There is a frankly shocking number of so-called "parody-religions," all of which are very humorous if you have the temperament for them. Most don't have enough limelight to have any discrimination, but there is value in knowing about them and their perceptions because they also all make reasonable statements about the nature of religion from an outsider's perspective. I'll be giving you the run-down of what some of the more prominent ones are and what they're saying about religion, so brace yourselves. Full disclosure: some of these are deliberately crude and go out of their way to be insensitive towards religion. There will be a lot of sacrilege discussed moving forward. Seriously. A lot.
Perhaps the most prominent is the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster (FSM), also called Pastafarianism, which basically saw all the different things the other parody religions were doing and put them all together. The basics are that the invisible, intangible Flying Spaghetti Monster created the universe and all things in it in the meatball shape much as it is today with the deliberate and mysterious design to appear billions of years old instead of the thousands that it really is. A pirate named Mosey was blessed with a vision of the FSM after being fed under-cooked pasta. He then spread his religion, setting up shop somewhere east of Europe. Over time, various denominations broke off of the main denomination (including Nin-jah, or ninjas). The full history of the religion is both way more in-depth and unimaginably funny. The purpose of the religion is to point out flaws in reasoning in other religions or their rhetoric. For instance, if you replace the word "God" with "Flying Spaghetti Monster" in any passage of the bible, it will sound ridiculous to think someone might believe that, even though it is functionally no different. It also pokes holes in some of the arguments that defend his existence, basically making the FSM another version of Russell's Teapot (an unfalsifiable object that one claims to exist, believing that because no one can disprove the unfalsifiable statement, it must be true). Basically, if God is invisible and intangible, you can't prove he doesn't exist, so he must exist. The same logic applies to the FSM. It also uses satire to argue against the connection between causation and correlation, stating that because pirates became less common over time and global average temperatures were rising simultaneously, pirates must have been keeping the global environment in balance. This, among other things, were argued for at the religions inception in a letter to the board of education at a university in Kansas from Bobby Henderson, a student at that university who didn't believe creationism should be part of the curriculum for a scientific class. Perhaps theology or philosophy, but not science. He argued that if creationism were taught, it should be the "true" one outlined in that letter. It is important to understand that the religion never admits to being satire, although it is most obviously nothing but that. In fact, that's what the defining characteristics of parody religions are: satire about religion. Learn more about Pastafarianism at their website spaghettimonster.org. Look around. It's an infuriating web design, but you'll live. Others exist of course. The Invisible Pink Unicorn (IPU) is a similar satire about the existence of God using the same logic as the FSM and Russell's Teapot (no, I won't source that, it isn't that relevant, you can fight me). Dudeism (which you'll learn about at dudeism.com) is like Pastafarianism in that it takes an existing belief system and modernizes it. Where Pastafarianism modernizes and satirizes Christianity, Dudeism modernizes and satirizes Daoism. Last Thusdayism mocks creationism assuming it can discern anything true about the world. For instance, the statement that the world was created last Thursday exactly as it was then with only the illusion of having existed for billions of years is exactly as believable as God creating the world a few thousand years ago and used dirt to create Adam and one of Adam's ribs to create Eve. Googlism makes an argument that Google is more suited to be God than any traditional deity at churchofgoogle.org. None are as all encompassing, however, as the Church of FSM, so we'll be focusing on that next week when we look at their reception. Unless we don't because there just isn't anything interesting there. We'll see when I get around to researching it.
4 Comments
Nickie Kettler
2/21/2021 02:36:49 pm
Hi Kian. The blog itself was an easy read. You utilized your source. The post also had little to no errors. One thing I will say is to watch how long your posts are. If they are too long, for someone who may not agree with you or is just reading it because they have to, they may lose interest because of how long it is.
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Kian Pfannenstiel
2/22/2021 06:23:17 am
That's fine, you'll live.
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Katira Kratzberg
2/21/2021 05:09:57 pm
I thoroughly enjoyed this blog. Personally, I never knew that parody religions existed and I feel like not many others did as well. They are extremely comical, but I also wonder why people go out of their way to make these fake religions. I also would like to know if they have some sort of rituals or masses that they hold. The spaghetti one and the comparisons it draws to christianity are hilarious.
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Kian Pfannenstiel
5/9/2021 08:06:35 pm
They're not fake religions, they're parody religions. They are real religions, they have services (Mass is a Catholic thing, Kati) and rituals. Pastafarian Pastors are certified to marry people, though that really doesn't mean all that much. The purpose is to point out flaws in reasoning behind religions. It's not trying to make them all fall apart, but to show that there is a difference between faith and reasoning, and that one must be aware of that.
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