William Craig’s Reasonable Faith has a nice article on the FSM, and why this approach to dethroning the Christian concept of God is really intellectually weak, is worth reading. My summary below.
Some of Craig’s contentions:
1. Using the FSM to attack Intelligent Design is dumb because ID theorists agree that ID does not indicate any specific deity.
What’s curious about this parody is that ID theorists like William Dembski have been insisting on this same point for years, but everyone seems to think them disingenuous. Dembski makes it abundantly clear that on the basis of the specified complexity in the universe one cannot infer that the Designer is infinite, omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent, and so forth. It is precisely for that reason that ID theorists deny that ID is disguised religion. The identification of the Designer with God is a theological conclusion that cannot itself be warranted on the basis of the design argument alone.
2. Any reasonable description of god must include a non-corporeal entity, since material entities are, by definition, created.
Ok, this argument is not really that strong, or made well, but it is made. By this definition, the FSM can not be god because it is physical. Of course, you could then argue with the incarnation.
Moreover, it’s plausible that any ultimate explanation must involve a personal being which is incorporeal. For any being composed of material stuff will exhibit precisely that specified complexity that we are trying to explain. The old ‘Who designed the Designer?’ objection thus presses hard against any construal of the Designer as a physical object (see my Richard Dawkins’ Argument for Atheism in The God Delusion in the Question of the Week Archive). That immediately rules out the Flying Spaghetti Monster as a final explanation.
3. Argument from Contingency – the FSM, being physical, can not fulfill the requirements of a god as defined by the Contingency argument.
The contingency argument, if successful, proves the existence of a metaphysically necessary, uncaused, timeless, spaceless, immaterial, personal Creator of the universe (see Argument from Contingency in the Question of the Week Archive). That conclusion is also incompatible with the Sufficient Reason of all things being the Flying Spaghetti Monster, since as a physical object (even if invisible to our senses) he can be neither metaphysically necessary, timeless, spaceless, nor immaterial.
4. The Kalam cosmological argument
Again, not well described in this post, but mentioned as one more reason why the FSM fails
The kalam cosmological argument, if sound, gives us grounds for believing in the existence of a beginningless, uncaused, timeless, spaceless, changeless, immaterial, enormously powerful, Personal Creator of the universe. Again, a being with such attributes cannot be anything like the Flying Spaghetti Monster.
5. Historic “natural theology” demands a god with certain attributes, most of which the FSM does not contain.
What the parody shows is that we are not justified in attributing to our explanatory postulates arbitrary properties that are not justified by the evidence. Natural theologians have always known this. That’s why, for example, Thomas Aquinas, after his five brief paragraphs in his Summa theologiae proving the existence of a being “to which everyone gives the name ‘God’,” goes on to discuss in the next nine questions God’s simplicity, perfection, goodness, limitlessness, omnipresence, immutability, eternity, and unity. As a being, the Flying Spaghetti Monster comes up drastically deficient as an explanation of those phenomena…
6. CONCLUSION: FSM proponents are not very smart, but rather, merely smart-alecs.
Those who seriously parade the FSM as an argument against the biblical god are showing their lack of intellect, reasoning ability, and understanding of classical philosophical and theological arguments surrounding the existence of God.
That people could think that belief in God is anything like the
groundless belief in a fantasy monster shows how utterly ignorant they are of the works of Anselm, Aquinas, Leibniz, Paley, Sorley, and a host of others, past and present. No doubt part of the fault lies with equally ignorant Christians who have no answer when called upon to give a reason for the hope within and who therefore give the impression of arbitrary and groundless belief. But it must also be attributed to poor education, intellectual laziness, and a lack of curiosity. Given the revival of natural theology in our day over the last half century, we have no excuse for such lame caricatures of theistic belief as belief in the Flying Spaghetti Monster.
I find your lack of belief in Pastafarianism disturbing.
Which reminds me of the scene in The Life of Brian where the crowd chasing Brian and declaring him the Messiah turns on the old hermit who denies it:
"Heretic! Kill the unbeliever!" Whereupon they swarm him.
That is how fanaticism works – and why i am not a pastafarian, because xianity is a reasoned faith. If you believe nothing, you will fall for everything. Or something like that.
