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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.
In Virginia prisons you must submit to short hair and no beard. Even if it is against your religion to shave or cut forelocks. Those that refuse are kept in segregation. IE the hole. 23 hour lockdown, very limited recreation and privileges. When I was in VA prison we tried to help them. Sneaking items into the hole. There were people with active court cases against this practice that'd had been in segregation for years, even over a decade.
Silence is a state of mime.
This judge will suffer the wrath of doings! He is in deep sauce now.
Clearly, the church of Pastafarianism lacks the spectacular, physics defying mythology necessary for an acknowledged religion.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
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?
This ruling actually makes sense. An important part of a real religion is a total absence of real evidence. There is absolutely no evidence that God or Allah or Vishnu or Jupiter or Zeus or Thor actually exist, making those real religions. But spaghetti does exist. You can likely even find some at your local grocer. I know that my grocer stocks several different varieties, and I actually ate some last week. So that's evidence that spaghetti does exist, which means that any "religion" based around it cannot actually be a real religion, because there is real evidence that spaghetti exists.
So does that mean Scientology isn't a real religion also? After all Hubbard started it as a bet and not because he believed it was real. Of course I can't prove that Hubbard started it as a joke/bet but neither can I prove Pastafarianism was started as anything other than a serious religion. Since Scientology has its little alien in a space ship circling Neptune controlling the religion it sounds just about the same as the Flying Spaghetti Monster.
Dyslexics Untie!
In light of this ruling, would the JavaScript and Rust programming languages be considered religions?
They aren't religions in the traditional sense, like say Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Hindu and Wicca are.
But they aren't intentional satire either, like the FSM is.
Yet their adherents exhibit the same sort of blind, often illogical, devotion that we see from the followers of other religions.
JavaScripters have a holy book in the form of Crockford's "JavaScript: The Good Parts". They worship their saints, including John Resig and Node.js. They don't care how awful JavaScript's semantics are, or how limited its standard library; they're so devoted to it that they will use it anywhere and everywhere, especially when doing so is the worst idea possible.
Rustaceans study the absurd and contradictory Rust Code of Conduct, and base their entire existences around it. They idolize Rust's borrow-checker. They worship Rust developers like Patrick Walton and Steve Klabnik, as well as the Rust Moderation Team. Rustaceans will launch a downmod crusade against you if you don't glorify Rust in the discussion at Hacker News or Reddit.
So should JavaScript and Rust be considered religions? I would think they should, since their followers are actually seriously devoted, and not joking, despite the many contradictions and the complete idiocy we see surrounding such programming languages and their communities.
"A prisoner could just as easily read the works of Vonnegut or Heinlein and claim it as his holy book, and demand accommodation" - That's exactly right. The government cannot judge the validity of a religion.
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.
I stole this from an Ars post, but this is going to be appealed and the State will loose. It's already been seen by the Supreme Court in 1985, specifically Wallace v. Jaffree : "The individual's freedom to choose his own creed is the counterpart of his right to refrain from accepting the creed established by the majority. Moreover, the individual freedom of conscience protected by the First Amendment embraces the right to select any religious faith or none at all. "
http://stuff.co.nz/life-style/...
Much as I share the judge's doubts about sincerity of the plaintiff, I suspect, the ruling will not stand.
He is right — in this case. But it is difficult (if not impossible) to define a criteria — like in that earlier case, where judges where asked to distinguish between erotic art and pornography: "I know it when I see it. Religion is even more difficult to define.
But the whole idea of government — whether in prison or the military, wherever — recognizing a religion and making special accommodations for followers seems like a violation of the First Amendment. I mean the establishing part of it — you can still freely exercise whatever as long as it does not require special accommodations.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
"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 bible and claim it as his holy book, and demand accommodation of Mormonisnm or the church of seventh day adventists. The Christian Gospel is plainly a work of satire, meant to entertain while making a pointed political statement," and thus not a "real" religion.
This is the same argument and it actually makes sense, how do we know that the Bible was not meant as a satire? How do we know the Bible is a holy book? Just because some people said so? You either have to allow everything to be a religion or none of it.
Because honestly, they all sound equally fake and ridiculous. The difference is that Pastafarians aren't required to believe in their God... I'm sorry, but this needs to be overruled. You can't *safely* define what is and isn't a true religion without trampling the spirit of the first amendment.
