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Worshipping the Flying Spaghetti Monster Isn't a Real Religion, Court Rules (arstechnica.com)
WheezyJoe writes: A court in Nebraska has officially ruled that Pastafarianism is not a real religion, and therefore a prison inmate with "several tattoos proclaiming his faith" will not get $5 million or privileges to order and wear religious clothing and pendants, nor meet for weekly worship services and classes and receive communion. The Federal judge ruled that The Gospel of the Flying Spaghetti Monster is not a "real" religion eligible for protection under the First Amendment...
In ruling against the inmate and the church of Pastafarianism, the judge wrote "there must be a line beyond which a practice is not 'religious' simply because a plaintiff labels it as such... 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 [citing Kurt Vonnegut's Cat's Cradle and Robert A. Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land]. The Flying Spaghetti Monster Gospel is plainly a work of satire, meant to entertain while making a pointed political statement," and thus not a "real" religion.
In ruling against the inmate and the church of Pastafarianism, the judge wrote "there must be a line beyond which a practice is not 'religious' simply because a plaintiff labels it as such... 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 [citing Kurt Vonnegut's Cat's Cradle and Robert A. Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land]. The Flying Spaghetti Monster Gospel is plainly a work of satire, meant to entertain while making a pointed political statement," and thus not a "real" religion.
...of L. Ron Hubbard and claim it as his holy book. Oh. Wait.
From the summary: "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 [citing Kurt Vonnegut's Cat's Cradle and Robert A. Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land]. "
I don't get it -- so inventing a religion from science fiction authors Kurt Vonnegut or Robert Heinlein would be bogus. But inventing a religion from science fiction writer L. Ron Hubbard yields a viable and constitutionally protected religious practice. What's the difference?
And by deciding what is and what isn't religion, we are a step closer to a state religion.
The judge could have used standards applied to other religions (must have a fairly consistent, established dogma; must not pose a hazard to the operation of the prison or prisoners, etc), but instead decided to plant his flag on satire and political stance, which conveniently ignores centuries of Christian political advocacy and the mutant strands of Christianity that appeared with the hippies in the 60s.
I mean Mormonism is an established religion. Snake handlers even get their day.
But to deny religious belief simply because he doesn't like where it originated from is begging for a Supreme Court ruling, and then the floodgates will really be opened.
Until the devotees of pastafarianism start doing crazy self destructive things in the name of the religion, it's a pretty safe bet that they don't take the faith all that seriously.
Why stop at scientology ?
Bible ? Coran ? Tora ? Any other ?
Thank you, judge, for stating that all religions are fake.
Totof
And how many of the people in recognized religions actually believe the stuff their religion preaches? I'll tell you what - if more of them did believe, there wouldn't be so many acting like a-holes out there. So "belief" is a pretty hard thing to prove. I doubt that testing belief in religion (of which ALL have to be taken as fiction by the court due to lack of proof for any of them) is something that a court needs to be getting involved in.
The #1 crime in America is drug possession. Most religions don't say anything about drugs, and if they do it's usually only to say not to consume alcohol and they do not mention any other drug. Many religions even have stories of their priests and ascetics taking hashish and other drugs for enlightenment. So your "nearly all of which are expressly forbidden in major religions" claim doesn't hold water.
[Disclaimer: I'm not a drug user]
I see people whose genuine beliefs look a lot like a parody of Christianity of Islam all the time. They usually call themselves Christian or Islamic respectively.
I think what he was getting to is that there are no reasons for religious exemptions.
In the case of the beards, I assume from your wording it is still forbidden for some people, that doesn't make any sense!
Either there is a good reason to forbid beards, and no one gets one, or there is none strong enough, and everyone can have one.
Do you really think it is fair that someone from religion X or Y can have a beard, but not a guy from religion Z or a non-believer?
Arguably, no real religion has a formal structure or a belief system. Those are just the hollow outward appearances that attempt to take the place of the real religion, which is usually lost forever as soon as its founder dies. "The letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life". Try to write down religious insights, and they slip through the pages like water between the fingers.
I am sure that there are many other solipsists out there.
I'll start by saying that I agree with your post about 100%. My only point of contention is that I actually don't doubt the sincerity of the plaintiff or the validity of the religion. Specifically:
"there must be a line beyond which a practice is not 'religious' simply because a plaintiff labels it as such. [...] The Court concludes that FSMism is on the far side of that line."
He is right — in this case.
I disagree that he is right. The judge correctly identifies Pastafarianism as satire designed to make a political point but then proceeds to make a ruling making that political point invalid. The issue members of the FSM church try to bring to light is that members of religious groups get special treatment all the time. You can't wear hats for your driver's license picture. Wait, your religion says you must wear one? Ok, then you can wear one. Everybody else has to follow this rule, but you can't. Or, in this case, people in jail who are religious get to wear clothing the others aren't allowed to, they get to congregate at special times when others aren't allowed, etc. All the FSM church members want is that whatever rules you create apply equally to everyone. It's not even to remove those privileges from the religious. If there's a reason why inmates shouldn't be allowed these things, that reason doesn't disappear if they're religious. If there's no reason why they shouldn't be allowed these things, then there's no reason it should be banned for anyone.
The judge makes the point that members of other religions truly believe, while members of the FSM don't. But even that's not really true. Members of the FSM truly believe in the tenets of their religion: they truly believe that making special exceptions to the rules to accommodate someone's religion is unfair and unethical. Their practices are designed to bring this perceived injustice to light and are central to their moral code.
Warning: Opinions known to be heavily biased.
Dude, don't use religion as a reason why you're bitter about life and your dad fucked in you in the ass like a nickel whore.
This is exactly the sort of high-class, deep-thinking argumentation I love coming to Slashdot for.
[In case you don't get this, that was sarcasm.]
And in case you didn't notice this, I explicitly noted at the end that my post was meant to be satirical. In other words, I was making a joke to further an important point -- all religions tend to have some elements which can appear ridiculous to outsiders.
I make no claims about whether these Bible stories are true or false -- only that a reasonable person could apply the judge's standard in this case to the opening pages of the Bible and conclude that it was meant to be a parody and/or political satire or commentary. (In fact, in cases like the story of Lot's daughters, it probably was intended to be something like political commentary or even satire to poke fun at the origins of neighboring tribes.) Thus, while I concur with the judge's ruling that I doubt this prisoner has a "serious" religion, the actual judgment standard is pretty arbitrary and doesn't hold up to the kind of deep logical scrutiny we usually demand of legal opinions.
> Vi is definatly a religion :-P
No, vi is a text editor with religious functions available from command mode, emacs is a religion that can also edit text.
I'm just going to have to write the Ravioli Testament in which the FSM makes it very clear that followers of his religion must at no point actually believe he exists.
I'll close it with the admonishment that satire is the only true representation of pastafarian belief.
At this point the judge will have to acknowledge that the prisoner's beliefs are fully aligned to the holy texts and that they are a true follower of the religion.
Or maybe they could stop giving wankers privileges based on arbitrary statements of illogical belief.
The historical context of Mormonism, "Christian Science", and Scientology are well known and documented in detail. If well known fraud and idiocy aren't sufficient to deny them legal status, Pastafarianism ought to be on firm ground.
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