Last updated 7/2008
Q: Who are you?
A: My name is Bobby Henderson. I’m 27. I grew up in Oregon and move around a lot. I have a physics degree and have successfully avoided a “real” job for years.
Q: Did you really send the Open Letter to the Kansas School Board?
A: Yes. But, I received no replies until after I posted the website online and the School Board started getting lots of emails about it. You can read some of the responses I received here.
Q: Are you an atheist / heathen / what?
A: I don’t have a problem with religion. What I have a problem with is religion posing as science. Teach Creationism in school, fine, but don’t teach it in a science classroom. And don’t change the definition of science so that you can teach these things. That’s retarded.
Supernatural explanations are by definition not science, so why would you teach them in a science classroom?
Religion, itself, isn’t bad. But it isn’t necessarily good, either. There are plenty of good Christians (and Muslims, and Buddhists, and Hindus), and plenty of bad ones.
Dogma is bad for everyone.
Q: You are making God angry.
A: I doubt it. If there’s a God, and he’s intelligent, then I would guess he has a sense of humor. And how do you know He is NOT a Flying Spaghetti Monster?
Q: Do you make money off this?
A: Yes. The Church makes money off T-shirts, car emblems, book sales, and occasionally donations. We are saving a lot of money and pretty soon here we’ll buy our first Pirate Ship which will serve as a floating church, open to all Believers.
Q: Your graph is messed up.
A: No, it’s not. The X-axis doesn’t have to represent time. And the data points don’t need to be in order. A graph is just a collection of data points, I can display them however I want. It might not be what you’re used to, but it’s not messed up. Please stop writing me emails about it (well over 200 at this point).
Q: There are more pirates now than ever. Look at the South Pacific. And song-downloading pirates, and blah blah blah.
A: Real pirates use swords (cutlasses, actually). Those “pirates” in the south pacific are guys with machine guns, cruising around in power-boats. They’re not pirates. And the song-downloading “pirates” are smelly nerds, and therefore not real pirates.
Q: Your grammar/spelling/etc is bad.
A: Yah.
Q: You’re wrong. It’s actually a linguini / mashed potato / dinosaur / elephant / whatever monster.
A: Maybe He just disguises Himself as those things. Also, you’re not funny.
Q: Can I reprint your letter?
A: Yes. Send me a link, please.
Q: Acceptible use of content?
A: It’s ok with me if you’re using the FSM images/content as long as it’s not for profit, and you’re doing it to further the Cause of the church. I.e. printing out FSM propaganda materials and distributing them is ok (and encouraged). Making FSM t-shirts, selling FSM merchandise, etc. is NOT OK.
Q: What blogging/cms software are you using?
A: The recently redesigned site is built on the Wordpress platform with the K2 template.
Q: How many members are there?
A: I don’t know. There are no membership records as such, so I can only guess based on the amount of traffic the site receives, etc. Traffic to date (September 2006) is somewhere in the vicinity of 350 million hits, and around 15 million unique visitors. Google returns close to 2 million results for the phrase “flying spaghetti monster“. So, who knows - your guess is as good as mine.
Q: Why Pirates?
A: We believe that humans evolved from pirates. Consider that humans share around 95% DNA with monkeys, and more than 99.9% DNA with pirates.
Q: Interview requests
A: I’m happy to answer your questions. I recommend you just send me your questions in an email with a subject that I’ll notice, like “INTERVIEW QUESTIONS”. You don’t need to ask permission or set up an interview for some future time, just send me the questions. Thanks.
Q: Website statistics
A: Somewhere around 10k-40k visitors per day, and somewhere around 500k-1million hits a day. Hits are extremely high because lots of people hotlink images,etc from the site. Which is fine w/me.
Emails - depends, but 50 per day is not uncommon. I have 13,839 unread emails right now (9/25/06). I’ll get to as many as I can.
Q: Why is there an FSM banner on my MySpace profile?
A: It’s a virus/worm that WAS NOT CREATED BY ME. I had nothing to do with it. I’m sorry - it caused everyone a lot of problems, and I do not approve of this sort of thing. You can remove it by following the directions here.
More questions? Ask me below, or email me at bobby.henderson@gmail.com
Hey Thumper and Nikkiee - how’s the land down under?
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I like the way the Towers on that coin pop up too.
Towers go up, Towers go down! Towers go up, Towers go down! Towers go up, Towers go down!
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Hours of fun for the type of person that would buy that kind of crap!
I just want all of the children on this site who condone the behavior of this poor guy who started this to know that Jesus loved you all enough to die on a cross and bear all of your sins. Past, present and future. How could any of you possibly have that much disrespect for the one who loves you far beyond what the human mind can fathom? A God who loves you enough to send his only son to die for us, in our place, so that we can spend an eternity in paradise with him and the very one who sacrificed himself for us. Our precious savior Jesus Christ!!!! A God who, even after these kinds of things, Spaghetti nonsense, and blasphemy of all sorts, will STILL welcome you as his child and love you like no other! The one true God and king, the living God! The alpha and omega. I will never know why God has created some of us with enough sense to know of his exsistance and some of us he didn’t. So for the ones who are misfortunate enough to doubt him or just plainly not believe, I will remember you in my prayers, and I will pray that God shows you some kind of light. If I could pray you into salvation, I really would, but it’s not up to me. He wants you to come to him willingly because he loves you. He loves you all so much and it really pains me to see Satan having such an influence on people. Please, all of you, especially Bobby, search for the light. If you search for him with all of your heart I promise he will show you the way! He will not forsake you and your life will forever be changed in only the best way! Thanks to all who took the time to read this and may God bless and be with you!
That’s really funny In the Light.
