Religious scholars mull Flying Spaghetti Monster
by Justin Pope
November 16, 2007
(AP) — When some of the world’s leading religious scholars gather in San Diego this weekend, pasta will be on the intellectual menu. They’ll be talking about a satirical pseudo-deity called the Flying Spaghetti Monster, whose growing pop culture fame gets laughs but also raises serious questions about the essence of religion.
The appearance of the Flying Spaghetti Monster on the agenda of the American Academy of Religion’s annual meeting gives a kind of scholarly imprimatur to a phenomenon that first emerged in 2005, during the debate in Kansas over whether intelligent design should be taught in public school sciences classes.
Supporters of intelligent design hold that the order and complexity of the universe is so great that science alone cannot explain it. The concept’s critics see it as faith masquerading as science. Continue reading “Flying Spaghetti Monster and the Pastafarians”
