The essay will be parsed thusly:
Part 1: Natural Theology / Natural Revelation
Part 2: The Flying Spaghetti Monster
Part 3: The Invisible Pink Unicorns
Part 4: The God of the Bible
The Flying Spaghetti Monster
That we are left to discuss the Flying Spaghetti Monster and Invisible Pink Unicorns is only indicative of the deleterious effect of the New Atheist movement whereby belittling and clever quips pass for reason and dealing with arguments as our opponents proposes them.
The Flying Spaghetti Monster and the Invisible Pink Unicorns are meant to be on a footing with theism and particularly the Judeo-Christian God. In part 4 we will consider whether the Judeo-Christian God passes natural theology’s / natural revelation’s test. Let us see if the Flying Spaghetti Monster and Invisible Pink Unicorns do so.
In the first instance the shahadah may be stated as: “There is no god but the Flying Spaghetti Monster, and Bobby Henderson (pbuh) is his messenger.” The Flying Spaghetti Monster’s adherent are known as “pastafarians.” The Flying Spaghetti Monster first revealed his presence in 2005 AD to Bobby Henderson who stated,
I and many others around the world are of the strong belief that the universe was created by a Flying Spaghetti Monster. It was He who created all that we see and all that we feel…
He is of course invisible and can pass through normal matter with ease an artistic drawing of Him creating a mountain, trees, and a midget.
Firstly, we should point out that, as per New Atheist “reasoning,” the primary point to make is that the Flying Spaghetti Monster is not a real alternative at all because it raises an even bigger problem than it solves namely: who spaghettied the spaghetti? We may likewise ask: who amassed the meatballs?
Since we cannot answer these questions the Spaghettied One does not answer anything.
The Flying Spaghetti Monster has a physical body and thus, is not immaterial nor spirit: it has extension in space is therefore limited by spatial dimensions and restricted by locality and thus, is not omnipresent. One adherent of the cult of the Flying Spaghetti Monster made specific reference to its “noodly appendage.”
This parody of “The Creation of Adam” is interesting in that it brings to mind the original. In the original God is depicted as a Kenny Rogers looking man (after the facelift); a concept which is certainly not in the least bit biblical. However, I have discerned much truth in the painting which I expressed in my essay The Creation of Adam.
Since the Flying Spaghetti Monster is physical it is subject to the absorption and deflection of light particles and is therefore visible and particularly hued. Bobby Henderson did claim that the Flying Spaghetti Monster is “invisible and can pass through normal matter” and so either Bobby Henderson is a false prophet or the Flying Spaghetti Monster knows how to traverse dimensions.
Since the Flying Spaghetti Monster’s physical body consists of spaghetti and meatballs the constituents of the godhead are as follows: eggs, salt and pepper, flour, water, beef and or pork, basil, parsley, mushrooms, bread crumbs, oil, etc.
Since these physical entities must have, by necessity, preexisted the Flying Spaghetti Monster it cannot be the uncaused first cause. Moreover, the constituents of spaghetti and meatballs must have been amassed by an Intelligent Chef who not only had access to various physical ingredients and knew how to put them together just right, fine tuned them, but utilized cookware and some form of energy with which to cook the ingredients.
The Flying Spaghetti Monster is made of the very materials which it is alleged to have created. It could not have created itself since it would have to have been in order to have created itself.
Since the Flying Spaghetti Monster is composed of various complex parts that were merged it had a beginning.
Since it is physical it is not immaterial.
Since it had a beginning it had a cause.
Since it had a beginning it is not eternal.
It experiences time and is not eternal.
It is limited by space. This is true even if it can pass though matter since it has to “pass through” it in order to make its way to another location. Therefore, it is not omnipresent.
Since it is composed of material objects it is not a contingent being.
The Flying Spaghetti Monster does not pass the test of natural theology.
In addition to what you wrote, FSM and IPU lack legit credible historical evidence for their existence, not to mention we have more than enough evidence that states they were made up as parodies of religion.
ReplyDeleteI'm going to go waaaay off topic for a moment and say that the murder of Tiller the late term abortionists killing yesterday does cause me to face a conundrum. I am an atheist but I detest late term abortion, and I hate murder but, hey, I understand the killer's rational. When I heard he was killed in a church I imediately assumed the killed doctor was in an Episcopal or Lutheran church.
ReplyDeleteOK, you've convinced me, Mariano. The FSM is different from the biblical creation myth. The former is a joke, so the latter must be a delusion.
ReplyDeleteI'm beginning to think that Mariano has suckered us all in with an example of Poe's Law. http://rationalwiki.com/wiki/Poe%27s_Law
ReplyDeleteMariano,
ReplyDeleteI love you. I really really do.
Animated Pasta that resists gravity has little to do with an Uncaused Cause.
ReplyDeleteYes, exactly like god.
ReplyDeleteYou set yourself up for that one Yuckoff. You're always good for a couple of yucks, I'm glad we live in different cities. You're dumb aren't you?
