Religion News Service
BEND, OR, USA, June, 2011 (Religion News Service): When congregants of West Side Church and the Christian Life Center awoke in June to news that their churches had been vandalized, their frustration quickly turned to confusion. In addition to the anti-Christian slogans scrawled on the walls of the two buildings, the words “Praise the FSM” were painted everywhere. Churchgoers were left scratching their heads.
But after a Google search, they learned “FSM” stood for “Flying Spaghetti Monster,” the Deity of a spoof religion called “Pastafarianism” that’s popular among some atheists and agnostics.
However, mere hours after news of the vandalism broke, Bobby Henderson, the head of the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, publicly condemned the vandals; and Hemant Mehta, author of the Friendly Atheist blog, posted an online plea for donations to help fund repairs. In less than 24 hours, he raised more than $3,000.
Pastafarianism was founded in 2005 when Henderson, then a physics student, sent a letter to a Kansas school board satirically critiquing the theory of intelligent design by citing “evidence that a Flying Spaghetti Monster created the universe.” For many atheists like Mehta, harmless religious satire is part of the atheist experience.
Atheists in Australia are divided over a parody religion called “Jediism,” based on George Lucas’ “Star Wars” film franchise. Jediism gained attention after some 500,000 people listed “Jedi Knight” as a tongue-in-cheek religious affiliation on 2001 census forms in Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the United Kingdom.
As Australia readied for its 2011 census, however, the Atheist Foundation of Australia urged nonbelievers to mark “No Religion.” Their reasoning, they said, was practical: “Jedi” gets counted as “not defined” instead of “no religion,” and so the nonreligious population is undercounted.
“It was funny to write Jedi once; now it is a serious mistake to do so,” the organization wrote on its website.
But not everyone agrees. “When (religious) people try to dominate the political landscape,” one atheist said, “sometimes the humor you find in things like the Flying Spaghetti Monster is a very subtle and powerful way of pushing back.”