Why you should convert to Flying Spaghetti Monsterism!

WHY YOU SHOULD CONVERT TO FLYING SPAGHETTI MONSTERISM YOU ASK?
Well it is clear once you know these things.

• Flimsy moral standards.
• Every Friday is a religious holiday.
  If your work/school objects to that,
  demand your religious beliefs are
  respected and threaten to call the ACLU.
• Our heaven is WAY better.
  We've got a Stripper Factory
  AND a Beer Volcano. 

        If those things don't make it clear why you would want to join let me get more into it. As a member of The Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, i have found much wisdom from accepting his Noodlliness words as the one and only truth. I have affectedly been touched by his Noodly Appendage.

        Some have claim that the church is purely a thought experiment, satire, illustrating that Intelligent Design is not science, but rather a pseudoscience manufactured by Christians to push Creationism into public schools. These people are mistaken. The Church of FSM is real, totally legit, and backed by hard science. Anything that comes across as humor or satire is purely coincidental. With millions, if not thousands, of devout worshippers, the Church of the FSM is widely considered a legitimate religion, even by its opponents – mostly fundamentalist Christians, who have accepted that our God has larger balls than theirs.

So yes Pastafarianism is a real religion. Most of us however do not believe a religion – Christianity, Islam, Pastafarianiasm etc – requires literal belief in order to provide spiritual enlightenment. That is, we can be part of a community without becoming indoctrinated. There are many levels of belief. By design, the only dogma allowed in the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster is the rejection of dogma. That is, there are no strict rules and regulations, there are no rote rituals and prayers and other nonsense. Every member has a say in what this church is and what it becomes. To outsiders it makes us hard to define, but here are some more general things that can be said about our beliefs:

• We believe pirates, the original Pastafarians, were peaceful explorers and it was due to Christian misinformation that they have an image of outcast criminals today
• We are fond of beer
• Every Friday is a Religious Holiday
• We do not take ourselves too seriously
• We embrace contradictions (though in that we are hardly unique)

       Now you are probably asking yourself is this a joke, so just let me state that It’s not a joke. Elements of our religion are often described as satire and there are many members who do not literally believe our scripture, but this isn’t unusual in religion – it’s only more obvious in the case of our particular religion. A lot of Christians, for example, don’t believe the Bible is literally true – but that doesn’t mean they aren’t True Christians. If you say Pastafarians must believe in a literal Flying Spaghetti Monster to be True Believers, then you can make a similar argument for Christians. There is a lot of outlandish stuff in the Bible that rational Christians choose to ignore. We do the same with our scripture. This is intentional.

We’re are also not anti-religion, even if comes across like that. This is also NOT an atheists club. Anyone and everyone is welcome to join our church including current members of other religions. In addition to the Atheists, Agnostics, and Freethinkers who have joined us, we have a number of Christian (and Muslim, and Hindu and Buddhist …) members and more are welcome. So let me make this clear: we are not anti-religion, we are anti- crazy nonsense done in the name of religion. There is a big difference. Our ideal is to scrutinize ideas and actions but ignore general labels.

      If you still don't believe any of us believe this, well some Pastafarians honestly believe in the FSM, and some see it as satire. I would just make the point that satire is an honest, legitimate basis for religion. Satire relies on truth to be effective. If it’s a joke, it’s a joke where to understand the punchline you must be conscious of underlying truth. Compare our religion to those that are built on lies. I am not talking necessarily about mainstream religions (which themselves are often full of mysticism and ad-hoc reasoning), but think of cults, or churches where the leaders are scamming their followers out of money. These are groups where the followers fully believe. Are these churches legitimate since they have many True Believers?
Or can we agree that religion is as much about community as any shared faith. By any rational metric, Pastafarians are as legimate a religious group as any. Arguably more so, since we’re honest and rational.

If everything i have told you so far hasn't convinced you that the CotFSM is right for you. Maybe this will help, it was really an eye opening experience for me and i hope to live up to the standard of our prophet Bobby, much of what i have written copied and pasted is his words actually.

"But nonbelievers are overreaching when they dismiss the phenomenon of religion as wrong and useless because it so often lacks a basis in evidence. The fact that millions of people get something positive out of a religion – even if it is based in superstition – *does* mean something. But that’s not to say it’s True, only that it has Value. For many people, religion is about being part of a community and being part of something bigger and more important than themselves

Nonbelievers would be better off criticizing only on the negative, damaging parts of religion, and being less judgmental about the idea of religion in general. Nonbelievers get hung up asking for evidence when really we should be looking at why does religion thrive despite evidence? We should be pushing the idea that faith is not equivalent to evidence-based-reasoning without insisting that it’s inferior, only that they are different ways of seeing the world. And that the problems happen when these world views clash." 

      My bases for not liking religion, not just Christianity they are just the loudest, for a long time was a lack of evidence, and all who followed such a religion was obviously stupid to me, because they couldn't see the lack of evidence. Who could put myth and superstition before science and evidence, i always wondered. Our prophet Bobby, both explained that and showed me my errors of my way. I still think religion as a whole is not the answer and that rational thinking is still better, as do many followers of FSM, it one of the main things we believe actually, that rational thinking is a good thing. However, that doesn't mean that people following a religion don't have a personal reason and belief in what they think and that they don't get something out of it. And that means it does have value, to them, and no matter what i think, i can't dispute that value. I still support rational thinking, as i already said, but i can't put them down for that personal belief that give them value, i can however disagree and we can have debates about it, but i can do it civilly as well. I hope that they can do the same with me.

If nothing else, we also want a pirate ship. Does your religion want a pirate ship? Didn't think so.

So now you want to be a Pastafarian, what do you have to do you ask?
Nothing, If you want to be a pastafarian you are. You’ll notice there’s no hoops to jump through. You don’t need to pay anything. You are just a pastafarian as soon as you want to be.

I think i have talked enough now so i will leave you with this

RAhem

A FSM believer and birdkeeper.

LINKS:
HOMEPAGE OF CotFSM
CotFSM ABOUT PAGE( where much of this was copypasted from )