And the point is, those who equate pastafarianism and xianity are making a snarky point about fanatics (xian ones included), but are making an intellectually infantile, if not erroneous statement when it comes to attempting to debunk the god of xianity.
Believing nothing is not consistent with atheism. Believing nothing is nihilism, not atheism.
btw: There are plenty of fanatical xians. Whether it is a reasoned faith or not doesn't negate this fact. Those who think they possess absolute truth are easy prey to this type of thinking. The use of reason demands a healthy dose of skepticism, not faith. How much skepticism do you have towards your faith, seeker?
I don't "fall for everything"; neither do I believe in nothing. And yet, I'm not an xian. I have good reasons for not believing, too. One of which xians would profit from: humility.
Those who think they possess absolute truth are easy prey to this type of thinking.
Agreed. This is why the apostle Paul warned against pride, saying "truth puffs up, but love builds up."
The use of reason demands a healthy dose of skepticism, not faith.
Agreed, but healthy reason does not exclude faith.
How much skepticism do you have towards your faith, seeker?
Plenty. I actually left it for many years and explored and learned much from psychology and Buddhism. I returned, however, due to what was lacking in those areas, and what is unique and present in Christianity.
I don't "fall for everything"; neither do I believe in nothing.
Good. I was not referring to you, but to the anti-intellectual and snarky use of the FSM, which makes one valid point while making a hugely invalid comparison to the more reasoned, tested, and historical faith of Christianity. It's juvenile anti-authority banter masquerading as mature reason, imo.
I have good reasons for not believing, too.
We all have our reasons. I understand why many might reject xianity based on the behavior of immature or wacky christians, and even the unbelievability of the claims of scripture. But I still think that one can claim to be logical, intelligent, and reasoned, and believe the gospel without being inconsistent with the former.
This morning, my car wouldn't start. Then I muttered under my breath, "Come on Flying Spaghetti Monster!" Lo and behold, my car started right after I said that. After that personal experience, I could no longer deny His existence.
Cineaste, that is exactly the kind of dumbed down rhetoric that anti-religious secularists wield, and the FSM fits that same Atheist Caricature of Faith.
Answers like that won't win any converts to your position.
It's satire, seeker! Haven't you heard many, many times xians utter similar idiocies? "I couldn't find my keys, so I asked Jesus and found them right away!" Or football players making a big show of kneeling and praying after making a touchdown (as if the infinite creator of the universe had a hand in that). That's the whole point of the FSM: satirizing the ridiculous aspects of religion.
Atheists use it as more than mere satire, but more like mockery – and those are not the same.
They use it to say that all religious claims are equally rediculous, unsupportable, and unverifiable, so therefore, all of them are worthless.
And that line of reasoning is why I and others criticize the FSM – because it is actually NOT satire, but mockery and poor logic masquerading as intelligent satire, which it fails to be.
I'm so glad you keep this blog up Seeker. Every time I feel down, I can come read something from you and feel better about myself.
Have you considered that may be your true vocation – you can improve the lives of those around you by being such a colossal failure as a human being that their minor missteps pale into insignificance?
Your sarcasm and mockery speak volumes about the strength of your arguments, intellect, and maturity. Congratulations on feeling better about yourself. Perhaps one day you will understand that real self-esteem is grounded in love, truth, and a right relationship with God.
You rock my world and make me feel so gay! ok, maybe not gay. oh well, you know what I mean ;)
This is just fantastic!
Flying spaghetti monster defeats anti-evolution FL school board
Looks like it's time to start the Church of Darwin to play the same game.
I'm sure such "victories" appeal to the juvenile god-haters, but they are important because it shows how blowhards and fools can overcome logic with bullying.
Silly deities make a mockery of Intelligent Design because many of its proponents take pains not to indicate a specific deity. Far from invalidating parody (1), ID’s affectation of nonspecificity is a butt of jokes. Pastafarianism enthusiastically embraces ID’s vagueness, applying every one of its proponents’ arguments in support of a spaghedeity many find laughable.
