Yeah, I know it’s satire

Published by Bobby Henderson February 21st, 2007 in Hate Mail (and concerned criticism).

Yeah, I know it’s satire.  I’m an atheist, and I hate stupid, narrow-minded fundies as much as anyone.  But honestly, this joke has run its course.  People’s lives can actually get ripped apart by Pastafarianism, though I know you don’t really believe it.  Not as many as by organized religion, but organized religion can’t really be stopped except by massive revolution, whereas Pastafarianism can be.  It was funny for a while, but you don’t seem to realize (actually, some of you probably do) that no one cares anymore, that all the hate mail is faked.  Stop laughing at the rest of the world, and realize that you’re not better than the people who post your hatemail; it’s a /joke/.  And your religion has lost its humor.  So shut up when talking to people you think are stupid.  That was the /real /meaning of the “atheists are so arrogant” post.  He was pointing out that /you/ were so arrogant in believing that there were really that many stupid people in the world.  Some of you, I am now sure, know that all this hatemail is faked.  Tell the others, and get everyone to stop acting such a fool.

RAmen,
bbctol

953 Responses to “Yeah, I know it’s satire”

1. 861 - February 28th, 2007 at 10:47 pm - bill Says:
   
   

   @Roudy Wench
   I can see that maybe the way you use the term ‘guilt’ maybe mixes the two terms ‘guilt’ and ’shame’ as i mean them. I don’t see how to figure out the language right now. But it’s interesting.
   The idea of ‘Original Sin’ is incredible. Not only from the standpoint of adam and eve but it seems to imply that we can inherit sin from our ancestors. I’ve often wondered what it would be like to be German and realize that as a culture you are till being held responsible for things done before you were born.
   Not that I think that a culture shouldn’t be aware of cultural character flaws. Like maybe Americans maybe should watch out for the tendency to go back to slavery or at least think of some people as less than human. But at some point you give assurances that you’ve learned and gone past that. And at that point we need to move on.
   But to believe that Adam and Eves “major trangression” of not following the lord’s commands gets passed on to everyone else, is close to insane. Not only does passing it on not make sense but the original crime was not following orders when no reason was given for why the orders should be followed made no sense.
   Let me say this. If I had to do it all over again and the lord told me not to eat the apple because he said so and that’s the only reason, I’d eat the apple. Who does he think he is? (Besides God)
   Maybe I should inhereit the eternal guilt, but I’ll take it.

2. 862 - February 28th, 2007 at 10:48 pm - Rowdy Wench Says:
   
   

   @ Batman - woo hoo! Not abandonded! :) Thanks for the book recommendations - will write those down.
   Insanity begins with actually believing what is being posted there. I haven’t been to the sites, but it seems to me that as long as you don’t believe what you are saying there then the sanity doesn’t end!
   I was going to address the concept they have of rape…and got upset so I need to leave it alone. Religion teaches such hideous ideas about sex and women…urgh…at 36 I’ve finally unwound a bunch of it - thankfully!

3. 863 - February 28th, 2007 at 11:00 pm - Batman Says:
   
   

   @Rowdy Wench
   Yeah, I think that was when I started getting a little bit angry with them. Their ideas on rape and sexuality honestly make me just a little bit sick. I want to say something, but I feel myself getting really really mad, and then I know I won’t get any kind of point across. (I don’t do well with arguments when I am really angry… tend to stutter and lose track of everything I want to say)
   .
   @Thumper
   Ola!! Mass banning? Are we just going to swamp them with wave upon wave of rhetoric and vitriole? Not that I am against that, neccessarily, I just hope I get an invite. =) Had enough of their mean-spirited and frankly stupid advice to people who are in too much pain to know better.
   .
   Yeah Fight Club… I’m not a fan of Brad Pitt, but Edward Norton is stellar. Loved the movie… have you read any of his other books? You want to read something that takes a wonderfully cynical (yet disturbingly realistic) look at religion? Read Survivor… I can’t spell the name but it’s Chuck Pahlaniuk (I’m sure you know this). You would love that book… right up your alley, full of sarcasm and scathing commentary on how out of control religion can get.
   .
   I’m for bed now, people… I hope I will see you all tomorrow, on FSM and the “exercise in insanity” we have going over at the Xian-site.
   G’night!

