"His Noodly Appendage" ?

Regular readers of this blog know that I appreciate a good parody. I've had a few posts using a parody news website to try and get a few laughs.

This past week, I've been looking into the, so-called, "science" of Intelligent Design (ID) and saw immediately that ID deserved being parodied. But, before I could come up with something really funny on my own, I came upon "The Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster". (CoFSM).

The parody religion is the brain child of Bobby Henderson, who, for his own amusement, sent an Open letter to the Kansas School Board after he learned the school board was holding a hearing to decide whether the alternative theory of Intelligent Design should be taught along with the theory of Evolution.

Wikipedia has this;
"Because intelligent design implies the existence of an intelligent, but not necessarily omnipotent or omniscient designer, some, like Henderson, argued that this designer could, in fact, be anything imaginable."

That, really, isn't too far removed from what Voltaire said about "The Watchmaker Analogy" from which Intelligent Design , huh, evolved.

"[F]rom this one argument, I cannot conclude anything more, except that it is probable that an intelligent and superior being has prepared and shaped matter with dexterity; I cannot conclude from this argument alone that this being has made the matter out of nothing or that he is infinite in any sense [i.e. that he is God]."

From that letter to the Kansas school board, the "religion" - whose members call themselves Pastafarians - has spread at a phenomenal rate.

The CoFSM is popular with atheists and agnostics (known by Pastafarians as "spagnostics") who use it in their attack on religion, but to me, it is more an attack on ID and those who attempt to force their beliefs on others.

The CoFSM web site is located here: