History & overview · every faith gets one
An argument about science, in the shape of a religion.
Pastafarianism holds that the universe was created by a Flying Spaghetti Monster who arranges the evidence to look otherwise, that Friday is the weekly holy day, and that full pirate regalia is His preferred dress. It began as a single letter written to a state school board in 2005 and became the most legally tested religion of the century: courts and registrars in the United States, the Netherlands, Poland, Austria, New Zealand and Strasbourg have all had to rule on whether it is one. They have not agreed. New Zealand licensed a Pastafarian marriage celebrant in 2015; a federal judge in Nebraska and the European Court of Human Rights both said it is satire and nothing more.
Why it is filed this way
Parody is both the church's own account of itself and the finding of every court that has examined it. In Cavanaugh v. Bartelt (D. Neb. 2016) Judge John M. Gerrard held that FSMism is not a religion under the First Amendment or RLUIPA but a parody advancing an argument about science and public education. The Dutch Council of State reached the same conclusion on 15 August 2018, and the European Court of Human Rights declared a Pastafarian application inadmissible on 9 November 2021 for lack of the seriousness and cohesion Article 9 requires. Against that: New Zealand's Registrar-General approved the church as an organisation able to nominate marriage celebrants in December 2015, and the first legally recognised Pastafarian wedding was held on a boat at Akaroa on 16 April 2016. The category is settled in law and unsettled in practice.
The founding
In 2005 the Kansas State Board of Education was holding hearings on whether intelligent design should be taught alongside evolution in state science classes. Bobby Henderson, a physics graduate of Oregon State University, wrote to the board asking for equal classroom time for a third theory — that the universe was made by a Flying Spaghetti Monster — on the grounds that if intelligent design is science rather than faith, so is his. The board did not reply and he posted the letter on venganza.org, where it spread. The board adopted the disputed standards 6–4 on 8 November 2005; a differently composed board reversed that 6–4 in February 2007. Henderson published The Gospel of the Flying Spaghetti Monster with Villard in 2006.
Its founding is bound to Bobby Henderson — 2005 CE.
What it holds
Reality. A created world whose evidence has been tampered with by its creator, so that no measurement of it can be trusted — a claim built to be exactly as unfalsifiable as the one it answers..
The divine. One god, made of spaghetti and meatballs, with a Noodly Appendage. Belief is not required of Pastafarians and most are explicit that they do not hold it; what is held is the argument the god is standing in for..
Death and after. A heaven with a beer volcano and a stripper factory, and a hell with the same two, gone stale. Named in the Gospel of the Flying Spaghetti Monster and not taught as doctrine..