4. 864 - February 28th, 2007 at 11:04 pm - Rowdy Wench Says:
   
   

   Hi Thumper!! I recommend a “united front” if the Pirates want to attempt a mass banning attempt - have a plan for what to say so that it appears as exactly what it is - a coordinated attack. Should be more fun that way… :)

   @ bill - Communication is such a hard thing! I don’t know how people ever find a way to use English well. I’m not sure at the moment how to clarify my concepts of guilt and shame - only just started thinking about it. You are correct - it is interesting! These are the things that keep us up at night at my house. A friend told me a few weeks back “You guys are really intense” and yeah, we are! Anyway, after the day I’ve had it’s hard to get my head into really thinking about this. I must say that oh my FSM I hate the idea of “because I said so”! I grew up with a mother who used that to justify her rules/orders and that is absolutely not good enough…

5. 865 - February 28th, 2007 at 11:27 pm - Rowdy Wench Says:
   
   

   @ Thumpie - One of our favorite sayings in my house is “This is your life, and it’s ending one minute at a time”. Not sure if that’s in the movie or in the Dust Brothers music they made later, but it’s a good quote nonetheless!

   @ bill - will keep thinking about this! Good stuff…

   I’m out for the night. It’s been a long day and we aren’t done yet…

6. 866 - February 28th, 2007 at 11:30 pm - Thumper Says:
   
   

   @Rowdy
   “have a plan for what to say so that it appears as exactly what it is - a coordinated attack. Should be more fun that way…”
   I just have this mental image of Millsey sitting at his desk reading “Hustler” under a Xtian magazine when an alarm like you’d imagine they have on the space shuttle starts sounding and a disembodied female voice says…”security alert threads two, five and seven…threads three and nine compromised…”…Millsey would then scurry about madly editing and banning away…Praying to the almighty that he smite the nasty Pastafarians and preserve the pay pals from harm…Oh lordy… if only we had a Pastafarian “inside man” with a camcorder for U tube…

7. 867 - February 28th, 2007 at 11:32 pm - Thumper Says:
   
   

   @Rowdy
   That line is most certainly a Fight Club line…”The things you own end up owning you…”…a wabbit favourite…

8. 868 - March 1st, 2007 at 12:09 am - Rowdy Wench Says:
   
   

   @ Thumpie - hahaha! I love your mental image…
   And now I’m going to pass out…been a long day!

9. 869 - March 1st, 2007 at 3:06 am - DutchPastaGuy Says:
   
   

   @Rowdy Wench
   “was talking to a friend earlier who’s daughter is dating someone Catholic. She was asking him (my friend) if she marries this guy is it OK if she raises the kids Catholic? He said to do whatever she wanted, it wasn’t his call. But, everyone he knows who was raised Catholic has spent a LOT of time and money recovering from it!”
   If noone asked for your opinion it would probably be wrong to push them hard not to raise their kidds as Catholics. HOWEVER, if asked about your opinion……..why not give it, plain and very clear. You might be helping some as-yet-unborns to live without original sin guilt and that sort of stuff.
   @all
   At the moment I don’t want to be part of any mass banning. I’d like to stay in the ‘friendly hardline atheist’ character a bit longer. I’ll try to be well-reasoned and polite. No responses from real fundies to that sofar. They want to know how to talk to an atheist, but when one very openly (and sofar politely) announces himself, they’re lost for words. I may request some of you to provide some response fodder that I can pounce on to do more atheist reasoning. It worked well with JBs Spanish character sofar.
   Btw, I didn’t refrain from mentioning FSM because it would get me banned personally, but because it might lead them to this thread and get us all kicked out. Mentioning the FSM as a wonderful bit of satire doesn’t have to be rude and shouldn’t get me banned I think. But it might get you all tossed overboard. Wooops, posting this they would be on to me and would kick me out too. Oh well.

10. 870 - March 1st, 2007 at 3:46 am - GurgleSploit Says:
    
    

    Well, I read about 3/5 down the massive chain of replies, and let me say (while my suggestion has no relation to any of fellow posters, and is soley my own and in no way reflects the belief of others) congratulations on eviscerating the idiot.

    The whole thing was working for me as a valid source of argument (save the whole “People’s lives can actually get ripped apart by Pastafarianism - huh?”) until bbctol (Or ‘Ishmael’ or whatever - what, is this person in 11th grade, fresh out of reading ‘Moby Dick’ or something? Ishmael, cool name, man.) began to constantly contradict himself (I base this assumption of gender off the name ‘Ishmael’). My grasp of his overall argument (or rather, what I see as backing up against a wall) is:

    1) “I’m an atheist, and I hate stupid, narrow-minded fundies as much as anyone”
    -Here, we have someone who does not believe in God, and like us, decries fundamentalists who try to impress their ideas onto others. Sounds good, except for the ‘hate’ part.

