Pages

27 November 2007

When is an anti-religion actually a religion?

Someone, in order to satirize the idea of Intelligent Design, created a spoof religion which says the universe was created by a being known as the Flying Spaghetti Monster. That tongue-in-cheek "religion" soon gained followers who rallied around their common opposition to Intelligent Design. But at least one of them actually began to believe this invented deity was someone out there she could pray to. The American Academy of Religion took up this phenomenon in a session on "the Subversive Function of Religious Parody" at their annual meeting earlier this month. With our recent discussions of presuppositions regarding the existence of God, I thought people here might be interested in reading the article (Pasta monster gets academic attention) and perhaps commenting on it.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Sounds like the type of religion i would come up with...somebody's got a great sense of humor out there...

But seriously, i think it could be classified as a religion if it affects how you live in every major area of your life. Otherwise, it's not something you believe in, but something you claim to believe in. I like how they used a counterexample to make intelligent design look stupid. They know how to present something effectively, even if i don't agree with it...