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Pastafarian Wins Battle To Wear Colander In License Photo
An anonymous reader writes "Eddie Castillo is the first American to successfully have his government-issued photo identification taken while wearing a colander, though DPS officials are reportedly planning to follow up with Castillo in order to 'rectify' the situation. Others have tried unsuccessfully, and Castillo told KLBK that he was surprised at his victory, which he called a 'political and religious milestone for all atheists everywhere.'" Two years ago Niko Alm won the right to wear a pasta strainer on his head although Austrian authorities required him to obtain a doctor's certificate that he was "psychologically fit" to drive.
Can't think of a better symbol for atheism than someone wearing a bowl on their head.
He'd look just like Eddie Castillo.
"The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old......They literally know nothing." - Ben Rhodes
Praise be to the Flying Spaghetti Monster and all His Noodly Appendages!
It's all just an attempt from NSA and CIA to create more news, driving attention from Snowden's leaks, plus to show the whole world that USA is still more free and open country than Russia and China.
What would you say on that, cold fjord, eh?
Absence of proof != proof of absence.
OK, so what about the women who INSIST that their religion says they MUST wear a full-face Burka in public? NO SUCH DEMAND EXISTS IN THE QURAN!
Surely, then, these people should have to have a phsychologists' report to see if they are fit to drive.
...do people really still think of religions in 2013 as about sky-fairies rather than philosophies or systems of ethics?
I know the loudest and the ones who receive all the press coverage from the people who can take advantage of their extremism seem to be all about mindless devotion to a higher power, but the billions of "religious faithful" tend to be more sophisticated than that.
And the primarty atheistic religions of the 20th century - Soviet communism and American capitalism - show that even the modern human mind is not lifted out of reach of objects of mindless worship.
It highlights the idiocy in having special laws for religious beliefs. If something should be illegal, it should be illegal for everyone. If something should be legal, it should be legal for everyone. You shouldn't get special privileges for holding certain beliefs. If it's fine for some people to wear hats or other head coverings in official photographs then it should be legal for everyone.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Being from Australia I'm not sure what the US licence laws are.
Does the fact he has it on his licence photo and seems to be using religion to get that, mean he is required by law to wear it while driving and travelling etc?
Of course he is psychologically fit, the pasta strainer will shield his brain from the orbital mind control lasers.
Atheist wins a minor victory in his campaign against arbitrary rights granted to religions.
Dude, nobody's fooled that you're actually a "pastafarian." We all know you just want an excuse to try to make the lawmakers outlaw wearing anything semi-nonconformist in a government-issued ID. Just let them wear their religious paraphernalia. It's not hurting you, and nothing good can come from trying to force them to change.
I submitted a photo where I wear a pasta strainer for my official electronic health insurance card in Germany -- and it got accepted, no questions asked! Always good to get some laughs when I have to go to a doctor.
Head coverings were not allowed, but religious ones were exempt. Oddly enough however, a friend of mine got a photo accepted where he poses with a beer mug (Maßkrug, you know, the typtical bavarian 1l mugs). Maybe because that's a religious symbol as well?
It is ridiculous that people are allowed to hide their face on ID photos by wearing headgear. No kind of headgear should be allowed on ID photos for any reason whatsoever, no exception allowed.
Um, what?
Showbiz Pizza was a front for the Pastafarian movement.
May as well start killing and eating one another.
give the middle finger to any camera that can or is taking a picture of me.
And no, I don't have a current I.D. card. So when someone asks me for my I.D., i just show them what it would of looked like. Needless to say, this gets me in trouble.
Religions seems to be nothing but trouble...
Be seeing you...
If they recognize Pastafarianism and being able to wear a colander in photos on government-issued IDs, then I insist that I be allowed to have a martini in hand as I subscribe to the religion of Alcoholism.
In Soviet Russia, dot slashes YOU!
That "religion" is a fake religion created to protest against the real religious impositions in society.
I half-heartedly await the day on which we can have a decent discussion about social issues without people being so vile. Somehow I don't expect this will happen in my lifetime.
I can't worship a deity that isn't gluten free.
What are you talking about?
Here, let me google that for you.