    2) “FSM fuels the controversy, and just causes equal hatred on both sides. This is not working towards peace.”
    -Well,
    I) here Ishmael points out that a)peace = goal, and b) hate = not working towards peace. Didn’t Ishy just say that he hated fundamentalists? I thought hate was bad - poor form, ‘Ishmael’ (Hey, he’s been arguing semantics the whole time, why shouldn’t we?).
    II) controversy has never had anything to do with peace and violence. Controversy is merely created when traditional views are challenged, and people are uncomfortable with a shift in standards, which is at the very front of what we are trying to create in the first place. Should we simply not question religion at all? Some atheist you are.

    3) “Accept that Pastafarianism can be a bad influence in some people’s lives, and don’t lash out so viciously at religion.”
    -This is stupid for two reasons:
    I) Pastafarianism can’t be a bad influence in people’s lives - that’s like saying possessing beliefs from any religion at all is detrimental. If I am interpreting Ishmael’s previous posts correctly (’My parents thought it was bad…our relationship was strained…differences caused the problems by fueling a difference of ideas’…etc), then let me posit this: Hypothetically, say I was Muslim, living in a Christian household; my beliefs would be no less valid than theirs, yet they would be grievously upset with me, undoubtedly - so Ishmael is saying that I should just cave and take up their Christian beliefs, simply because They view my Islamic beliefs as ‘a bad influence’?
    To reduce this to it’s base form - Ishmael is saying that belief in any religion at all is ‘a bad influence’.

    II) It seems that now Ishmael is actively defending religion, like the fundamentalist we all knew he was deep down inside. “Don’t lash out at my beloved religion!” he cries.

    Religion deserves to be lashed out at, for all the terrible things it has done. And can you say otherwise? - The Christians embarked on a crusade, slaughtering countless innocents, the Spanish Inquisition tortured and murdered anybody who did not agree with their viewpoints, and who knows how many have been branded and exiled, or even stoned to death because of their deviation from religious beliefs; we here of the FSM faith simply call you stupid. It seems to me that Pastafarians, as a group, ‘lash out’ less ‘violently’ than members of major religions have. QED

    I generally don’t like name calling, but my dear Ishmael, you deserve it. We could deconstruct each of your arguments individually, but you’re such a sewage pipe that it would take forever.

    Who’s the fool now, you chode?

11. 871 - March 1st, 2007 at 4:23 am - minusch Says:
    
    

    hejhej.
    I’m a german roman catholic and I found this page on of a universitiy-forum.
    While reading the first 20 replys I decided to react, too.

    I don’t fear different believes and if someone beliefs in FSM I have a much better feeling than if someone beliefs in money.

    religion always separated families, friends, people. the same with sience. or political direction. or sexuality.
    systems need to keep themselves at the point where they feel strong. If one member of the system changes his/her behaviour. all others have to react/to change. Strong groups (such as a familiy) can evolve strategies to cope with the new situation, but also strategies to get back to the former strong point. That is where trouble for the changer starts. And that is what characterizes groups defined by religion: unflexibility and the fear to lose one of them to something not-as-religious-as-there-truth-is.

    This problem is not about blaming someone. It’s about understanding why some people don’t have a choice, wether to change their mind or keep some secure situation alive. And if the group cannot open their minds for to hear what the changer really wants, he/she would fall out of it as a logic consequence (or gets back and cancels his/her new opinion).

    It can be seen as a form of weakness to fear something as FSM. Exspecially because they don’t proclaim nothing, don’t want to get part of classes and have no need to spread over the whole world. And pasta really is healthy! So what’s better? Youths running behind drugdealers or begging for pasta? Adults surpressing their homosexuell children or presenting a tortelini-meal for to talk about the new feelings?

    I will stay romancatholic in my heart. But I love your alternative to fundamentalism and mindborders. Maybe my god and your’s could have dinner sometime. :)

    warmth,
    minusch.

12. 872 - March 1st, 2007 at 4:27 am - BobfromEngland Says:
    
    

    Bobbyhendersonministeries. Wow, scarey guy. Isn’t it great that they get to call themselves “Bishop” or whatever just cos one of their mates calls them that?
    How about Archdeacon Thumper, Abbot Bill, Monseigneur Jean Bart, Metropolitan Alchemist, Archimandrite Rowdy Wench (I promise I’m not making these up they’re “real” xtian ranks in their clergy). Remember Chris in Northern Exposure “I bought my DD (that’s Doctor of Divinity not a bra size!!) from Rolling Stone Magazine”.

