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Flying Spaghetti Monster & Pastafarianism

A British Columbia Pastafarian fights for his religious rights:

Pastafarian’s fight with ICBC comes to a boil (with video)​

A Surrey man’s prolonged fight with the Insurance Corp. of B.C. for the right to wear religious headgear in his driver’s license photo has reached a boiling point. OBi Canuel, 36, was told Friday the public insurer would not permit him to drive past the end of the day unless he submitted to a photograph with a bare head.

Author of the article:
Matthew Robinson
Published Oct 02, 2014 •
Last updated Jan 29, 2015

A Surrey man’s prolonged fight with the Insurance Corp. of B.C. for the right to wear religious headgear in his driver’s license photo has reached a boiling point.

OBi Canuel, 36, was told Friday the public insurer would not permit him to drive past the end of the day unless he submitted to a photograph with a bare head.

“I was content to wait until they changed their mind and, in the meantime, they never hesitated to give me paper interim licenses,” he said. “This was never a problem until today.”

Canuel said when he went into an ICBC driver licensing office Friday, staff gave him a one-day permit.

“I have to work and this is inconvenient,” he said. “I don’t imagine that this will get resolved over the weekend, so I will have to spend at least some time unable to drive.”

For Canuel, a Pastafarian minister in the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster who wears a colander on his head in religious observance, ICBC’s demands amount to an attack on his rights under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

Article Continues With Video:
https://vancouversun.com/news/metro/pastafarians-fight-with-icbc-comes-to-a-boil
 
Pesto be upon him! He is truly a paladin of His Noodliness. 8)
 
You might think transport staff would apply the brakes if you turned up with a driving licence photo of yourself with a colander on your head.

But Asia Lemmon said faces drained only briefly when she presented the photo to Utah authorities — they had to spray by the rules because the headgear is a religious statement.

Lemmon, whose legal name appears on her driving licence as Jessica Steinhauser, says the pasta strainer represents her beliefs in the satirical Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster.

The Flying Spaghetti Monster movement, also known as “Pastafarianism”, started in 2005 as a protest against teaching intelligent design as an alternative to evolution in Kansas schools.

When she had the photo taken on September 29, Lemmon said she was not sure if staff at the Division of Motor Vehicles office in Hurricane would allow her to wear the headgear, but “it was surprisingly really, really easy”.

Nannette Rolfe, director of Utah’s Driver Licence Division, said about a dozen Pastafarians have had their state driving licence photos taken with a similar colander or pasta strainer on their heads in recent years.

“As long as we can get a visual of the face, we’re fine if they choose to wear the headgear,” she said. ...

http://www.irishexaminer.com/world/cola ... 98441.html
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What a lemon! :lol:
 
New Zealand: Pastafarian marriage ceremonies approved
16 December 2015
New Zealand has given approval to the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster to carry out marriage ceremonies in the country.
Members of the church call themselves Pastafarians and believe that the world was created by an airborne spaghetti and meatballs-based being, although its own website notes that some followers consider it to be a satirical organisation.
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http://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-news-...social&ns_campaign=bbcnews&ns_source=facebook
 
Brandenburg faces wrath of Flying Spaghetti Monster

The Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster in Brandenburg is suing the state over what they say is their right to post signs around town.

The Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster (FSM) in Templin has filed charges against the state of Brandenburg over being able to post signs around town, with the first hearing set for Wednesday, according to the group.

The FSM church explained in a statement that in December, it had discussed with local authorities its status and agreed it could qualify as an "ideological community". They therefore had the right to post signs advertising their "noodle mass" - just as Protestant and Catholic churches advertise their own masses and gatherings with roadside signs.

Then, Brandenburg Culture Minister Sabine Kunst declared that because the spaghetti monster followers were not officially designated as a religious community, they would therefore have to remove the signs.

Worshippers saw no recourse but to bring the case to court.

"No matter what happens, the opposition has shot themselves in the foot," Brother Spaghettus, also known as Rüdiger Weida, told Jetzt, because either they will allow the signs to be set up again, "or we will take it to the next level court."

The Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster was established in the United States in 2005 as a satirical way to protest fundamentalist Christians pushing for the intelligent design theory to be taught in schools.

Equal time should be devoted to the idea that science alone could not explain the emergence of life as to the theory of evolution, the religious groups demanded.

FSM founder, Bobby Henderson, called for his beliefs to also be awarded equal time in the classroom if the Christians' demands were accepted.

Since then, the church's "Pastafarian" followers have spread throughout the world, gathering at noodle masses to eat spaghetti and drink beer.

Pastafarians often wear colanders on their head, believe that humans descended from pirates (“the original Pastafarians”) and that in the afterlife they can look forward to a heaven complete with a “beer volcano and stripper factory”.

“Elements of our religion are sometimes described as satire and there are many members who do not literally believe our scripture, but this isn’t unusual in religion. A lot of Christians don’t believe the Bible is literally true – but that doesn’t mean they aren’t True Christians,” the FSM website states.

"We are not some kind of mindless, nonsense troupe that many people think we are," Brother Spaghettus told Jetzt.

"We remain confident in the right to our claim and are prepared to achieve it through all legal means," Brother Spaghettus wrote in a statement.
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http://www.thelocal.de/20160406/flying-spaghetti-monster-church-sues-brandenburg
 
As an American Christian I fully support my Pastafarian brothers in their struggle.
I endeavor to be the kind of Christian that an atheist could not rationally object to.
One that Hitch or Dawson would gladly join for a drink. If that makes me a heretic, at least I'm in good company.
 
FrKadash said:
http://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-news-...social&ns_campaign=bbcnews&ns_source=facebook
Click to expand...

New Zealand stages first Pastafarian wedding on pirate boat

The light-hearted Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster has staged its first legally recognised wedding.

Toby Ricketts and Marianna Fenn tied the "noodle knot" in the New Zealand South Island town of Akaroa.

The happy couple say that guidelines of the Pastafarian religion stipulate that wedding celebrants must be pirates.

Members of the church profess the belief that the world was created by an airborne spaghetti and meatballs-based being and humans evolved from pirates.

New Zealand officials last month designated the religion as an officially-recognised faith, allowing Wellington-based Pastafarian Karen Martyn the legal right to conduct marriages.

She carried out her inaugural wedding as an ordained "ministeroni" on Saturday.

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-36062126
 
Pastafarian pastor gives the invocation / prayer at an Alaskan community government meeting ...
Pastafarian pastor leads prayer at Alaska government meeting

A pastor wearing a colander on his head offered the opening prayer on behalf of the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster to open a local government meeting in Alaska, the latest blessing from a nontraditional church since a court ruling.

Barrett Fletcher, the Pastafarian pastor, noted the duties performed by the members of the Kenai Peninsula Borough Assembly in his Tuesday message, adding a few of them “seem to feel they can’t do the work without being overseen by a higher authority” ...

“So, I’m called to invoke the power of the true inebriated creator of the universe, the drunken tolerator (sic) of the all lesser and more recent gods, and maintainer of gravity here on earth. May the great Flying Spaghetti Monster rouse himself from his stupor and let his noodly appendages ground each assembly member in their seats,” Fletcher said.

The only people who stood for the invocation were those without seats in the standing-room-only assembly hall in Soldotna, which is about 75 miles (121 kilometers) south of Anchorage. One man turned his back to face the wall during the invocation, and other men did not remove their hats.

The Pastafarian invocation followed one in June from Satanic Temple member Iris Fontana that caused about a dozen people to leave the chamber in protest when she invoked “Hail Satan” in her opening prayer.

Fontana was among the plaintiffs in the lawsuit litigated by the American Civil Liberties Union of Alaska against the borough after it approved a 2016 policy saying that people who wanted to give the invocations at the government body’s meetings had to belong to official organizations with an established presence on the Kenai Peninsula. Other plaintiffs who had been denied permission to give the invocations included an atheist and a Jewish woman.

The Alaska Supreme Court last October ruled that the borough policy was unconstitutional, and the borough government changed it in November to allow anyone to offer invocations regardless of religion. ...