As you correctly point out, William Craig’s criticisms based on the supposed corporeality of the Flying Spaghetti Monster (2,3) are weak sauce. Indeed it is written: “He is of course invisible and can pass through normal matter with ease.” (Open Letter of Bobby, verse 23) Since Our Divine Saucy Maker is, by definition, the creator of time and space, it follows that His Pastiferous Perfection (blessed be his meatballs) is immaterial, uncaused, beginningless, noncontingent, necessary, eternal, timeless, spaceless, all‐powerful, and all the rest (4).
Moreover, the Flying Spaghetti Monster fits Aquinas’s requirement list of “simplicity, perfection, goodness, limitlessness, omnipresence, immutability, eternity, and unity” better than Craig’s preferred Trinity (5). His Good Gracious Glutenaciousness is not a complicated simultaneously (and illogically) triple/singular person, and is less mutable and more consistently good than the mercurial “thou shalt not kill — now go genocide the Amelekite men, women, children, and babies for me” God of the Bible.
Craig’s conclusion (6), that those who compare belief in God to belief in the Noodly One are utterly ignorant of Anselm, Aquinas, Paley, Sorley, and unnamed others (therefore poorly educated, intellectually lazy, and incurious like “equally ignorant Christians”), is no more than an ad hominem Courtier’s Reply:
The problem with the FSM is that it runs into the same problems as Russell's Tea Pot.
I believe Bill Vallicella said it best here: http://maverickphilosopher.typepad.com/maverick_p…
Furthermore, the Commandment "Thou Shalt Not Kill" refers to murder, that is killing outside the purview of Law (executing a criminal) or military action in defense of the state or self-defense.
Also, the Amelekites were engaged in war with the Isrealites. So divine order or no, there was a need for the Hebrews to defend themselves from a relentless enemy (which Amelekites were). Even then, the laws of war of the time were upheld (the defeated Amelekites were to submit to the victors, and only if they revolted against their law would any further blood be shed, as explained by Maimonides). It wasn't a genocide. It was a war that the Amelekites started. Give Dever's "Who Were the Early Israelites and Where Did They Come from?" a read.
My main issue with the FSM is that it attempts to circumvent honest discussion and hard challenges to the Abrahamic faiths (and visa-versa, in regards to non-belief) with mockery. Even as an Agnostic myself, I see such tactics as being counter productive.
Insulting someone's belief with empty rhetoric doesn't make them change, it only hardens their resolve and makes us all look like jackholes. It didn't work for Jack Chick, it certainly isn't working for Fred Phelps, and it really isn't going to work for us.
It's nice to meet someone as reasonable as you commenting. Thanks for that.
But Robin, you keep at it :D, you're welcome here too, of course.
According to vintersong, the Flying Spaghetti Monster runs into the same problems as the celestial teapot, best described by Bill Vallicella. No, it doesn’t.
The “problems” Bill identifies are reasons that a teapot is unlike a creator deity:
Empirical or theoretical reasons for believing the universe requires a creator are equally reasons for believing in Yahweh, Brahman, Ometeotl, Nana Buluku, the Flying Spaghetti Monster, or any other creator deity. This objection would hold for hypothetical teapots, but not for hypothetical creator deities, unless there is no logical reason to believe in a creator.
William Craig’s post has this very same problem regarding the Flying Spaghetti Monster, as both danielg and I noted above.
However, this is true of the Flying Spaghetti Monster.
Each of which also serves as an argument for the Flying Spaghetti Monster.
(i) There are many detailed arguments for the existence of a god, hence also for the Flying Spaghetti Monster. (ii) (iii) Nor is the Flying Spaghetti Monster.
To sum up, none of Bill’s objections that the celestial teapot is not analogous to God are applicable to Pastafarianism.
Okay. Then in your case, the FSM is less a philosophical argument, than it is just a mocking name for a monotheistic deity (ie: Dawkins referring to the Abrahamic god as "Sky Fairy")?
Question: how does answer of the questions and challenges proposed by apologists and philosophers concerning the existence of God? How does this contribute to the ongoing discussion? How does this challenge any of their beliefs or make them think differently?
Answer: It doesn't. It's mockery. Nothing you have said before or since answers any of those challenges with anything short of dodging. How is the FSM more believable than the Abrahamic deity or the Deistic God or heck, anything at all?
If you just throw back every claim and attribution made by believers by claiming "oh yeah?! well, my made-up-god can do this!", without answering them or challenging them, then that's a waste of everyone's time.