    @ Bill and Rowdy Wench
    For most people guilt, shame and remorse are, I think virtually synonymous. Also they are experienced rather than abstract concepts so it might be more helpful to think about them as feeling guilty, ashamed and remorseful. Rowdy Wench is right in that you can be indoctrinated with such emotions through the religion which you are taught as a child, but I would argue that once you dismiss those teachings you can and should ditch the emotions which went with them. Hence you free yourself from fear of hell at the price of losing the imaginary comfort blanket of life after death, but you also lose any sense of guilt which resulted from being taught about sin. One of the consequences of this is that you have to think about what sort of morality you wish to adopt to replace the values that you reject when you reject your birth religion. Prof Dawkins argues in “the god delusion” that we have an almost Darwinian sense of morality. Whilst I think he’s right at a basic level, because of the reasons for which it has evolved it is unlikely to give us answers to some of the more complex moral questions confronting us today. If you take abortion, for example, I think most people would agree that in the abstract terminating life is a bad thing. We don’t agree with killing people generally, we don’t agree with automatically killing people when they reach 70 or 80, most people who have any intelligence don’t support the death penalty. Yet, if the life of the putative mother is in danger of if the pregnancy is the result of rape most people who post here would probably agree that the termination is the preferable option, however it is “the lesser of two evils”. Hence we retain a concept of good and evil which is not derived in any way from religion but built up, like all good science, by hypothesis and experiment, in this case thought experiment.
    “Useful” feelings of guilt/shame/remorse come from when we transgress those moral rules which we have worked out for ourselves by experiment. They are the result of knowingly doing wrong. I recall an incident over 30 years ago when I was at university and seduced a young lady who was too drunk to give informed consent. I knew that what I was doing was wrong, but I did it anyway and have had a sense of remorse ever since. More importantly I learned from that error and can honestly say I’ve never done it again (of course I’ve had sex when both parties were drunk but not the first time in a relationship). However, despite learning the lesson I’ve continued to feel guilty remorseful and ashamed of my original behaviour though I can’t distinguish which word is most applicable.
    Sorry about breaking the scroll rule but your discussions have got very interesting recently!

13. 873 - March 1st, 2007 at 10:27 am - Physics Wench Says:
    
    

    Hi all,
    Haven’t posted much, but have been an avid reader of the site.

    Reading this stuff made me want to join in on the fun. I’m now a part-time clerk at a Christian Book Store. This means I’m more coherent than the average person on the fundie forum, so if that could be useful to anyone, let me know. ;)

14. 874 - March 1st, 2007 at 10:42 am - DutchPastaGuy Says:
    
    

    @Physics Wench
    Welcome to the FSM website, may you be touched by His noodly appendages.
    If I may ask: what area of Physics?

15. 875 - March 1st, 2007 at 10:56 am - Rowdy Wench Says:
    
    

    @BobFromEngland - I love being an Archimandrite! The power is making me all tingly! Oh wait maybe that’s something else…hahaha! :)
    On a serious note, thanks for joining in the guilt/shame discussion. You have some excellent thoughts on this. I agree with you about “useful” feelings - spot on. The problem becomes what happens when a person internalizes that guilt/shame and it literally forms the basis for who they believe they are. These become “dysfunctional core beliefs” - I’ve been through a fair amount of Cognitive Behavior Therapy and it’s brilliant so I will use the terminology from that. I have thrown out a huge section of my dysfunctional core beliefs and am getting ready to start on another round (ever closer to sanity - yay!). I have ditched an enormous amount of guilt, shame, anger, fear and self-loathing. In the last 5 weeks or so I have a genuine laugh for the first time in my life, and smile. I am not saying that life is all roses and sunshine, but it’s better all the time.
    On the note of your transgression - thanks for sharing such a personal story. I am thinking it’s possible that you are feeling all of those things (guilty, remorseful and ashamed). As a reminder that you should never do that again, those are useful. Sometimes when I do things I shouldn’t and learn a huge lesson I share it with friends/teenage riding students (when appropriate) so they can learn from my mistakes and that helps me feel like what I went through was useful. But, when the emotions start to eat you alive it’s time to find a way to let some of them go so that you don’t live how I did! Can’t tell where you are from your post; just trying to share some of what I’ve worked hard to learn.

16. 876 - March 1st, 2007 at 10:58 am - Rowdy Wench Says:
    
    

    @ Physics Wench - Welcome back! Feel free to come here to decompress after a challenging day at the Xtian book store…and do tell the good stories! :)

    And now, I’m off to take care of responsiblities…I’ll be back when I can.

