Pastafarianism is a great non-violent method of highlighting the privileged position of organised religions worldwide. When a nation decides that church and state should be separate, and no religion is promoted over any other, you usually end up with a handful of religions with privileges (e.g., tax exemption, access to civilian private records, etc.) that no other organisation can attain. When another religion gains popularity, they too claim these privileges (which is only just, as there is no state sanctioned religion).
This creates a neat conundrum for the lawmaker; what is a religion? When is an organisation a church? Can you legally define what a religion is?
Why is the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster obviously satire, and Catholicism a proper religion? What about Scientology? Is it about the number of adherents? Something tangible? A short-list of pre-approved religions? Pre-approved by whom? On what legal basis?
If you follow this line of reasoning to the extreme, you must conclude that a satirical organised religion is just as much a real religion as any other. Which is fine, but it implies that have to provide the same (legacy) privileges to all, or accept not being a secular state (and rewrite your constitution as a consequence).
Pastafarianism is all about proving this inherent silliness afforded to established religions.
Religions make some kind of honest claim on metaphysical Truth. Satire is at odds with that.
The clever thing is that getting the government to pick winners here is actually worse than letting someone wear a colander in his ID photo. This doesn't undermine organized religion as much as it demonstrates the limitations of liberal government.
My country administratively decided pastafarianism is not a church because it was not created "to observe and spread religious faith". Apparently that's the necessary condition to register a church here. On appeal they just issued same decision again.
Because 'Catholicism' is usually embedded deep in a nations history, and flying spaghetti whatever is shit someone decided was funny.
For example the province of Quebec has made a great push to remove religious symbols from many places but you'll still see a lot of catholic symbols everywhere including on/in official buildings because you know.. history/culture.
No, it's just perpetuating the very damaging mindset of 'everything must be codified and spelled out into tedious detail'. Look, I enjoy taking the mick out of religion as much as the next guy, and there are many cases where current practices wrt government treatment of organisations based on faith or philosophical convictions haven't caught up with modern views of separation of governments. And yes, that 'last mile' of leveling the playing field takes some people to make a case for it; and will cause some social strife etc and that's all to be expected in a free society.
However, basing such 'activism' (for a liberal definition of that word) on pedantic (and frankly, juvenile) definition games is not the way to go about such a thing. All it leads to is the actual manifestation of the (satirical, debunked) 'EU regulations on the sale of cabbage' (x). It's pointless, much like the definition of what constitutes 'pornography', or what warrants moderation (see the articles on that topic today and yesterday).
It's not like "This creates a neat conundrum for the lawmaker; what is a religion? " is a new or even insightful question. It has been asked for thousands of years. It's fine to have people writing theses and books about it, but for pragmatic purposes, it's senseless to demand an 'algorithmic' answer where a precise set of rules allows one to machinistically answer it for every possible case one can throw at it. I've been banging this drum many times on this site, but that's simply not how policy making for diverse groups of humans works, much to the chagrin of many of us here who prefer our human interactions with as low levels of ambiguity as possible (for clarity: yes, I'm saying, in a roundabout manner, "let's try to keep our autistic tendencies in check".)
So no, one "must" not conclude that any religion is as much a religion as others. In the end, it's all just social constructs, and social constructs just do not work the way you claim. Courts across the world have ruled on organizations being 'religions' or not, and while here and there there is a debatable one, it's not as indecidable as you make it out to be. (one of my favorite ones is that of the 'Sisters of Saint Walburga' where the Dutch Supreme Court decided in 1986 that an organization that claimed to be a religion with one of its main rituals being offering live sex shows to paying audience members was, in fact, not a religion but rather a sex club masking its commercial leitmotiv behind a claim of religion. Shocker!)
Anyway, TL/DR: Pedanticism bad, common sense good - 'pastafarianism' long in the tooth, let's not encourage anything that gives us even more rules and laws and regulations, it's bad enough as it is with anti-social assholes exploiting corner cases (and that goes for all sides).
