World's first Pastafarian wedding takes place in New Zealand

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/apr/18/worlds-first-pastafarian-wedding-takes-place-in-new-zealand

by tim333 • 10 years ago

62 34 10 years ago

Freak_NL3• 10 years ago

Pastafarianism is a great non-violent method of highlighting the privileged position of organised religions worldwide. When a nation decides that church and state should be separate, and no religion is promoted over any other, you usually end up with a handful of religions with privileges (e.g., tax exemption, access to civilian private records, etc.) that no other organisation can attain. When another religion gains popularity, they too claim these privileges (which is only just, as there is no state sanctioned religion).

This creates a neat conundrum for the lawmaker; what is a religion? When is an organisation a church? Can you legally define what a religion is?

Why is the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster obviously satire, and Catholicism a proper religion? What about Scientology? Is it about the number of adherents? Something tangible? A short-list of pre-approved religions? Pre-approved by whom? On what legal basis?

If you follow this line of reasoning to the extreme, you must conclude that a satirical organised religion is just as much a real religion as any other. Which is fine, but it implies that have to provide the same (legacy) privileges to all, or accept not being a secular state (and rewrite your constitution as a consequence).

Pastafarianism is all about proving this inherent silliness afforded to established religions.

humanrebar4• 10 years ago

Religions make some kind of honest claim on metaphysical Truth. Satire is at odds with that.

The clever thing is that getting the government to pick winners here is actually worse than letting someone wear a colander in his ID photo. This doesn't undermine organized religion as much as it demonstrates the limitations of liberal government.

I'm not sure that's a win for anyone.

lmm• 10 years ago

More and more I'm starting to think that intentions don't/shouldn't matter. If someone's asking for special treatment or their own laws, does it really matter whether the reason for it is sincere belief or not?

Freak_NL3• 10 years ago

If governments are eventually forced to abandon the special privileges afforded by law to religions because of satirical mock-religions, then I think the country as a whole benefits.

The question pastafarianism poses though, is how can you differentiate between satire and 'the real thing'? What if pastafarians claim that, yes, it started out as a joke, but now we really believe in His Noodly Appendage? As a normal citizen it isn't hard to conclude that 'obviously', this is satire, but law must not be based on what we feel is satire or religion, it has to be objective.

anexprogrammer• 10 years ago

Religions make some kind of honest claim on metaphysical Truth

There are widely accepted religions which have very dubious claims on that front. I'm not sure therefore that pastafarianism is any less deserving of the status of religion simply for being overtly satire.

I'll intentionally refrain from naming as my aim is not to start a flame war.

Retric• 10 years ago

But, they do claim to be spouting truth. Namely that no religion actually knows about the Divine. Sure, it's missing a long list of laws etc, but is that cruft what defines a religion?

tim3335• 10 years ago

I think it demonstrates the advantages of liberal government unless you'd like the blasphemers executed like they try to do to Christians in Pakistan for example.

scotty794• 10 years ago

My country administratively decided pastafarianism is not a church because it was not created "to observe and spread religious faith". Apparently that's the necessary condition to register a church here. On appeal they just issued same decision again.

pigpaws2• 10 years ago

Then one must ask, could 'Apple' (or any corporation/idea that promotes a 'lifestyle brand') be considered a 'religion'?

Harley Davidson, Amazon, Oracle, Crossfit, Microsoft, Veganism, etc... as 'followers/fanboys' of these by nature 'spread' the idea that their 'way of life' is better than that of their 'competitors'.

How far down the rabbit hole does this go?

tim3335• 10 years ago

Why can't I as a Pastafarian have faith in reality rather than improbable documents? Or is it only real religion if the stuff you believe in appears nonsense?

roel_v2• 10 years ago

No, it's just perpetuating the very damaging mindset of 'everything must be codified and spelled out into tedious detail'. Look, I enjoy taking the mick out of religion as much as the next guy, and there are many cases where current practices wrt government treatment of organisations based on faith or philosophical convictions haven't caught up with modern views of separation of governments. And yes, that 'last mile' of leveling the playing field takes some people to make a case for it; and will cause some social strife etc and that's all to be expected in a free society.