ReplyDeleteIn addition to what you wrote, God, Zeus and the Trimuti lack legit credible historical evidence for their existence, not to mention we have more than enough evidence that states they were made up as religions.
ReplyDeleteOh Baby Huey, with your adorable da Vinci Code conspiracies. Given enough time and the same investigative yardstick, we'll be debating about whether or not Stephen Jay Gould was a Homeric mythical figure, comprising of several authors who wrote an apologia for a crumbling atheist faith well after the 20th Century.
ReplyDeleteUnBeguiled,
ReplyDeleteI love you as well and very much so.
aDios,
Mariano .
Again, posting main body of comment externally to allow more formatting control.
ReplyDeleteMy comment is essentially a clarification on the use of the FSM with numerous examples drawn from your post.
B.A.,
ReplyDeleteThanks for emphasizing the importance of term clarification, particularly the blatant equivocation of 'universe' that seems a major weapon in the apologist's armamentarium.
I have attempted to make this important point myself, by resorting to neologisms forcing the apologist's hand. Nevertheless, they just don't get it. Mariano seems to think shifting the meaning of a word mid-argument is legitimate. I'm not sure how to convince him otherwise.
So does having an evolutionist play-doh from the primordial past just magically and impossibly morphing into wonderful and terrifying shapes of beings from bats to humans, how refreshing!
ReplyDeleteTu quo que to all the Pastafarians out there
More treatment of the FSM found here. Answer the questions if you can.
ReplyDeleteSure thing. Right after you explain why, if god does everything, Jesus never played the bagpipes.
ReplyDeleteMM has a few problems:
ReplyDelete1) Where does it say that "god does everything"
2) And how do you know that Jesus never played the bagpipes?
Your turn to explain now :)
0) your god is supposed to be omipresent and omnipotent; it can't not do everything. if it takes credit for all good things everywhere and everywhen it must also be responsible for all bad things too. bagpipe music, for instance.
ReplyDelete1) where does it say that the FSM is made of conventional pasta?
2) where does it say that Jesus did play the bagpipes?
I'm afraid you are confused. Let's assume that for the moment that omnipotence means that God can do anything. But that doesn't mean he HAS done it. I can do many things that I have never done. I can go to Asia but I've never done that. I can drive my car 120 miles/hour but I have never have. So while God can do many things, that doesn't mean he has done them. Get it?
ReplyDeleteAnd you're still confused about the bagpipes. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. Nowhere does is it said that Jesus played the bagpipes. But nowhere it is written that I traveled to Spain last year, but I did. Jesus could be in heaven now playing bagpipes.
Another example, nowhere in the Bible does it say that Jesus ever had tired feet from all the walking that he did. But does that mean his feet never got tired?
Feel free to try again :)
Suppose I hold a pistol in my hand and curl my trigger finger a quarter inch inward. There is a loud bang!, a flash of light and a puff of smoke. A brief moment later a person standing in front of me falls backward, spouting blood, and quickly dies consequent to rapid exsanguination through the perforation of his left ventricle by a .30 caliber lead pellet.
ReplyDeleteFurther suppose I'm arrested and tried for the murder of the same said man. I plead innocence. After all, I was 50 feet away when the man fell. All I did was twitch my right index finger, I never touched the man. After they stop laughing the jury deliberates for 30 seconds and return a guilty verdict.
And this would be rightly so. In common parlance it is said that a person does, or is responsible for, whatever events can reasonably be predicted to follow from his or her willful act. Its true that the slug punctured the heart, not me personally, but it is also true that I initiated the linked chain of events that launched it to do the harm that was predictably done. It was in fact manslaughter with malice aforethought, in a word, murder.
The only possible defense would be some sort of ignorance of what my act would entail. Perhaps I'd never seen a gun before and didn't know what it was, how it worked or what it did. Maybe I didn't know it was loaded when I pulled the trigger. Maybe... etc. I might conceivably have been ignorant of a number of things in a number of ways to escape guilt.
But an omniscient actor cannot be ignorant of anything at any time or else it is not omniscient. Everything that has happened since the beginning of time, and everything that will happen until the end of time, was known to your god when it pulled the trigger on the Big Bang. All of it's consequences were premeditated. So, if it can be fairly said that I put a hole in the man's chest in the above hypothetical, then it can be said that whatever happens is done by your god, yea, even unto the skirl o' the pipes.
You're correct that, in your world view, Jesus might well be playing the pipes in heaven. Or, maybe he's sippin' dacquiries Bermuda. You can't say that either or neither possibilities are true. Indeed, there's so much that is not written in the bible that ignorance about Jesus' whereabouts and activities is virtually boundless.
And I have to admit I find your state of mind, this knowing and not knowing at the same time, intriguing. How do you reconcile your complete certainty that Jesus must be somewhere doing something with your total ignorance that he is anywhere doing anything?