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.
I do not worship the FSM, but I sympathize.
In the 60s (that would be the 1960s for you young folk), I became a minister for the Missionaries of the New Truth ($10 back when that was real money). We seemed to be a small religion though I never met other believers in person (mail order ministry). It is shocking to think that my faith could be questioned by an arbitrary group of 'authorities'. Might they then insist that I pay 45 years of back taxes? Might they make me take down the giant pink and orange middle finger fetish in my front yard? Could they disperse the devout young maidens with whom I celebrate in connubial bliss every day?
...omphaloskepsis often...
What is and is not a religion? Is taking a position on God a religion? In some ways, atheism is “religious” because it makes a definitive statement about the existence of higher beings, while agnosticism is perhaps not because it refuses to take a position. Buddhism is treated like a religion, but it’s really an orthogonal philosophy, and many people are Buddhists and also some other religion at the same time.
Although I will argue with people whose beliefs defy logic, nobody has the right to dictate to you what you should believe. And that goes both ways. Just because there’s a label for your peculiar superstitions doesn’t mean you can force me to respect you.
We have so many real things that are NOT choices that people struggle with. Race, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation. Hell, in the UK people put you down if you have red hair. I think this “hate speech” thing is bullshit. If you want to flap your mouth about some ignorant belief you have, go for it; you just don’t have the right to interfere in their lives by hurting them, preventing them from getting jobs, etc.
All religions are obviously works of fiction, according to everyone not of that religion...
Take any religion, much more than 50% of living human beings think it's obviously fake.
So, tell me again: what is a "real" religion, objectively?
My Stack Overflow user
Why stop at scientology ?
Bible ? Coran ? Tora ? Any other ?
Thank you, judge, for stating that all religions are fake.
Totof
Well this is going to prove really interesting, can't wait to see if it manages to make it to the supreme court or not.
Om, nomnomnom...
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 Flying Spaghetti Monster Gospel is plainly a work of satire, meant to entertain while making a pointed political statement
This "plainly" here is difficult to judge. How can we be sure any unbelievable religious text wasn't some sort of "pointed political statement" or "satire"?
For example, I now take you back a few thousand years to the drafting of the Book of Genesis:
HEAD RABBI: "Hey, you nimrods! It's time to get to work on that 'history' of our people. I expect to see some results when I get back. Make sure it's entertaining!" [exits]
RABBI A: "Okay, let's get going. God created the universe over 7 billion years."
RABBI B: "Come on. That's not very exciting. How about 7 days?!"
RABBI A: "No way. Nobody will believe that. It's just ridiculous!"
RABBI B: "But maybe that's what we need here. A touch of the ridiculous!"
RABBI A: [scribbles furiously] "Okay, fine. 7 days. And God made a beautiful paradise. And God created men and women..."
RABBI B: "Wait, wait, I got it... maybe the woman is made from the guy's RIB."
RABBI A: "Okay, that is pretty hysterical. And now we need to explain why life sucks so much, and all these stupid rules we have about not being able to eat bacon."
RABBI B: "Hmm... I love me some bacon. What to do? Well, we need God to look completely ridiculous from the start, with all sorts of arbitrary rules. How about we put a tree in paradise with lovely fruit, but the people aren't supposed to eat it for no apparent reason? And then they do, and God just says, 'Get the hell out of here!' "
RABBI A: "BRILLIANT! Hey, I got an idea. Remember that big flood they still tell stories about? What if God told a special 'chosen' guy to build a giant boat and sail around in it?"
RABBI B: "Yeah, and he packed up all the stuff in his house to save it from the flood."
RABBI A: "Wait, wait... no we need to make this even crazier. Remember, we gotta make this silly and entertaining, or nobody will read it. How about the flood covers everything, so the guy has to save all the animals. So he packs up two of everything on his boat!"
RABBI B: "That's insane... and hilarious. Everyone's going to crack up at the ridiculousness of that. And then when they land the boat after the flood, the guy gets all drunk and naked... and his family has to come in and cover him up."
RABBI A: "But, but... he's all drunk and curses the guy who saw him, and thus we can justify serfdom and slavery for millennia!"
RABBI B: "Fantastic! But what are we gonna call the people who get cursed?"
RABBI A: "Well, they keep telling us we can't have bacon. Let's call him HAM!"
