Religious Scholars and the Flying Spaghetti Monster

A recent CNN headline seemed like something from TheOnion: "Religious Scholars Mull Flying Spaghetti Monster." (For some background on FSM, see my April 2006 blog entry.) It seems there were several sessions that discussed the FSM phenomenon at a recent American Academy of Religion annual meeting. The CNN piece gives several of the lecture titles.

One thing I found annoying about this news article was the following at the end of it:

Indeed, the tale of the Flying Spaghetti Monster and its followers cuts to the heart of the one of the thorniest questions in religious studies: What defines a religion? Does it require a genuine theological belief? Or simply a set of rituals and a community joining together as a way of signaling their cultural alliances to others?

In short, is an anti-religion like Flying Spaghetti Monsterism actually a religion?

Joining them on the panel will be David Chidester, a prominent and controversial academic at the University of Cape Town in South Africa who is interested in precisely such questions. He has urged scholars looking for insights into the place of religion in culture and psychology to explore a wider range of human activities. Examples include cheering for sports teams, joining Tupperware groups and the growing phenomenon of Internet-based religions. His 2005 book "Authentic Fakes: Religion and American Popular Culture," prompted wide debate about how far into popular culture religious studies scholars should venture.

Lucas Johnston, the third Florida student, argues the Flying Spaghetti Monsterism exhibits at least some of the traits of a traditional religion -- including, perhaps, that deep human need to feel like there's something bigger than oneself out there.

He recognized the point when his neighbor, a militant atheist who sports a pro-Darwin bumper sticker on her car, tried recently to start her car on a dying battery.

As she turned the key, she murmured under her breath: "Come on Spaghetti Monster!"

That is a funny anecdote -- I've never thought of substituting FSM for "God" when I blurt out "God damn it" or something similar. I think I'll start doing that, just for fun.

But it is ridiculous to even ask whether the group of people who "believe" in FSM are themselves a religion! This demonstrates an utter lack of understanding of concepts, essences, and proper definitions. While every complicated concept has its boundary and marginal cases, clearly FSM is not one for the concept of "religion". It is a joke. People don't actually believe in FSM -- putting forth the theory of FSM is a rhetorical device, a reductio style thought experiment by Atheists in their debate with believers in the supernatural. No one who talks approvingly of FSM does so out of a "deep human need to feel like there's something bigger than oneself out there". Give me a break.

True, people who gather at an FSM club might do so for some of the same reasons that some people join religions: for social reasons, for something to do on a regular basis (e.g., once a week at an appointed time). While that is an important aspect of why many people join religions, it is not an essential, definining characteristic of the concept of religion. For that you need something that involves metaphysics, epistemology, and ethics. Without going on at length about it now, I would consider a good definition of religious beliefs to involve at least the belief in one or more supernatural beings (metaphysics), a belief in at least some propositions on the grounds of faith alone (epistemology), and what the existence of the supernatural means for how one should act (ethics). These are the core characteristics of what make something a religion. FSMism puts forward beliefs that in each of these areas -- but only as a way of making fun of actual religions. FSM isn't actually a religion, and neither are people "cheering for sports teams, joining Tupperware groups" thereby members of a religion.