Barrett, who started his chapter in Homer, on the lower Kenai Peninsula, concluded his opening prayer as asking the Flying Spaghetti Monster to provide each assembly member “satisfaction in the perception of accomplishment and allow them true relaxation and an ample supply of their favorite beverage at the end of this evening’s work.”

He then ended the prayer with: “Ramen.”
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SOURCE: https://www.apnews.com/06c11b92f92d427a8a38b5f1ab583080
 
I am an ordained minister of the following churches...

The Universal Life Church
The Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster
The Church of Dudeism

Because you may as well cover all bases and you never know when it may come in handy.
It also pisses off my father in law, a staunch Irish Catholic who believes that nobody, no matter their religion or business should work on Easter Sunday or Christmas Day.
Incidentally, you too can also join. We welcome one and all.
Bless you.
 
When Ms Popper and I got around to officially tying the knot, she said she wanted an old college friend of hers to perform the ceremony. He had mailed off $20 in the Seventies and become a minister, and had done a lot of weddings. She said he was very good at it. I said that's fine but as I had not met the fellow, I wanted us to have a visit so I knew what to expect when my Catholic relatives showed up. She said that was reasonable and it would be fun to go for a visit. She had not seen him in many years but had kept in touch.

As it happened though, we got busy and never did get up to visit "our minister". A few weeks before the ceremony, when it was looking pretty obvious we weren't going to see him before he showed up for the wedding, I got pretty worried. Then I decided that if I didn't trust her judgment on such matters, I would not be getting married to her. Of course he turned out to be a great guy, and he did such a good job with the ceremony that we got many compliments. Some people even asked for a copy of the vows, which we had not seen until the night before. I had been worried about one of my Catholic aunts buttonholing the guy and quizzing him about his church, but it turned out to be one of Ms Popper's relatives from the Bible Belt who grilled him about it. He was smooth. He explained that he didn't have a flock at the moment, but still did weddings and such things so he could keep in shape for the right opportunity when it came along, or some blarney like that. They lapped it up.
 
It's bad enough this news editor set herself on fire to protest victimisation by the Russian state:
News story

She was investigating a criminal case - but what are we to make of this paragraph?

"That criminal case appears to focus on a local businessman who allowed various opposition groups to use his spoof church for forums and other activities including training election monitors. Mikhail Iosilevich created the so-called Flying Spaghetti Monster church in 2016 whose followers were dubbed Pastafarians."

Does the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster have sinister roots? I thought it was a Subgenius-style spoof? Is someone trying to silence the Pastafarians? Anyone know?
 
GNC said:
Is someone trying to silence the Pastafarians? Anyone know?
Click to expand...

As an ordained minister in the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster does this mean I'll have to go an hide in my 'panic room'? I bloody well hope not as I'm in the middle of cooking up a pot of a rather tasty Bolognese sauce in between looking at posts here and that will really throw a spanner in the works.
 
GNC said:
who allowed various opposition groups
Click to expand...
That's your problem right there. Although the Russian Orthodox Church has formed a close alliance with the Putin regime, alternative religion is small beer compared with alternatives in the political sphere.
 
But I thought it was a joke? Is it now useful to "dissidents" (for want of a better word) to latch onto? How did they get here from there?
 
Attempts by an Australian Pastafarianism adherent to have the church recognized as a legal association have failed (again; for now).
Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster loses bid for legal recognition as incorporated entity

The Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster will remain in the realms of satire, after an attempt to have its Australian wing formally recognised was rejected by a South Australian legal authority on the grounds that the purported religion is nothing more than a "hoax". ...

Key points:
  • An adherent of the offbeat movement launched a legal bid to secure it legal status as an incorporated entity
  • She said formal recognition would have allowed greater transparency
  • SA's Civil and Administrative Tribunal rejected the bid, describing the church as a "sham" and a "parody"
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FULL STORY: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-06...spaghetti-monster-proposal-rejected/100228038
 
EnolaGaia said:
Attempts by an Australian Pastafarianism adherent to have the church recognized as a legal association have failed (again; for now).

FULL STORY: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-06...spaghetti-monster-proposal-rejected/100228038
Click to expand...