Let's see, let's try googling "Heckler's Veto", with "Man Sekasi (I'm feeling lucky).
http://lmgtfy.com/?q=Heckler's+Veto&l=1
Sure, but what does that have to do with Austrians and the US Supreme Court?
If there was a joke in there, not many people got it.
You are confusing religion with culture. All the definitions of religion that I have looked up include not only cultural factors, but also involve supernatural beliefs (such as deities, a creator, life after death, etc.). Communism and its versions qualify as cultural systems, but not as religions.
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Comment removed based on user account deletion
Let us not forget that your Messiah, Obama, worships the Zombie Jesus.
OK, he does not, actually. Does anyone actually believe The Chosen One believes that Jebus bullshit?
But he SAYS he does.
Which makes him a liar.
When will we stop voting for people who are unwilling to stand up for what they actually believe?
Glad atheists have finally acknowledged their beliefs are a religion.
Every group has them.
As Christians are the majority of the US population, so Christians have the most verbal morons on display. As the percentage of atheists has risen, so too has the visibility of atheistic morons become apparent.
Just as I hold that despicable Christian family the Westboro's in utter contempt, so too do I hold the morons comprising AA. Neither couching your language in biblical speech or psuedo-scientific jargon means jack to me. It's still vitriol.
People need to learn to think past 'the other'. Those who cannot need to be understood as shallow thinking bigots.
As usual on /. there is a great deal of denigration of religion under this post, and that's unfortunate. I suppose under the banner of rational engineering we forfeit any understanding of transcendent experience, keeping our minds locked in facts and missing the beautiful mystery right in front of our faces.
My point is not to defend the abhorrent practices of tyranny by religious leaders, nor the scared multitudes that follow them. But, just like any generalized mass of people, many (if not most) religious people are good people, like you, me and Castillo. The connection to headgear or any other religious garb has to do with orienting one's mind to one's sacred practice -- not because someone told them to, or to show off.
This isn't a question of whether God the sky fairy exists or not. It's a matter of spiritual connection, of keeping oneself grounded in sacred humility and service. It transcends morals and ethics. A Buddhist who does not believe in any sky gods may still wear clothing reflecting his sacred order. If you cannot grasp the power of the sacred, cannot connect to its guidance, then you are bereft of a singularly beautiful life experience.
"Molest me not with this pocket calculator stuff."
- Deep Thought
Pose with a glowing picture of the hypnotoad.
- Zav - Imagine a Beowulf cluster of insensitive clods...
It does not require blind faith to have a general policy of rejecting unfalsifiable things as false.
Going from "there is no evidence of any gods" to "there are no gods" isn't any different than going from "there's no evidence of a teapot orbiting the sun" to "there is no teapot orbiting the sun." It's not blind faith; it's common sense.
Blind faith is when you go from "there is no evidence of a teapot orbiting the sun" to the amazing fantastical "there is a teapot orbiting the sun."
The two different conclusions stemming from the initial unknown condition aren't equivalent, because one takes a falsifiable position and one does not.
The guy who believes in the orbiting teapot and the gods, is no longer able to learn anything, because no new evidence can ever possibly change his estimate of how correct his belief is. Evidence plays no role at all; he has ceased to be able to obtain information. He doesn't have a theory and nothing ever happens to increase or decrease his estimate of his belief's truth. His "knowledge" is a pure fantasy with no connection to truth (except perhaps accidental).
The guy who says there are no orbiting teapots and no gods, has a falsifiable theory. Discovery of an orbiting teapot or a god will invalidate it, and continued absence of contrary evidence (especially after deliberate searches) will confirm the theory. His position contains knowledge. You can build on that kind of knowledge, as you might have noticed with all the rocket ships and cellphones and medicines.
"Believe me!" -- Donald Trump
I get that this is a "win" for freedom and that the religious shouldn't get special privileges... but isn't this guy and maybe everyone fighting to wear colanders on their heads in photo IDs missing the point of photo ID and why there are exceptions? The purpose of this photo is to identify you. If you are a Muslim woman who always wears a hijab or a Sikh man who always wears a turban because your religious beliefs tell you to then doesn't it make sense for you to wear one in your photo ID? Are Pastafarians walking around all day with colanders on? I don't think the reason for wearing the headgear should be the issue: just that it is an everyday occurrence. Perhaps I'm missing something, but I've never heard of someone claiming their religion requires that they only wear headgear in photos taken by the DMV.