Apparantly, after all our blasphemy, God will STILL welcome us to heaven? that’s weird, i’d heard about this place called hell, you must have forgotten about that. And if Christ died on the cross, and he rose again, then he didn’t really die. Jesus had so little convction he couldn’t even finish what he started, his own death. And why is your god so vain he needs everybody to love him? you know what, if your god can’t just be content with me being a good person, Satan seems a little more accepting to me.
Perhaps you should research the church of satan yourself in the light.
open your mind tosspot.
In the light?? In the dark is more like it.
in the light Sep 1st, 2007 at 11:20 pm
Are you from the Landover Baptist church? I’ve just been over for my monthly visit….err…I mean worship :))
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July Hatemail
http://www.landoverbaptist.org/mail/0707.html
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Bloody Heathens (:))
Nikkiee, Love the letter from Darren Naath, talk about missing the plot :)) Some people just don’t get it do they?
Reading this thread (I was really bored) took a very long time. It says a lot about what it wrong in this world. These crazy fundies really drive me nuts. At any rate very funny, now I have to go buy a new book …uh I mean bible. I am officially a pirate, as a real live descendant of a 16th century Irish pirate do I get any special privileges?
@Bink Sep 11th, 2007 at 6:09 pm “… I am officially a pirate, as a real live descendant of a 16th century Irish pirate do I get any special privileges?”
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You’ll probably get an extra friday now and then.
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Welcome aboard, matey!
I don’t know, but I think the calender will prevent me from getting any more Fridays than anyone else, but you never know what the noodley appendage can do, it is all powerful. So I will be looking forward to my extra Fridays.
Bink - may be you will get more noodly touches, are you short?
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I echo Jean Bart, welcome aboard, grab something to drink, and grab a partner of your choice.
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I have no pirate in me, just Hun raider. I like to think of the Huns as the pirates of Europe.
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Am I short???? Am I missing something…..no, but I am mysteriously shrinking. I was just over 6′ according to my medical records when I was thirteen, and now in my thirties i am 5′ 11.5″
Ahoy matey’s, this is my first post here on this interesting site. Lucky for me it’s still Talk Like a Pirate Day here. Does anyone think makin’ the boss walk the plank is goin’ too far? I can’t take anymore! Instead of doing what I was supposed to be doing, I was attempting to purchase the Gospel and I read this review…
3 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
Creative Concept–Poor Execution–Troubling Situation, September 2, 2007
By S. Seigel (Planet Earth) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)
I am a sitting science and mathematics educator. I found this book at once entertaining and disturbing. It is crucial to the future of America that problems with such material be spelled out–and avoided.
Satire is a valuable tool in helping us step back and see things from a fresh perspective. This book would be a success, if, by reading it, people of faith and people whose faith is scientific obstinacy were induced to do that.
Instead, Henderson lampoons theistic faith to advance doctrinarism further widening the gap between those who would accept their scriptures literally and those who believe unwaveringly in (provably mutable) theories. One could as easily produce a book of satire lampooning the history of science (with an emphasis on contemporary fallacies and their adherents) making fun of all sorts of Great Minds (Pauling and Einstein come immediately to mind) for holding wrongheaded beliefs.
What’s needed in this debate is more sanity and clarity, not perpetual cycles of teasing and belittling. Vine Deloria has written a fine book (Evolution, Creationism, and Other Modern Myths ISBN: 1555914586) in which he exposes fundamental flaws on both sides of this debate; his book convincingly argues that “creationists” framed a debate to which “evolutionists” fall prey: pursuing unanswerable questions.
By reacting to traditional, religious fervor by analogy, Henderson remains dogmatic. The irony that disturbs me so is that the author adheres to a secular creed no less rigid or illogical than that which he parodies.
I seriously have a problem with any religion that pushes it’s beliefs on others. As a child I was subjected to a Cult like religion (the one that knocks on your doors) and a family which actually bought into the scam for a while. All of this seems to really have screwed me up!
I haven’t read the Gospel yet, it’s on the way. I have read about two years worth of posts, hate mail, arguments, ‘evidence’, rants, idiocy, and plain humor on this site over the last couple of days. What I’m asking is is it possible to have been touched by his noodley appendage BEFORE I even knew of him?
I think I may have been awash in the sea drifting hoping to find other Pirates. This wonderful ship, came along and picked me up.
Damn I feel better already! ARRRRRGGH!
Man, I have to tell you: you are indeed intelligent !
When I talk to religious people about god I always have to invent a name and a form as an anti-thesis but now it is as you have created exactly what I tried to say…
Good luck, and I sure hope you wont need a job soon :)
Roey, what does a job have to do with anything? I’m still in disbelief at the ‘attitude’….? WTF? It’s like some people think they own the club…
Do I have to get a job? What does our meat-sauced messiah say about work?
has the flying spagetti monster ever touched a midgit inaproprately cause u no it was the first thing created and he probably got lonely unless all the stripper factories had been created but still he might be hot for midgets or something.
I really doubt anyone ever claimed to find the actual ‘body of Jesus’, as per what Axel stated earlier. Thousands of people were crucified, not just Jesus and those other two guys. It was a very common Roman torture. Cheap and effective!
RAmen
this site is awesome, were did you come up with the idea
dont you think your website could be seen as disturbing the peace, like i agree with you idea on not having intelegent design taught in schools but there are enough arguments about religion already i no alot of people who have been offended by your views and tbh i dont no what your trying to achieve?
I’m in class right now researching for an argument on Intelligent Design vs. Evolution and if they should be taught in school. I’m now including your theory in my presentation and suggesting that ALL scientific theories concerning the orgin of the universe should be taught in school. Yay! :D