(x)
Pythagorean theorem: 24 words
The Lord's Prayer: 66 words
Archimedes' Principle: 67 words
The Ten Commandments: 179 words
The Gettysburg Address: 286 words
The Declaration of Independence: 1,300 words
The European Commissions regulations on the sale of cabbage: 26,911 words
There appear to be a number of sects with varying positions on the Ninja question. I pray this does not devolve into sectarian Sunni vs Shia style warfare between the Pirate and Ninja faiths.
http://uncyclopedia.wikia.com/wiki/Pastafarian_Sects
[+] [-] Freak_NL|10 years ago|reply
This creates a neat conundrum for the lawmaker; what is a religion? When is an organisation a church? Can you legally define what a religion is?
Why is the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster obviously satire, and Catholicism a proper religion? What about Scientology? Is it about the number of adherents? Something tangible? A short-list of pre-approved religions? Pre-approved by whom? On what legal basis?
If you follow this line of reasoning to the extreme, you must conclude that a satirical organised religion is just as much a real religion as any other. Which is fine, but it implies that have to provide the same (legacy) privileges to all, or accept not being a secular state (and rewrite your constitution as a consequence).
Pastafarianism is all about proving this inherent silliness afforded to established religions.
[+] [-] humanrebar|10 years ago|reply
The clever thing is that getting the government to pick winners here is actually worse than letting someone wear a colander in his ID photo. This doesn't undermine organized religion as much as it demonstrates the limitations of liberal government.
I'm not sure that's a win for anyone.
[+] [-] scotty79|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sickbeard|10 years ago|reply
For example the province of Quebec has made a great push to remove religious symbols from many places but you'll still see a lot of catholic symbols everywhere including on/in official buildings because you know.. history/culture.
[+] [-] roel_v|10 years ago|reply
However, basing such 'activism' (for a liberal definition of that word) on pedantic (and frankly, juvenile) definition games is not the way to go about such a thing. All it leads to is the actual manifestation of the (satirical, debunked) 'EU regulations on the sale of cabbage' (x). It's pointless, much like the definition of what constitutes 'pornography', or what warrants moderation (see the articles on that topic today and yesterday).
It's not like "This creates a neat conundrum for the lawmaker; what is a religion? " is a new or even insightful question. It has been asked for thousands of years. It's fine to have people writing theses and books about it, but for pragmatic purposes, it's senseless to demand an 'algorithmic' answer where a precise set of rules allows one to machinistically answer it for every possible case one can throw at it. I've been banging this drum many times on this site, but that's simply not how policy making for diverse groups of humans works, much to the chagrin of many of us here who prefer our human interactions with as low levels of ambiguity as possible (for clarity: yes, I'm saying, in a roundabout manner, "let's try to keep our autistic tendencies in check".)
So no, one "must" not conclude that any religion is as much a religion as others. In the end, it's all just social constructs, and social constructs just do not work the way you claim. Courts across the world have ruled on organizations being 'religions' or not, and while here and there there is a debatable one, it's not as indecidable as you make it out to be. (one of my favorite ones is that of the 'Sisters of Saint Walburga' where the Dutch Supreme Court decided in 1986 that an organization that claimed to be a religion with one of its main rituals being offering live sex shows to paying audience members was, in fact, not a religion but rather a sex club masking its commercial leitmotiv behind a claim of religion. Shocker!)
Anyway, TL/DR: Pedanticism bad, common sense good - 'pastafarianism' long in the tooth, let's not encourage anything that gives us even more rules and laws and regulations, it's bad enough as it is with anti-social assholes exploiting corner cases (and that goes for all sides).
(x)
(edit: formatting)[+] [-] MikeNomad|10 years ago|reply
Cheers to the Newlyweds. May their pasta bowl never be empty.
[+] [-] chippy|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tim333|10 years ago|reply