RABBI B: "Okay, where do we go now? Well, there's that guy everybody brings up as the founder of our people -- Abram."
RABBI A: "No, when he gets called by God, you gotta add more bacon jokes -- he's AbraHAM... get it?"
RABBI B: "That's really hamming it up..."
RABBI A: [groan]
RABBI B: "Okay, let's say this Abram... er, no... AbraHAM has a guy in his family that lives in a city that needs to be cured."
RABBI A: "Cured? Like bacon! Well you'll need some salt."
RABBI B: "Yeah -- so the guy flees the city, and his wife turns into a giant pillar of salt!"
RABBI A: "That's going too far. This is getting preposterous."
RABBI B: "No, no. Hear me out. And his daughters are so stupid, that after they fle
the judge wrote "there must be a line beyond which a practice is not 'religious' simply because a plaintiff labels it as such
The judge is quite right here, unfortunately for him the Constitution expressly forbids Congress - and by extension him - from drawing that line.
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
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.
This isn't about means of worship, it's that this isn't worship because the guy in question doesn't actually believe there is a flying spaghetti monster.
There are a lot of worshippers who don't believe the literal meaning of their literature. For example, many Catholics don't believe in transsubstantiation, i.e. that the host (wafer) turns into the flesh and the wine turns into the blood of Jesus during communion. That reminds me: https://xkcd.com/1152/
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.
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.
Judges are not the pope; they're not infallible.
[DISCLAIMER: this text is a work of satire and should not be misconstrued as a holy text upon which to base a religion.]
Corporation, n. An ingenious device for obtaining individual profit without individual responsibility. - Ambrose Bierce
A novel about how special agent Adam Lance is sent to steal a crystal skull from the temple of the Snake God is qualitatively different from a book professing the gospel of the Snake God as truth, and the former makes adopting religous belief inspired by the book appear less likely than the latter.
And precisely how do you tell the difference? Because one book has the subtitle "A Novel" and the other has the subtitle "A Religious Text" on the front?
Also, "truth" is problematic here. There are plenty of high-profile Christian and Jewish theologians who claim that many Bible stories were NEVER meant to be taken literally... and sometimes those stories are explicitly framed that way (e.g., New Testament parables) On the other hand, there are plenty of novels that present themselves in a tone as if they were "truth," sometimes even expressed in a first-person narration as if a diary of a real person. So, how exactly do you apply your standard that a religious text should be "professing the gospel.. as truth"?
What it really comes down to is a distinction in what people *DO* with the text, not what the text *IS*. There are plenty of examples throughout history where texts have subsequently acquired meanings and associations that were never intended by the author... but culturally their meaning is now fundamentally connected with these new ideas.
As long as the law says that religious belief should lead to a certain treatment, then it becomes necessary to distinguish between what is religious belief and what isn't.
This is the problem -- "religion" should not have any special status under the law, at least not more so than any sincerely held belief. An example would be "conscientious objector" status in a number of countries, where pacifism could be due to religious beliefs or due to a more general philosophical objection (which is not necessarily religious in nature).
(And yes, there is vagueness in sorting out whether something is a "sincerely held belief" too. But it's at least a somewhat more consistent -- if vague -- standard than granting special status to religions only, whether they are.)
You normatively assert that this should not be the case. Based on the actual judgement, it is the case.
You forgot to add: ...until that judgment is appealed and perhaps clarified (or even overturned). I highly suspect that even if this judgment is upheld by higher courts, the reasoning will be clarified.
This "plainly" here is difficult to judge. How can we be sure any unbelievable religious text wasn't some sort of "pointed political statement" or "satire"?
You're right, we can't be sure. The difference from this to the FSM cult, however (and what probably influenced the judge's ruling), is historical context - yes, we can't be sure the biblical accounts were derived as a political statement or satire, and what little historical context we have don't seem to point this way, so there's plenty of room for interpretation either by religious people or atheists.
The historical context for the FSM cult, however, is well-known, as is known that it is a political statement and satire.
Labeling something as a religion should not give it special privileges. The First Amendment was written at a time when "religion" was the appropriate word. Nowadays, it should be replaced with "belief".
(||) Nehmo (||)
That dialog was just fabulous! +1 for comic genius on your part.
...of L. Ron Hubbard and claim it as his holy book. Oh. Wait.