This is a travesty and I'm felling a little saucy about it. As a Minister of this Church the pastabilities were endless for the organisation and now we've been knobbled by South Australia (of all States)!
This is tortellini accurate reporting by the ABC and the more I think about it the angrier I get.
I'm so furious about it now I'm ready to boil over.

May the Flying Spaghetti Monster bless you all!
Ramen.
 
Pastafarians discriminated against again.

The former Lord Mayor of Dublin Hazel Chu says she did not discriminate against the prominent atheism campaigner John Hamill – and would not discriminate against any member of his group, the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster.

“There’s a lot of my friends of a non-religious background, atheists, agnostics – one is even in Mr Hamill’s Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster ... it’s not something I would discriminate against,” Councillor Chu told a Workplace Relations Commission equality hearing on Tuesday.

The row centres on a series of religious services live-streamed from the garden of the Mansion House in Dublin in December 2020 under the banner of the Dublin city Inter-Faith Forum called Rewind 2020, marking major religious festivals which had been disrupted by the Covid-19 pandemic that year.

Mr Hamill claims non-religious groups should have had a slot in the event series and that he was discriminated against on the basis of his non-religious beliefs as a representative group styling itself the Dublin city Inter-Non-Faith Forum.

https://www.irishtimes.com/ireland/...ainst-church-of-the-flying-spaghetti-monster/
 
ramonmercado said:
Pastafarians discriminated against again.

The former Lord Mayor of Dublin Hazel Chu says she did not discriminate against the prominent atheism campaigner John Hamill – and would not discriminate against any member of his group, the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster.

“There’s a lot of my friends of a non-religious background, atheists, agnostics – one is even in Mr Hamill’s Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster ... it’s not something I would discriminate against,” Councillor Chu told a Workplace Relations Commission equality hearing on Tuesday.

The row centres on a series of religious services live-streamed from the garden of the Mansion House in Dublin in December 2020 under the banner of the Dublin city Inter-Faith Forum called Rewind 2020, marking major religious festivals which had been disrupted by the Covid-19 pandemic that year.

Mr Hamill claims non-religious groups should have had a slot in the event series and that he was discriminated against on the basis of his non-religious beliefs as a representative group styling itself the Dublin city Inter-Non-Faith Forum.

https://www.irishtimes.com/ireland/...ainst-church-of-the-flying-spaghetti-monster/
Click to expand...

Sadly John Hamill has lost his case.

The Workplace Relations Commission has dismissed a claim that Green Party councillor Hazel Chu discriminated against a member of a non-faith group on religious grounds during her term of office as Lord Mayor of Dublin.

John Hamill, a representative of the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster and atheism campaigner, claimed Ms Chu had breached the Equal Status Act by treating a non-religious representative body less favourably than others with a religious belief over the availability of the Lord Mayor’s garden to host events.

Mr Hamill complained to the WRC that Ms Chu as Lord Mayor had allocated public resources to faith-based groups in late 2020 at a time when he was refused access to similar facilities on behalf of the Dublin City Inter-Non-Faith Forum, (DCINFF) despite many written requests.

He outlined how he became aware in December 2020 that Ms Chu had arranged for a series of different religious groups to hold services known as Rewind 2020 in the Lord Mayor’s Garden over a period of seven days to mark celebrations they had missed during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Mr Hamill claimed correspondence in which he sought similar access for non-religious groups, which included an offer of a donation to a charity nominated by Ms Chu, was ignored while the Lord Mayor’s office had responded immediately to a request from the Dublin City Interfaith Forum. ...

In his ruling, WRC adjudication officer, Jim Dolan, said the DCINFF was not directly comparable to the Dublin City Interfaith Forum as one was an active organisation which had existed for over a decade.

Mr Dolan said it was obvious that redress was being sought for the DCINFF rather than Mr Hamill.

Dismissing the complaint as “not well founded.”, Mr Dolan said he found it hard to disagree with the legal points raised by the council.

https://www.breakingnews.ie/ireland...imination-case-against-hazel-chu-1670823.html
 
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