725 Responses to “Frequently Asked Questions”

1. 121 - October 18th, 2006 at 8:51 am - Joshua Bloom Says:
   
   

   I’ve been in court and had arguments ready to go for the swear on the bible part. But I never got to use em. That apparently only happens in the movies.

2. 122 - October 19th, 2006 at 5:33 am - kholmes Says:
   
   

   Well I do beleive you have a new convert on your hands…makes more sense than scientology at least. More plausible than a bearded man on a cloud and a little red dude with a pitchfork, but it doesnt have 72 virgins…

3. 123 - October 19th, 2006 at 5:38 am - Davey Says:
   
   

   Who needs 72 virgins when you’ve got *factories* churning out *highly experienced* strippers? Them as disagree should be made t’swab the poop deck for all time, scurvy dogs that they be! Arrrrghh!

4. 124 - October 19th, 2006 at 9:54 am - Louis Says:
   
   

   Could someone please answer my questions about Sauce (above).
   May His Noodley appendage touch you.
   Brother Louis

5. 125 - October 19th, 2006 at 11:22 am - Davey Says:
   
   

   @Louis:
   .
   Now, I’m no expert (nor, indeed, edumacated hardly at all), but with regards to your sauce question, as I understand it, there’s no dogma about accompaniments, just so long as there’s pasta.
   .
   Of course, mate, I could be steering by a bad compass, and if such be true, I’m sure someone’ll be along to correct me, and force I to walk the gang-plank! Arrrgghhhhh!!

6. 126 - October 19th, 2006 at 2:49 pm - Jwillle Says:
   
   

   What about Ninjas?
   I personally spend as much time being as ninja as I do a pirate (which is actually considerable). I’m only a recent FSM devotee, but I would like to here the stance on this ancient conflict. I leed this dual life in hopes that understanding can bring even more radness into the world… think about a combined ninja-pirate front? Unstoppable!

7. 127 - October 19th, 2006 at 4:14 pm - nikkiee Says:
   
   

   Is no-one going to help sofia? I’m fairly new here myself. Pasta taccos anyone.

   sofia Best
   ……..know what do we have to do to get yous faboulous church here.
   I will really appreciate your answer al my mail address…….
   RAmen

8. 128 - October 19th, 2006 at 4:17 pm - nikkiee Says:
   
   

   Sofia,
   Your email address isn’t posted, with good reason, on the forum.
   RAmen

9. 129 - October 19th, 2006 at 4:26 pm - One Eyed Jack Says:
   
   

   Ninjas and pirates don’t mix.
   .
   There is the Reformed Church of the FSM and all their silly hoo-hoo about Ninjas and alfredo sauce, but nobody really takes them seriously. They’re just a bunch of fringe lunatics. No serious theologian considers them more than a minor cult.
   .
   I strongly suspect they made the whole thing up.
   .
   RAmen

10. 130 - October 20th, 2006 at 3:50 pm - Ryan Mear Says:
    
    

    WHOA!! I think I was just touched by his noodly appendage!!! X)

11. 131 - October 26th, 2006 at 10:12 am - Rick Childers Says:
    
    

    I created this image and was later told my someone that I had created the FSM. See it here http://www.flickr.com/photos/81935338@N00/275027648/ It must have been divine FSM intervention that led me to create this image because I didn’t know where it was going when I started making it.

    Rick

12. 132 - October 29th, 2006 at 10:40 pm - gwhillikers Says:
    
    

    The time will come when a great wind will break forth from the tableside, and the core of Him, the meatball, will tumble into the abyss, and roll out the door. Then shall He roll under the flaming Bush and become nothing but dirt. And on the fourth day, sprouts will form from His body, and the grain shall grow again. And the grain shall feed the bovine, and also be made into noodles, and He shall return. So it is written, so it shall be. Thus spoke the antipasto.

13. 133 - October 29th, 2006 at 11:30 pm - One Eyed Jack Says:
    
    

    You have been touched, Rick.