You were better off with the Teapot. At least that line of thinking had some philosophical heft.
How would it mock the Flying Spaghetti Monster to call him by name? That’s like trying to mock Zeus by saying “Hey, ~Zeus~!”. If you wanted a mocking name for the FSM, it’d be better to make up an insulting nickname, like “Noodlebrain”. Hm, Noodlebrain could come off as complimentary. Well, you get the idea.
What challenges have I dodged? Do you mean “challenges” and “dodges” like: “The Flying Spaghetti Monster can’t be material and be creator of the universe.” “But he’s immaterial.”?
When a challenge is aimed away from its target, there’s no need to dodge.
Just after incorrectly concluding that it doesn’t, you challenge me to answer, “Why believe in this god instead of another?”:
You’re so close to getting the point. Cold… cold… hot!… cold.
Yes, it was. Read the story.
God explicitly orders King Saul to kill the Amelekite men, women, children, babies, oxen, sheep, camels, and asses. What’d the babies do? They were born Amelekite. Amelekites were to be completely exterminated — the very definition of genocide.
By the way, Saul initially spares King Agag, and keeps some of the livestock. God regrets making Saul king for his disobedience in not exterminating every living thing. His prophet Samuel rebukes Saul for his incomplete devastation, Saul admits he has “sinned”, so to make amends, Saul personally chops Agag into pieces.
1. Hyperbolic language. In Ancient Near Eastern culture, assimilation not extermination was SOP for women and children (in order to swell their numbers).
2. According to the passage, it seems the issue was the fact that the King of his enemies (thus the true bringer of any atrocities) lived while his people died. So long as Agag lived, the potential for war to occur once again would haunt them (especially if you were trying to assimilate a people., and especially since killing a leader was SOP in war time).
There are plenty of questionable acts done in the OT, but this isn't one of them. At least outside the purview of a war.
So when, in 1 Samuel 15:3, God explicitly commands the extermination, not assimilation, of women, children, and babies (“put to death both man and woman, child and infant, ox and sheep, camel and donkey”), are you saying the authors of the first Book of Samuel hyperbolized, putting those words about killing women and children in God’s mouth?
So what do you find questionable? Ordering baby slaughter is beyond the pale for me.
I agree, but Christians overlook this, not only for convenience, but because it is viewed as a one time (?) act of punishment for wickedness on a city, but using Israel instead of God's direct hand – unlike Sodom or the Flood of Noah. Hard to defend, definitely.
But yes, it could have been an hyperbole on the lines of "totally destroy them!"
Okay, so you agree this one Bible story could be exaggerated. Do you agree that other Bible stories could be exaggerated, also?
No, I do not agree that it could be exaggerated. I said that it could be hyperbole or an idiom, not just read with modern, hyper-literal ears that have no idea what the idioms of the times meant.
But even if it was NOT hyperbole, I admit that it seems unjust to demand the destruction of another group of people, except to say that, like the demand to kill Isaac, or the Flood of Noah, it may have been just, and it certainly was not prescriptive (i.e. these were one-time or limited actions).
I understand that this seems a little contradictory, but I am OK with that ambiguity.
hy·per·bo·le, n. hī-ˈpər-bə-ˌlē
: extravagant exaggeration (as “mile-high ice-cream cones”)
Massacring innocent babies for their parents’ actions is unjust. Always. No matter what those parents may have done. Drowning every baby everywhere for their parents’ actions is also unjust. Categorically unjust. Absolutely unjust.
Nor was ordering genocides a one‐time action for the Biblical God. (Remember Moses and the Midianites? The Canaanites?)
God demanding Isaac as a human sacrifice was not an isolated incident either: compare the story of Jephtha sacrificing his daughter. No angels stopped that sacrifice.
His Noachian Flood, however, that we can call a singular event. God isn’t expected to commit another planetcidal rampage until His phantasmagoria of pain and torment in His prophesied Apocalypse, beside which His Twelve Plagues upon Egypt shall seem as parochial as His persecutions of Job.
1. Your definition of hyperbole omits a critical fact – it us a literary device to make a point, vs. an exaggeration that is a lie.
