be considered a religion is "if *insert religion here* didn't exist would your this religion/belief system have a point". For example Christianty is an outgrowth of judaism but makes christianty a real religion is that christian belief system isn't dependent of jews existing.

From what I've gather Flying Spaghetti Moster and similar "belief systems" rely heavily on the existance of the the monotheistic religions orginating from the middle east predominantly christianity and should christianity disapear for what ever reason those belief systems would loose their purpose.

IIRC even true satanism (instead of the Hollywood version) or the so called left hand paths aren't really dependent on the existance of christianity as they more a reaction of the values of christianity then christianity itself.

[Simon_Jester]

You raise some interesting points, but:

1) The religion is not treated as a serious proposition by a supermajority of its self-proclaimed practitioners

The vast majority of Christians, for instance, pay lip service to the religion but don't behave any differently from non-believers from their culture. They're not any more moral and certainly don't appear to "treat as a serious proposition" the idea that Someone is watching them and holding them accountable for their actions.

You're setting a higher bar than I had in mind, so either I need to rephrase or I need to provide a precise definition of 'serious proposition.' However, arguing over the level of the bar does not equate to proving that there shouldn't be a bar. Or that the bar can't be set at a level where Christianity, Islam, Wicca, Sikhism, and a great diversity of other worldwide religions qualify... but where bluntly, joke religions do not and should not qualify.

2) The religion is based in source material whose author explicitly constructed it as fiction or, more extreme yet, an outright joke

We have absolutely no way of knowing what was going through the minds of anyone who wrote any of what's now regarded as the Bible. In any case, I fail to see how the sincerity of the author's belief is a requirement for the sincerity of the follower's belief.

If a book was written in historic times by an author who explicitly marketed their work as fiction, and if the overwhelming majority of those who read the book treat it as fiction... at some point, the existence of a handful of people who don't fully grok the concept of 'fiction' doesn't justify treating that handful as a protected religion.

3) The religion does not call for significant sacrifices even from its relatively devoted practitioners (i.e. a few hours a week and substantial time and resources is 'serious,' reading a book and occasionally attending a drunken get-together is not)

Christian churches might like their members to sacrifice significant time, money, and resources, but this is in no way required for someone to call themselves a Christian and have their claim given due consideration.

Did you not read the words "relatively devoted?" The point is that the existence of a significant minority of devoted followers who actually seriously inconvenience themselves for the religion, on an ongoing basis, is one of the key pieces of evidence indicating that the religion is 'real.'

4) The religion has no observances or rituals that take place on a tight enough schedule for failing to practice them to have any real consequences in the eyes of the practitioner.

Christianity has no observances or rituals that have any real (in the sense of "observable" or "verifiable") consequences of any kind. If you're going to insist on the "in the eyes of the practitioner" clause, well, how do YOU know what practitioner thinks? And again using Christianity as an example, most Christians don't seem to think that missing church now and then is a big deal.

If a practitioner doesn't care about missing church, they probably don't care about access to a chaplain. Thing is, there ARE plenty of Christians who do care about missing church, or who do care about lacking the spiritual guidance of a priest/chaplain/pastor. Enough that when any given individual claims to be such a person, they can point to evidence of other, similar people, both inside and outside the prison system.

How many devotees of the Flying Spaghetti Monster can seriously claim that? That they have, say, skipped other enjoyable activities to attend a FSM service? That they have abstained from doing things they would normally do, after converting to FSMism? That they feel a serious spiritual lack if denied special accomodations to practice FSM-worship?

And finally, remember that EVERY religion was new, weak, and small once. How would YOU like it if a judge told you that YOUR religion "wasn't real" and that YOUR religious beliefs didn't deserve First-Amendment protections because your religion wasn't mainstream enough?

This isn't about mainstream versus non-mainstream. A tiny but highly committed cult, which has demonstrable existence and isn't just something I made up to get special privileges, and whose members and leadership clearly believe their own religious tenets, qualifies.

If there are a dozen people who are part of a sect that prays four times a day to the star Vega, and they actually do that, even when it's inconvenient... then yes, it is interfering with the free exercise of religion to stop one of those twelve people from praying to Vega four times a day. It's not about numbers, it's about the evidence (or lack thereof) of there being a group of practitioners who take the religion seriously enough that interfering with their practice of it interferes with their civil liberties.

Please stop trying to pigeonhole my argument into boxes it doesn't fit in.

My position is simple: be consistent. Either give special accommodations to ALL belief complexes which call themselves "religions", or to none. Don't pick and choose based on whether YOU think that SOMEONE ELSE'S religious beliefs are "sincere enough".

It's not about whether your beliefs are sincere enough to make a religion 'real.' It's about whether anyone's are.

In particular, the creation of religions that the practitioners don't take seriously, and the attempt to procure equal rights for those religions, is a joke played at the expense of the state. When it comes to prisoners in a jail playing jokes at the expense of the prison system, said prison system may understandably take a dim view of such things.

[Zeropoint]

Wait a minute, so now we judge whether MY religious beliefs are "serious" enough to warrant accommodation based on whether OTHER PEOPLE, who are neither you nor me nor in any way related to the situation, believe sincerely or strongly enough?

[Lord Revan]

I think what Simon meant to say(execuse the pun) is that it's not an attack against your personal beliefs but rather you need a system to prevent people from exploiting the right of freedom of religion to ask for priviliges above the rest by making up religion on the spot for example priests of religions are free from taxes relating to their religious duties (IIRC) so without a system to determine what is a true religion there would be no taxes since everyone could claim that their taxable resources are nessecery part of their religious practices of this religion they made up on the spot that demands no personal sacrifice from them but frees them from all taxes.

You can see how you cannot run a country like that.

[Zwinmar]

Who is anyone to say that someone's belief is intended as a joke? To some; all religions are a joke taken way to far and dipping deep into the well of madness.

The best way to prevent the abuse of religions is not to let the big ones have tax breaks, rather, it is to have no tax breaks in the first place. Otherwise, fair is fair, my fictions should be met with the same standard as yours.

[Lord Revan]

Problem with not having christianity or other major religions not having "projected" status (being free from taxes is just one priviledge they have) to prevent abuse is that those religions have centuries worth of influence on the minds of majority in a perfect world you deny them any special protection from the law but we DO NOT live in a perfect world so we have to live with the world we got and compromise.

[Simon_Jester]

Wait a minute, so now we judge whether MY religious beliefs are "serious" enough to warrant accommodation based on whether OTHER PEOPLE, who are neither you nor me nor in any way related to the situation, believe sincerely or strongly enough?

Basically, do you have any co-religionists?

If not you cannot credibly claim to be a member of a 'religion' because religions are group activities.

And the only reason I'm using them as a point of reference here is to avoid chaos. And in particular to avoid people facetiously claiming a right to privileges that not everyone has a right to.

Who is anyone to say that someone's belief is intended as a joke? To some; all religions are a joke taken way to far and dipping deep into the well of madness.

The best way to prevent the abuse of religions is not to let the big ones have tax breaks, rather, it is to have no tax breaks in the first place. Otherwise, fair is fair, my fictions should be met with the same standard as yours.

The US interprets freedom of religion as inherently granting religions certain privileges to permit them to be exercised freely. Since religious institutions have no means of support except the generosity of their adherents, you kind of have to give them a break if you want them to survive.

Now, you personally may reply "but I don't want them to survive." But the US government is basically prohibited from taking that stance. Which in turn means the government needs some way of ensuring that the protections it grants to religions are not claimed frivolously by pranksters or con artists. And that the protections are restricted to people who, while they may not be objectively correct about the world, at least believe what they are saying and care about their own beliefs on some level.