14. 134 - November 1st, 2006 at 5:46 am - Epistemologically concerned Says:
    
    

    Dear Epistemologists (those interested in how we know things) everywhere,
    it is interesting to note that there is such a strong following for FSM. It is particularly interesting because of the very interesting way in which those who do follow FSM regard knowledge. I am in fact a strong advocate of what I believe as being true, as I would assume most of you are. I guess the difference comes from what we in fact belive. I have noticed that those who follow the church of the FSM wish for equal rank in schools with both evolution and inteligent design. I have guessed (although perhaps erroniously) that this stems from a deep-seeded distrust of inteligent design, in particular, as an unfounded and religiously motivated augmentation of the scietific community (or perhaps the non-scientific community). I may well be wrong and very biased about what I will attempt to convey to the reader next, but I will attempt it nontheless.
    You are very correct in assuming that the decision to put ID into Kansas school curiculum was religiously motivated. However the science is not neccesairly similarly motivated. I am aware that many of the readers of this will dissagree with me, but let me probe a little further. It seems that there is a general toffery around your particular scientific view. As I am also a scietifically minded person I am a little shocked at your ignorence to general scientific epistomology. Many times one view has been claimed as THE worldview only to be superseded by a more ‘real’ view. To take a case from your dicipline, physics, einstien and reletivity. Reletivity was heralded as THE way we view the universe. however Heisenberg, Bohr and all their co-horts come along and disrupt einstien’s cosy classical view for quantum indeterminacy. Einstien himself, who was a greater mind than you or me, could not accept indeterminacy simply on his preconceptions of what sort of universe this one is, yet today it is taught as fact and is in fact behind many of our everyday conveniences.
    Now it may well be fun to make a little joke about the quaint little Christians down in Kansas, but it is another thing altogether to claim intelectual superiority when in fact we may never know if there is, was or could be some sort of designer for this great mess we call the universe. As for the ‘facts’ which I am sure you cling to for you sure footing in this difficult world, I would encourage you to reserve your judgement on others and instead try to understand all the views before dicounting them.
    I Hope I have been both ballanced and clear in my statements. I know that you will not all agree with me, but that is surely what makes this wold so interesting. Thankyou for reading. Sincerly
    Epistemologically concerned

15. 135 - November 1st, 2006 at 7:13 am - nikkiee Says:
    
    

    Verbose!
    “quaint little Christians down in Kansas”
    Now there’s a desriptiion which my imagination had not previously concieved.
    How quaint!

16. 136 - November 1st, 2006 at 7:30 am - nikkiee Says:
    
    

    Pompous.

17. 137 - November 1st, 2006 at 9:30 am - J Says:
    
    