However, basing such 'activism' (for a liberal definition of that word) on pedantic (and frankly, juvenile) definition games is not the way to go about such a thing. All it leads to is the actual manifestation of the (satirical, debunked) 'EU regulations on the sale of cabbage' (x). It's pointless, much like the definition of what constitutes 'pornography', or what warrants moderation (see the articles on that topic today and yesterday).

It's not like "This creates a neat conundrum for the lawmaker; what is a religion? " is a new or even insightful question. It has been asked for thousands of years. It's fine to have people writing theses and books about it, but for pragmatic purposes, it's senseless to demand an 'algorithmic' answer where a precise set of rules allows one to machinistically answer it for every possible case one can throw at it. I've been banging this drum many times on this site, but that's simply not how policy making for diverse groups of humans works, much to the chagrin of many of us here who prefer our human interactions with as low levels of ambiguity as possible (for clarity: yes, I'm saying, in a roundabout manner, "let's try to keep our autistic tendencies in check".)

So no, one "must" not conclude that any religion is as much a religion as others. In the end, it's all just social constructs, and social constructs just do not work the way you claim. Courts across the world have ruled on organizations being 'religions' or not, and while here and there there is a debatable one, it's not as indecidable as you make it out to be. (one of my favorite ones is that of the 'Sisters of Saint Walburga' where the Dutch Supreme Court decided in 1986 that an organization that claimed to be a religion with one of its main rituals being offering live sex shows to paying audience members was, in fact, not a religion but rather a sex club masking its commercial leitmotiv behind a claim of religion. Shocker!)

Anyway, TL/DR: Pedanticism bad, common sense good - 'pastafarianism' long in the tooth, let's not encourage anything that gives us even more rules and laws and regulations, it's bad enough as it is with anti-social assholes exploiting corner cases (and that goes for all sides).

(x)

    Pythagorean theorem: 24 words
    The Lord's Prayer: 66 words
    Archimedes' Principle: 67 words
    The Ten Commandments: 179 words
    The Gettysburg Address: 286 words
    The Declaration of Independence: 1,300 words
    The European Commissions regulations on the sale of cabbage: 26,911 words

(edit: formatting)

bojan• 10 years ago

That last one is a myth, though: http://www.snopes.com/language/document/cabbage.asp

dkbrk• 10 years ago

Attempting to precisely define and codify what characterises a 'religion' is neither useful nor a well-defined goal. I think it would be entirely reasonable to, under the law, accept that if someone claims something is their religion then it is. It doesn't matter if they invented it, if they are the only one who believes it, nor if it is obviously satire; treat them all the same because anything else must necessarily be some convoluted and fundamentally broken criteria.

Beyond that, the problem is that religions aren't just social constructs: they are granted special privileges under the laws of most countries. So the end result of this should be erosion and eventual dissolution of those privileges (though retaining the principle of freedom of religion and the designation of religion as a protected class against discrimination).

sickbeard• 10 years ago

Because 'Catholicism' is usually embedded deep in a nations history, and flying spaghetti whatever is shit someone decided was funny.

For example the province of Quebec has made a great push to remove religious symbols from many places but you'll still see a lot of catholic symbols everywhere including on/in official buildings because you know.. history/culture.

chippy2• 10 years ago

I was my understanding that ninjas were also involved, or is that a splinter group?

tim3335• 10 years ago

There appear to be a number of sects with varying positions on the Ninja question. I pray this does not devolve into sectarian Sunni vs Shia style warfare between the Pirate and Ninja faiths. http://uncyclopedia.wikia.com/wiki/Pastafarian_Sects

logfromblammo2• 10 years ago

I fear that it will not stop there. With Pirate and Ninja sects already identified, I must conclude that the Zombie and Robot sects are worshiping in secret.

MikeNomad• 10 years ago

In other words, Bob is not a Prophet. Bob is the Profit Margin.

Cheers to the Newlyweds. May their pasta bowl never be empty.

World's first Pastafarian wedding takes place in New Zealand

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