He never publicly admitted his book/faith was a satire, a joke, etc. He smiled and kept a straight face and said that its real. That's why the FSM didn't make the cut, they admit the farce, they did not take the farce far enough.
I make no claims about whether these Bible stories are true or false ...
Probably false - or at least unsubstantiated. I just checked my copy and there's no copyright, no original publishing date, no references. They mention this person "God" a LOT -- seriously, so much that you'd think he/she wrote the thing -- but there's no history on this person or that he/she even exists. There have even been Lawsuits against God, but they are usually dismissed because the defendant doesn't appear and/or "because God could not be properly notified, not having an address." At the same time - or "simultaneously", as another /.er prefers - a judge noted "God's omniscience ... Since God knows everything, God has notice of this lawsuit." But he/she *still* won't show up for court. Seems really sketchy to me.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
Vi is a modal editor. It has two modes: "Beep repeatedly" and "Break everything".
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
He's a specialist in LAW, not history, philosophy, psychology or religion.
The Deuteronomic requirement to stone to death anyone wearing cotton/polyester clothing, for example?
Whether or not Deuteronomy requires this, even the most minimal fashion sense does.
There are a lot of worshippers who don't believe the literal meaning of their literature. For example, many Catholics don't believe in transsubstantiation, i.e. that the host (wafer) turns into the flesh and the wine turns into the blood of Jesus during communion. [...]
There's a difference though, between disagreement about the details (every religion has this), vs. deliberate unbelief in the professed religion. The judge recognises that FSM initiated as a satirical belief, and is basically calling BS on the claim by these individuals that they *actually* believe and care about this satire-as-religion.
I know we're knee-deep in the whole "but who are you to question others' belief" era... but really, all proponents of FSM that I know are merely being anti-religious. I.e., if someone asked them to list the top 5 most important things in their life, FSM wouldn't make the list, I can assure you. Nor would they have even stumbled into FSM without there being a Muslim/Christian/?? group nearby to push and rile against.
On the upside, the judge has now granted these FSM believers a chance to prove themselves as genuinely religious. It seems that religions only fully develop under rejection and oppression by the current system... so the FSM folk should really be thanking this judge and embracing their opportunity!
The thing with laws is that you need to make them objective. Try coming up with a law that defines an objective difference between religious and non-religious belief.
The FSM certainly contains satire, but it also contains genuine beliefs that are not satire, one of which is the belief that satire is a good tool for their goal of "belief equality" (e.g. that certain religious beliefs should not have special privileges).
And not anyone can be a judge. You need to be qualified to raise enough money to win the judge election in your area.
Laws don't need to be completely objective in that sense. We do not need to be able to perfectly define something to legislate around it. One of the explicit given reasons for regulatory guidance and common law is to address the fact that the black letter law is quite often rather remote from the law as practiced. I get that you might prefer well thought out fully objective laws which don't require much interpretation: I agree with you, judges agree with you and regulators agree with you. But judges and regulators, our legal system, have to deal with laws that don't meet that criteria.
The laws governing religious protection in the United States are from a black letter law perspective often explicitly protections for various credobaptists sects that haven't existed in centuries against the institutional Anglican churches of mother England and those congregationalist and Presbyterian churches often favored by our colonial administrators. For example we know as a matter of fact that one of the concerns raised by the people passing the "no trinitarian oaths clause" (specifically designed for deists and Unitarians) in the constitution is that it could come in later times to be applied to Jews and Muslims. The majority of the founding fathers believed these would be one off cases better left to the courts and didn't feel any reason to legislatively address it. Others wanted to restrict it and so the language became the test clause you read today in the constitution.
The laws aren't objective they are very situational and interpreted by a culture in a cultural context that changes with time.
As for your challenge about religion that's pretty easy. A religion is a cultural system of behaviors and practices within organizational framework for the purpose of decimating the intergenerational continuity of beliefs in particular mythologies, world views, sacred texts, holy places and ethics.
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.
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
Please, judging is not difficult. The idea that you need to be some expert to do it is both dangerous and ridiculous. To the extent that it is true it is a *failure* of judges and the legal system. A (not the, but a) primary goal of any system of laws ought to be the simplicity and understandability of laws by everyone as everyone is, or should be, governed by them and ought to be able to apply them. The idea that we can't all understand the law is absurd and leads to the idea that you then need to be some sort lawyer just to live.