2. Isolated incident – you are right, it happened more than once.
3. Killing civilians – I agree with your point, though there are cases when that may be what is required – think Hiroshima. I am not defending it as a common practice, only saying that there are circumstances under which such a thing could be considered just and necessary. You seem to feel there are no such conditions, like those who think that capital punishment, doctor-assisted suicide or abortion are unjust under all circumstances. I respect that but disagree.
4. The Flood of Noah – while that may seem unjust, if God created all mankind, as creator and owner, He has the right, and perhaps even just reasons, for bringing judgment onto humans and their children – because the children, innocent or not, suffer the consequences of their parents' decisions. That argument needs more development, but that's the nut.
5. Job – God did not persecute Job, he allowed Satan to do so. You see very little real difference here, I'm sure, yet the distinction is important from an intellectual and philosophical standpoint.
Not so. Read the story yourself. It’s rather longer than the Amalek one, though.
First God torments Job: Fire from the heavens and foreign invaders destroyed and stole Job’s immense livestock holdings (including 7000 sheep, 3000 camels, 500 oxen, and 500 she-donkeys). The invaders also slaughtered Job’s great number of slaves. A mighty wind blows down his house killing all ten of Job’s children (7 sons and 3 daughters).
Then God gives Job over to Satan to do his worst, short of killing him. Satan’s torments are bush league by comparison: Satan covers Job in boils, worms, and scabs. Job has no peace, no rest, only torment.
Job’s wife tells him to curse God. His friends accuse him of having done something terrible to deserve such punishments. Job tells his friends he knows not what he has done wrong, but he’d like to hear God’s accusations and plead his case.
At last, God answers Job out of a whirlwind. His long-winded, blustery response (“Can you send out lightning bolts? Who has wisdom to count the clouds? Who can tip over the water jars of heaven?”) begins in Job 38 and goes on and on for two chapters. In short, it amounts to: “Who are you to question me? I’m God and you’re not, pipsqueak!”
(Browbeating Job was probably preferable to an honest answer, which would’ve been even more unsatisfying: “I killed your kids and put you through all that so I could win a bet.”)
I think you need to read it more carefully.
1. JOB 1:13 – The servant *reported* what he thought was God's fire from Heaven – the text does not say that God did it.
2. How is the raid by the Sabeans God's doing? Again, he allowed it, but did not do it.
3. Regarding the wind, again it does not say that God did it, but there is no precedent in scripture for Satan sending wind, so for the sake of argument, let's say you are right.
First, regarding these incidents, God does claim some responsibility in Job 2 by saying Then the LORD said to Satan, “Have you considered My servant Job, that there is none like him on the earth, a blameless and upright man, one who fears God and shuns evil? And still he holds fast to his integrity, although you incited Me against him, to destroy him without cause.”
Of course, it clearly says that Satan afflicted Job with boils.
None of this makes God unethical or immoral. And as I've often preached, there are only really two conundrums to which God answers with an appeal to our limited understanding ('mystery') – the case of suffering, and that of predestination.
All other mysteries seem to be fully explained. The assumption that in these few cases, we may be unable to grasp things (being finite ourselves) seems reasonable to me, even if it offends the minds of some.
Yeah, like marauding Sabeans, fire from the sky could’ve just been a ~coincidence~.
I disagree. Killing ten children to win a bet was unambiguously wrong. God’s behavior in the Book of Job is both unethical and immoral.
If that were so, we wouldn’t be arguing about all other mysteries in every other comment thread on this blog.
That’s a slaver’s mentality. No one owns us, just as you do not own your children.
He has the might. What gives him the right?
“innocent or not” = “unjustly or not”
It sure does, because it’s really flimsy.
BTW, I'm not so sure that the descendants of Amalek would be considered an ethnicity or race – they may have just been the nth generation of Amalek's family – like the Hatfields or McCoys. All of the the other 'ites' may have all been of essentially the same ethnicity. How's that for an argument against genocide?
What constitutes a separate people group? Genetics? Culture? Number of generations?
On the other hand, having a king makes them seem more like a nation than a tribe.
Good observation
Cineaste called a Bag of Toast comic a “caricature of Seeker” in a comment to another post months ago, but it seems to pertain more to this post.