    LONG POST
    .
    Dear Epistemologically Concerned,
    .
    Thanks for joining the debate.
    .
    It’s worth noting that you feel the need to write:
    .
    ‘I am in fact a strong advocate of what I believe as being true, as I would assume most of you are.’
    .
    This looks like tautology: if we believe something, then we don’t need additionally to state that we think it is true – that’s what we mean by stating that we believe it. But I think the fact that you feel obliged to support the word ‘believe’ in this way indicates something quite true and sort of fascinating. ‘Belief’ has become a rather weird, woolly, undefined thing. A lot people today genuinely seem to regard themselves as believing something that actually conflicts with their operational understanding of reality.
    .
    This is what drives people like Richard Dawkins to complete bafflement: clear-minded, rational-thinking, educated individuals who happily accept the advances of science but who nevertheless strongly hold beliefs that, were they to reason them out, would utterly contradict the secular knowledge that they take for granted.
    .
    I used to be such a person myself. I believed in god but I also read popular science, pursued a non-religious degree course and, like most, allowed my first-hand experiences to inform my actions in the world.
    .
    Particular aspects of my religion, as they were preached to me, occasionally caused me mild alarm, by bringing into view the places where doctrine did not uphold the kind of secular reason or humanistic morality that I had built up through my life.
    .
    I accepted this for some time. It’s largely possible to hold religion and reality in different parts of the mind, benefiting from the psychological support offered by faith whilst continuing to live on essentially humanistic principles. But the conflicts are there, and it was only a matter of time before I got around to addressing them. The result is that I am no longer a Christian.
    .
    I wonder how many people are actually operating this kind of science/faith doublethink, in which belief offers emotional strength and plugs the otherwise nagging need to answer some big existential questions. How many people would find themselves in an untenable position of self contradiction if they actually pursued the implications of their dual beliefs? On the purely anecdotal evidence of talking to people I know and have known, it’s a *lot* of people.
    .
    On the subject of Intelligent Design and whether the ‘science’ behind it is religiously motivated, I’ll just offer up two links. These have both been placed here by other visitors to this site (Mike Meier for the latter one) and I have them to thank for my being able to now recommend them to you. (Because long web addresses sometimes prevent posts from passing through moderation, I will remove ‘http://www/’ from the front of the addresses.)
    .
    .newyorker.com/fact/content/articles/050530fa_fact
    .
    .csicop.org/intelligentdesignwatch/dover.html
    .
    Both of these might be of interest to you in thinking about ‘Intelligent Design’ and both are well worth reading fully.
    .
    Then you say this:
    .
    ‘Many times one view has been claimed as THE worldview only to be superseded by a more ‘real’ view. To take a case from your dicipline, physics, einstien and reletivity. Reletivity was heralded as THE way we view the universe. however Heisenberg, Bohr and all their co-horts come along and disrupt einstien’s cosy classical view for quantum indeterminacy.’
    .
    Yes, it’s true. Scientists don’t stop doing science every time a new answer comes along. They pick at it, work from it and, if what they later find undermines the original idea, then the original idea is modified – or ditched. After all, the best scientific explanation for life that we used to be able to manage was ‘God did it’. Now we have evolution. God was heralded as THE way we view the universe. However Darwin, Dawkins and all their cohorts came along and obliterated the cosy Christian view of creation.
    .
    Scientists don’t pretend to be infallible. Nor would they reject a more convincing scientific argument than their current ones on the origins of life, and of the universe. ID is rejected because it is demonstrably incoherent, unscientific rubbish. When Christian scientists come up with something better than a restatement of their religious assumptions strung together with unjustified assertions, dysfunctional mathematics and scientific language, maybe they’ll do a little better.
    .
    No, we will never know for sure that there is no designer, you are absolutely right. Even if the scientists eventually, one day in the distant future, hang up their white coats and report that they have fully explained absolutely everything, the religiously minded will still be able to say: ‘But there *could* be an invisible, incorporeal being who secretly does it all and just makes it look this, couldn’t there? And you can’t stop me believing in him if I want to!’. And here is exactly the point of the Flying Spaghetti Monster. If it makes you happy to imagine that it’s all the work of some inaccessible, unique, unproveable being, then you’re probably just going to go on believing it even if everything we know from observing our world suggests that the chances of such a thing existing are too small to comprehend.
    .
    But don’t go pulling the ‘tolerate our religion’ card on me. When Christians can reign in their outspoken preachers who spread anti-humanistic ethics and anti-educational scepticism about the possibility of understanding without god – then, maybe, I’ll allow them to cuddle themselves up in their warm and fuzzy superstitions in the privacy of their own homes. Until then, even though I sympathise with you, you worry me.
    .
    It’s true, all these beliefs do make the world interesting. The sad thing is, when you find out a bit about the world (as you must have, with your reference to quantum mechanics) it’s actually amazingly, amazingly, amazingly interesting. Blocking out all that amazement with a ‘Here Be God’ is a crying shame.
    .
    Thanks for listening.
    .
    PS – By the way, you might find a friend over on the ‘for my part, my christian beliefs’ thread’. A debate not unlike this one (or at least one that has included the world ‘epistemology) has been going on for some time.

18. 138 - November 1st, 2006 at 2:54 pm - Epistemologically concerned Says:
    
    

    Dear J
    Thankyou very much for your well thought out answer. I relieves me greatly to know that there are people who understand the debate first hand, because not all of the posts here gave that impression. You may have guessed I am in fact a Chrsitian, but that should not make you assume certain things about either my faith or my worldview. The main reason why I wrote the above post is to safe-gaurd (I know it is not my task but sometimes I can’t help my self, sorry) against more people developing a fundementalist mindset. I deal with Christian fundementalists on a daily basis and it brings me no end of frustration, as I sure some of you can understand. However my view of what is frustrating is in fact their mindset is so very closed to other people’s ‘truth,’ so to speak. I thought (wrongly or rightly) when I read some of the posts on this site that I detected a little of the same mindset. This is why I am glad to see your post J as you clearly not fitting into that category. As for tollerence, I can understand, as an intelligent and thinking Christian I find no end of shame with other Christians, who are either doing wrong in the name of God (never a good idea), or just not thinking about what they are saying. Once again thankyou for your thoughtful respose, and sorry if I took up too much of your time. Sincerly
    Epistemologically concerned

19. 139 - November 2nd, 2006 at 9:14 am - Bigred Says:
    
    

    hello i am nathan henley and i am one of fsm supporters’ in utah. I have recently bought a fsm shirt and now am spreading the gospel to my school. they all find it interesting and funny. The fsm story was told to me by my dad while he was drunk and it was the best story i have ever heard so ill keep supporting what your doing and yeah.

20. 140 - November 2nd, 2006 at 9:43 am - One Eyed Jack Says:
    
    

    “The fsm story was told to me by my dad while he was drunk ”
    .
    Mormons have clean cut teenagers in suits to spread their religion. We have drunken “fathers”. I love it!
    .
    OEJ

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