Dear my beloved Christian friends and families,
I think I do owe you an explanation, as I put my religion belief as Flying Spaghetti Monster on my Facebook.
If anyone knows me a bit, you would probably know that I concur with all religious beliefs. Being a pretty much completed Agnostic myself (no, not a Skeptic), which is tragic enough, to me the system of faith is as valid as the system of logic or rational reasoning (that is deduced from the fact that intuitive knowledge should be as valid as empirical knowledge). To make it simpler: if you tell me “I believe in the Christian God, and God created the universe”, your statement should be as valid as a scientist's statement saying that “I believe in the high probability that the theory of Big Bang is correct and our universe begins with a process of probability wave collapse resulting in a Big Bang, and there is nothing before that (or nothing in the sense of any tangible ideas in our universe) because Time itself is created by the event.” (the definition of validity should be based on its benefit to humanity, but should be dealt with in another essay so that I can stick to my subject at hand).
I have many Christian friends and family members, who benefit greatly from their belief, and live a rich and successful life, that I am proud of you. It is no question that religious beliefs are a major element being part of humanity that makes us human.
On the other hand, let’s go back to the subject:- Flying Spaghetti Monster (further info can be found at Wikipedia, of course, don’t forget to donate to them once a while, haha).
Flying Spaghetti Monster (FSM) is a parody religion. In this religion, its belief is that there at one point of time a Flying Spaghetti Monster created the universe and human beings. And since It created us all and It is so almighty and all knowing and kind to us and love us, we should worship It and it is a valid religion. The most powerful proof of Its existence is based on the logical argument of ‘Intelligent Design’ – that when we look around us, our world, plants and animals, and human beings, we are such a wonderful living creature with so complex a biological structure that it is impossible for us to conceive that there is no creator who created us. Hence, our own existence proves that Flying Spaghetti Monster exists, and It, being the almighty creator, created the universe and us.
Why is there such a parody religion? It is originated during around 2005, when there was a Christian community requesting the high school somewhere in the States that their science class should teach the theory of “Intelligent Design” alongside with the theory of “Evolution”. Hence, the school board was holding a hearing on this case, and the creator of FSM (a guy named Bobby Henderson) created this religion to protest with the board that the theory of FSM should be taught in science class as well.
Although the parody religion of Flying Spaghetti Monster is mostly used by Atheists to counter Christian beliefs, we have to know the actual intention is that FSM is countering the “Intelligent Design” argument only. The “Intelligent Design” argument is indeed a fallacy arguing, with false logic, that our existence proves the fact that a Christian God exists. And if we teach this in science class, we will be literally teaching false logic in logic class. The intention to mix up the system of logic to the system of faith will result in disaster consequence. Science provides us with a tool to create things that based on logic, reasons, and empirical knowledge. It allows us to build machines and technology, and without it, not only we cannot build cars, we can’t even build solar power or do ecology studies that safe our future. Science study theories that are probable, but not final truth (as science consistently proved previous theories to be wrong and continuously doing that). There is always a probability that the theory of evolution is totally wrong, and science allows this probability. It is if Christians can confirm that there will always be a probability that God does not exists, than we can start to consider teaching the theory of Christianity in science class.
On the other hand, we can see that FSM is a valid argument against the theory of Intelligent Design. However, it is weak for atheists in arguing against Christian belief. As I mention earlier, intuitive knowledge is considered to be valid by so many philosophers (although subject to conditions), to use an argument of intuitive knowledge (that God does not exist) to counter another intuitive knowledge (that God exists) does not work. We all know that there will never be any kind of logical proof that an atheist can produce to prove that God does not exist. Hence, don’t be alarm when you see FSM. We only want to leave science alone as it is. If anyone wants to argue with logic, we might probably argue whether we should abandon science and go back to the Stone Age for the sake of the universe… that sounds to be a more convincing logical argument.