It says 'In God We Trust' right on our money. Who's jamming what down who's throats?
this is for identification purposes. Not a vehicle for "personal expression" AKA attention whoring.
DMV tells me to take off any hats I'm wearing and makes sure to note explicitly the glasses I wear are prescription and not a fashion accessory. Otherwise they'd be off too.
dips like this are the same people who wonder why DMV employees get surly. Putting up with dozens of entitled attention whores every day, who have been unable to earn any power in their lives, looking to cause problems just because they can.
Inmates running the asylum.
Anyways... I'm not suggesting that all religions aren't invented by man at some point, but at the very least, most such religions can at least claim that the people who follow them *genuinely* believe what they do, and cannot point to any specific historical person and say that *that* person invented the religion (some can... but most, at least of those that are actually recognized as religions today, cannot).
And heck, the guy who even invented Pastafarianism is still alive today.... The "Flying Spaghetti Monster" was first described in a satirical open letter written by a specific individual, Bobby Henderson, to protest the Kansas State Board of Education proposal to permit teaching intelligent design in 2005. It's demonstrably a friggen joke religion, with extremely clearly documented origins, and there's no rational reason to consider it equivalent to religions for which no historical record exists which categorically shows that they were made up by somebody (which, I think, would make the religion be classified as a cult moreso than religion anyways, and so would not have all of the same protections anyways).
I'd suggest that maybe in a thousand years or so when its origins have been lost in antiquity it might somehow get elevated to the level of a real religion, but I don't even know if that's likely given the popularity of literacy today unless a lot of our written records today also get destroyed in the interim.
In the meantime... I think everybody gets the point. ID isn't appropriate for teaching in public schools... can people who are claiming to believe this made-up thing now *please* just give it a rest?
I'm probably just going to get modded down as some sort of troll who's intolerant of some particular religion, but I'm not.... I'm just intolerant of something claiming to be a religion when it's historically verifiable that it's not. If somebody can erase all record of what Bobby Henderson did 8 years ago last June, then maybe... but until then. No... just... no.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Religious exceptions for headgear are made for those who constantly wear such headgear (nuns wear their habits every waking moment, women of certain Muslim sects must cover their faces when in the presence of men who are not their relatives, Jewish men always use their skullcap, etc) and not just as a fashion statement.
Is this guy seriously a Pastafarian? Does he wear the colander on a regular basis, or was this a one-off act to get attention? Of course Pastafarianism is made up and meant to poke fun at religions. No one seriously believes in the Flying Spaghetti Monster. If this guy gets pulled over by a cop and doesn't have his colander on, is that evidence that he committed FRAUD by claiming he wore it in the license photo as part of his religion?
There is an axiom of computing that proposes that any sufficiently complex system is implicitly intelligent.
The most complex system in existence is the universe itself.
Therefore the universe is intelligent.
That does not mean the universe gives a shit about you, me, or the whole freaking planet any more than I care about the death of a cell in my body.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
FSM!
: D
Uh, Linux geek since 1999.
What he is doing is attempting to destroy Ausyian freedom with the heckler's veto. I don't know if it is legal there, but it is illegal but done here in the US.
Correct Horse Battery Staple: 72 bits of entropy. Enter "Correct H" into google. When it generates the phrase, that's
Since Castillo claimed his bogus religion as the reason for requiring his picture to be taken wearing the Colander... the DPS should have included a restriction code "P" on his drivers license requiring him to also wear it whenever he was driving too.
ALL religious organizations need to devote massive PR to disavowing their own nutjobs, instead of a weak passive disapproval. Hunting them down, and disowning them out kind of disapproval. They seem to like having a few rabid members around.
They can have my command prompt when they pry it from my cold dead fingers.
...their heads examined are those who are always suggesting that others need their heads examined.
And yes, my head has been thoroughly examined multiple times, so thus I am quite qualified to be making this statement... I'm starting my psychiatry residency now. In 4 years I'll be "examining heads" professionally for a living ;-)
My experience in Virginia, and at most DMVs I've heard of in recent years, is that you are not allowed to smile in your photo. They instituted this rule because apparently it throws off the facial recognition algorithms. Because your "driver's license" is actually your ID for most things, and because it is also the means by which the government collects biometric data on everyone for the massive shared databases. Currently used when you go to a major sporting event, for one example (everyone entering is face scanned and matched). I don't think the facial recognition is used by the police in driver stops, though (yet).
Why discuss with the arational?
RE: "it's a little presumptuous of you to claim to have any kind of understanding of a power that is, by definition, beyond your comprehension?"
You can "prove" anything or "establish" anything if you beg the question.
If someone starts off by denying the possibility of a rational human discussion the only winning move is not to play.
underscore bracketing is the way in old-school ASCII to simulate underlining, that is to emphasize certain words or phrases, set things off for citation, etc.
Using underscore bracketing in an HTML environment is just another way of saying "I am a greybeard and have forgotten more than you will ever know. Oh, and _GET OFF MY LAWN_"
Han shot first!
Wait... what forum is this again?
Those aren't noodles, they're tentacles.
The Flying Spaghetti Monster is really Cthulhu!
Pasta fthagan, Ia! Ia!
+Beard didn't fit on Subj line, but all 3 were to be seen "masking" licensee's photo.
We think it was OK... since S. AU's gov't had same person's Driver's license in its database.
Why should beard + sunglasses + hat be OK on a firearm license???
Well, if someone finds that f/arm license, why make it easy to know who to follow home, eg, as footwork before breaking-in to steal guns...?
We say ir should be the norm, along with instructions to consider shaving off the eard, to make it even harder to make use of by such crims. Such licensees could also be advised to to to the photo shoot with coloured hair, for the same reason.
Sure, smartass, you have have yer license pitchur taken with a colander, BUT!!! you must have a colander on your person when you drive.
This sig is not paradoxical or ironic.
Pffft America... we've had at least one of these, too:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2382465/Im-Pastafarian-Man-claims-religion-forces-wear-sieve-head-given-permission-wear-official-identity-card-picture.html
"Austrian authorities required him to obtain a doctor's certificate that he was "psychologically fit" to drive."
Just curious, but do they ask the same of anyone wearing a cross, a turban, a kippah, etc?
No? Didn't think so.
Most Atheists seem to be more on the Agnostic side of things; in that they acknowledge there might be, or there might not be a god. There is no solid proof either way though it's looking less and less likely given the claims of the Theists.
Stop trying to marginalize us. Agnostics call themselves agnostics or use a phrase of some sort to summarize their beliefs, and are usually fairly upfront about not wanting to be called atheists. Atheists by definition (hint: a-theist) do not believe in a god, and most of us are pretty goddamn emphatic about it.
Please help metamoderate.
Very cool example!
As it happens, most scientists would say that yes, they did accumulate evidence that it probably doesn't exist: for certain ranges of mass. A Y2K guy has a narrower Higgs boson hypothesis than a 1960s guy. The later guy knows things, thanks to experiment and absense of finding the particle, that the 1960s guy doesn't. The later guy's hypothesis is more specific.
I'll have a new respect for believers in the paranormal, when one of them says they've searched very hard, and through repeatable experiment have probably ruled out 721 names of Genesha, thereby refining their Ganesha-exists hypothesis to 279 names at most. Learning that Ganesha consistently fails to respond to appeals to 721 names wouldn't be proof that he doesn't have those names or that he doesn't exist, but it'd be something. It'd be evidence, weak though it be. It would pave the way toward further narrowing his names down to where eventually an experiment is performed, where it's learned that by concentrating on one of 3 names, Ganesha does respond to prayers, and then confirming the hypothesis that he exists.
As if. :-)
Some people will say you can't rule out or narrow down any of Ganesha's properties (e.g. his names); there's no experiment which could ever be performed. I agree. That's why I don't consider Ganesha to be a falsifiable theory (i.e. not a serious hypothesis) and why the idea contributes nothing to the body of knowledge. It is worthless bullshit.
"Believe me!" -- Donald Trump