17. 877 - March 1st, 2007 at 11:06 am - Rowdy Wench Says:
    
    

    @ everyone - it seems to me that some of my discussion on guilt/shame is inconsistent. This is reflective of my confusion on the matter - please excuse my thought process on this. Confusion is a good thing - it means I’m learning! So bear with me - I’ll get it sorted. Hopefully we will all get better in the process of this discussion!

18. 878 - March 1st, 2007 at 11:29 am - Alchemist Says:
    
    

    @Batman - a number, if not all, evangelical, pentecostal and baptist churches practice baptism by full immersion - certainly, anyone who claims to be a born again xtian will probably have been through this ritual.
    .
    You are taken somewhere to get changed into a white robe. Usually you wear something under this, shorts and T-shirt, swimsuit etc.
    Although the “Assemblies of Bod” insist that the men wear only a novelty “Elephant” posing pouch and the women wear fluorescent green thong and matching nipple tassels. They’re a bit odd though.
    .
    From here you are led to the front of the church where you are led into a big bath tub.
    You walk down the steps where two helpers are already in. You lean back, into their arms.
    .
    As the head honcho babbles something from John about washing your sins away, the two buggers, who you’ve trusted to hold you up whilst you took a nap, let you fall into the water (thus waking you up - try not to scream, they’ll think it’s demons leaving you’re body and they love that kind off thing:) )
    .
    They then lift you out and the band play “Majesty”
    .
    At some point you’ll have to “Witness” as to how you found Jeebus.
    .
    It’s always good for morale if you sex-up your sinful past. Witchcraft, played with a Oui-Ja board as a kid, lesbianism, prostitution, drug use etc. They’ll squirm in pleasure for these.
    .
    Then how you met jeebus. Something corny like “I met him at the pub one night, I was slumped, drunkenly, over the bar when a voice called out to me “Last orders at the Bar….” I knew then that jeebus was talking to me! If I didn’t change, then it would be my last order at the bar, the bar of the lamb of Bod. My last chance to drink the love that is jeebus. HalelloooooooooooolYA.
    .
    Than add some crap about helping to help the poor, have changed, I once was blind and know I see, need to tell everyone about jeebus blah blah blah - BANG one baptism :)
    .
    @Physics Wench - hi there :)
    The more the merrier I say :)
    .
    @DPG - with you on this one. I fancy staying the doubting xtian for a while. If we can get you to convince me of my error on a xtrian site then that could be funny :)
    I want to play for a while yet but I think that could be a good finale :)
    .
    OOOh - mega post for me :)

19. 879 - March 1st, 2007 at 2:49 pm - DutchPastaGuy Says:
    
    

    @minusch
    “I’m a german roman catholic and I found this page on of a universitiy-forum. While reading the first 20 replys I decided to react, too. I don’t fear different believes and if someone beliefs in FSM I have a much better feeling than if someone beliefs in money. religion always separated families, friends, people. the same with sience. or political direction. or sexuality.”
    Welcome to the FSM website. I’m the local, friendly atheist extremist around here. Mind if I poke your mind a bit on Catholicism?
    Being an atheist I’m not high up with any religion, but I always have a specially strange/bad taste about Catholicism. Especially its strong sense of hierarchy. I can’t imagine how any thinking person (from the very short impression that I can derive from your post, you seem to have pondered things at least a bit, maybe very well, hard to tell from just that one post) would say ‘Sure, I’ll let the Catholic Church’s CEO (’pope’ if you will) decide what is good for me’. As a thinking person, don’t you feel you want to decide things for yourself?
    I know that many Catholics do their own thinking, but formally they are then deviating from the Church teachings a little. And if you made up your mind on everything I guess you would not be all that Catholic anymore. After all, the sense of hierarchy is one of the defining characteristics, so if you dump that altogether I wonder if you could still cal yourself Catholic.
    Your thoughts?

20. 880 - March 1st, 2007 at 2:56 pm - DutchPastaGuy Says:
    
    

    @Alchemist
    Ok, I won’t link to here yet, but someone has already mentiond the FSM. I sent an email asking who let the cat out of the bag, but that seems to have disappeared (or will arrive uselessly late). I assume ‘Hyuio’ is among us?
    .
    I could convince you of all sorts of things, but I actually like seeing what the real responses over there would be. Silence sofar. So for the moment just the occasional one or two sentence response to give me an excuse to post will do. I’ll soon take care of the one that ‘midget’ left me about morality. And it will not be outright offensive, but I will explore a bit closer how hard I can make them cringe before I get a warning or bannig.

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