Personally, as long as they're not strapping bombs to themselves and killing people in the name of The Flying Spaghetti Monster, I'll take Pastafarianism over some other religions...
METRO VANCOUVER -- A Surrey man, an ordained minister in the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, is involved in a holy war of sorts with ICBC over his right to wear his religious headgear — a spaghetti strainer — in his B.C. driver's licence photo.
"The exact same photo being denied by ICBC was approved for use on his BC Services Card."
ReplyDeleteThat's the new health insurance card, which basically means the health authorities either don't think he's nuts, or he is and better get his coverage fast.
What this really shows is that cultural relativism and any across the board "freedom of religion" are nuts. Still if people don't get this when there are hundreds of millions who believe the whole world must submit to their cult, pay the jizya, or die, then we need the harmless nuts.
I have no problem with harmless nuts, or religions that don't call for the killing of unbelievers. That said, I'm not entirely convinced these Pastafarians aren't so much nuts as they are being ironic and taking a joke a bit too far.
ReplyDeleteNo doubt your right, but there is a sense in which the followers o f Richard Dawkins are nuts. Atheism may be defensible, but denying/making fun of the fundamental religiosity of humanity, writing it off as an evolutionary anachronism, is nuts. Humans are unlike animals because we are ordered around a sacred centre of attention and seek transcendence. One form this takes in agrarian age and modern political religions is human sacrifice, in which the left continues to indulge. Not all religions are equal, there is only one tradition that clearly exposes human sacrifice and seeks to move beyond it.
ReplyDeleteAs I recall "Pastafarianism" was, at its genesis, an organized insult to believers in any religion. Ironic had nothing to do with it; it was all about mockery and insult.
ReplyDeleteSome people never really grow up. These idiots would be among them.