Pastafarianism

An argument that has been waged for hundreds of years, the controversy between creationism and evolution has come to the fore again in recent years. While direct teaching of Creationism in a science course has met with stout resistance due to its mention of God in most school districts, Intelligent Design has begun to be proposed as an alternative. By not directly mentioning God, but instead teaching that the universe is better described in its current state by the existence of an intelligent being than by Evolution, proponents hope to placate critics. This has not been the case. Most scientists have condemned Intelligent Design as being at best a pseudoscience on par with astrology and palm reading, and when the Kansas Board of Education decided that Intelligent Design should be taught as a scientific alternative to evolution, Bobby Henderson, a physics graduate, sent in a letter to the board a demand that a spoof religion that he had created based on Intelligent Design should be used instead.

In his religion which became known as Pastafarianism, Bobby claimed that a giant flying spaghetti monster was the great designer behind the universe and world. Although ignored by the board at first as nothing but a prankster, Henderson's new "religion" became quite widespread when he uploaded his letter onto the internet. In his letter Henderson outlines some of the core beliefs in his version of Intelligent Design and claims that Pastafarianism should be taught in schools because it is completely cohesive with traditional Intelligent Design. In most cases Henderson's letter pokes fun at the precepts of Intelligent Design especially at its more shaky concepts. For example, for Pastafarians pirates were embodiments of goodness, and the increase in hurricanes, tornadoes, earthquakes, and volcanic eruptions are all direct consequences of the decline in pirate numbers since the 1800s.