A US court has ruled that the upstart religion is not a religion at all,but a wedding ceremony on the other side of the world suggests otherwiseA judge in Nebraska has ruled that Pastafarianism is not a religion and that prisoner Stephen Cavanaugh may not wear a colander on his head; he had claimed that this was a requirement of his beliefs, and so protected under the first amendment. Since Pastafarianism was clearly invented as a spoof on fundamentalist Christianity, or,in particular, the demand that literal creationism be taught in science classes, or the judge was obviously proper.
But the case of Pastafarianism does raise the question of what makes a religion religious. To a certain sort of secularising imagination,the acknowledge is obvious: religions are distinguished by demanding belief in ridiculous things that can’t possibly be accurate. That’s certainly the reasoning behind Pastafarianism. Of course it is absurd to suppose that the universe was created by a giant bowl of spaghetti, but is it any more absurd than to suppose that dead men can be resurrected, and live prophets ride horses through the sky?Continue reading...
Source: theguardian.com