If you’ve spent any time on the internet during the last 10 years, you may have noticed that some people (those who go by the name “new-atheists”), have been talking about the Flying Spaghetti Monster (FSM). They believe that the FSM is a legitimate analogy to God, similar to Russell’s Teapot or “the invisible pink unicorn.”
The advocates of the FSM (they call themselves pastafarians) usually attempt to show that the FSM and God are on equal epistemic grounds because they both have no evidence, or they’ll say that the evidence used to show that God exists could just as easily affirm the existence of the Flying Spaghetti Monster.
Notice that this silly analogy is nothing more than a dismissal of the evidence for God’s existence. But that’s actually the least heinous of their intellectual crimes. Even if theism is false and God does not exist, the FSM would be a really bad parody. According to William Lane Craig, “The real lesson to be learned from the case of the Flying Spaghetti Monster is that it shows how completely out of touch our popular culture is with the great tradition of natural theology.”
You may be thinking…come on, Elijiah. No one actually uses the Flying Spaghetti Monster as a REAL argument! And in response to that, I will point you to prominent atheist author and speaker Richard Dawkins, in his post at the Huffington Post:
We cannot, of course, disprove God, just as we can’t disprove Thor, fairies, leprechauns and the Flying Spaghetti Monster. But, like those other fantasies that we can’t disprove, we can say that God is very very improbable.
The Flying Spaghetti Problem:
Natural Theology 101
Natural theology is a branch of philosophy that uses observations of the natural world and reason to discern the existence and attributes of God. There are a wide variety of arguments that would fall under the term natural theology, and for the sake of illustration, I will use an argument known as the Kalam Cosmological Argument (click here for an awesome visual demonstration of the Kalam from Reasonable Faith).
The argument can be easily stated in this way:
- Everything that begins to exist has a cause.
- The universe began to exist.
- Therefore the universe has a cause.
Once we’ve determined that the universe has a cause, we can discern the necessary attributes of this cause.
Because this cause created the universe, it must be…
1) … outside of time (as we know it)
2) … outside of space (as we know it)
3) … outside of matter (as we know it)
4) … beyond the universe
5) … powerful enough to create the universe
6) … personal (because the effect of an impersonal force exists while the cause exists, and the universe is not eternal, meaning the cause cannot be impersonal)
7) Some argue that Occam’s Razor suggests that the cause of the universe must be the prime-mover
Given these necessary attributes of the universe’s cause, is the spaghetti monster a reasonable inference?
Of course not, you’re silly! (I know that wasn’t a serious question.)
Spaghetti is a contingent entity, bound my the time, space, and matter within the universe. So lets toss points 1, 2, 3, & 4 into the flying spaghetti garbage. Does spaghetti qualify as a possible metaphysically necessary entity? Given that it is contingent upon the existence of the universe, no. There goes #7!
Could the monster be a really powerful monster? Sure. You can have #5.
Could the monster be personal? Sure! You can have #6, too.
Congratulations FSM. You score 2/7!
There is absolutely no way you could be the cause of the universe!
I can already predict the response from the pastafarian.
“Yes but Elijiah…this Flying Spaghetti Monster has all of the attributes you’ve discerned from the Kalam!”
At this point, the pastafarian granted the argument’s soundness & validity, is now quibbling about what name to call God.
I call him God, they call him the FSM. It would be a strange form of atheism that believes in a timeless, spaceless, immaterial, supernatural, powerful, metaphysically necessary entity. And it would be even more strange for this same atheist to refer to this entity as…spaghetti.
Thanks for reading!
Feel free to leave a comment or question below!
PS: If you’re interested in this topic of natural theology, I strongly suggest you get your hands on this book: The Blackwell Companion to Natural Theology. It is one of my favorite books on the topic.
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i came across your article recently via a theist I know who finds these articles compelling. This is the 3rd he sent that I read, because I enjoy having my world view challenged. Unfortunately, as it stands, that hasn’t happened yet.
“The argument can be easily stated in this way:
Everything that begins to exist has a cause. (How do we know that for sure? As far as we can tell that is true within this universe, but since we are having a conversation outside this universe, as you yourself state later on, things we take for granted within the universe like time and matter might not exist outside of it. What is to say causality isn’t the same here? I’m willing to accept this premise for the sake of argument, but I don’t think we are in a position to say it is most certainly true)
The universe began to exist. (This premise I have the biggest problem with this premise. We don’t know that the universe began to exist. What we do know is that the universe began to exist in this form, with time space and matter. In the scenarios of a Big Bang/Big Crunch, where a universe expands and collapses in on itself over and over again, then we can safely say that the universe is merely going through certain phases, not has a beginning and an end. Of course, the Big Bang/ Big Crunch hypothesis is just one of many, due to the fact that our evidence, which is space matter and time based, is limitied to the smallest of moments just after the Big Bang. Us not knowing about what happened at the point of the Big Bang is not the same as the Big Bang being the beginning.)
Therefore the universe has a cause.
(Because of my mild objection to the first premise, and major objection to the second, I cannot accept this conclusion. I’m sure you’ve also heard the retort as well that a God could very well be put into this logical equation as well. I’m sure you might argue that god didnt have a beginning, but like the beginning of the universe, this would be unverifiable)
Ok, but for the sake of argument, let’s say if the universe has a cause and look at the subsequent premises:
“Because this cause created the universe, it must be…
1) … outside of time (as we know it) (ok, I accept this)
2) … outside of space (as we know it) (this too)
3) … outside of matter (as we know it) (this too)
4) … beyond the universe (umm, not sure about this one. Seems probable but I’m not a theoretical physicist so I’d want to talk that over with one to make this claim)
5) … powerful enough to create the universe (ok, accept this)
6) … personal (because the effect of an impersonal force exists while the cause exists, and the universe is not eternal, meaning the cause cannot be impersonal) (*record scratch* what? Really not following you on this. Are you trying to say that an impersonal cause by definition can not exist in the event that the effect is terminated? So are you saying that if a wildfire burns down your house yet continues long after your house is done smoldering and is ash it is necessarily a personal force? Also, where do you get the idea that the universe is not eternal? It’s possible, and moreover the universe’s capacity for life certainly is not eternal, but the best understanding of the universe at this time is that it will continue to expand forever, at about 10^92 years (give or take!) it is expected to enter a dark period where matter and energy are so far apart that the hottest thing in the entire universe will be basically hot jupiters because the last of the stars, brown dwarfs, will have shut off the light for good)). Given this, and the fact that I am probably not understanding your explanation, this premise seems very flawed.)
7) Some argue that Occam’s Razor suggests that the cause of the universe must be the prime-mover” (given the many assumptions presented here, that the universe is not eternal, that it has a beginning, that it’s not just going through cycles, that if it has cause that cause is necessarily outside of itself, I don’t think Occam’s razor applies here. And even if it did, Occam’s razor isn’t an iron clad premise, it’s a problem solving principle that can be utilized to explore possible explanations. Again, since we have no evidence prior to the Big Bang for anything, we similarly don’t have any explanations one way or another to choose from to apply Occam’s razor to)
Your atheist are a lot more fun than mine. Seem to be more approachable. You want some fun, read Leo Tolstoy on religion and science. Thank you for your insight.
Hey Scott! Thanks for your comment.
And I’ve run into many hostile atheists myself, but have yet to read Tolstoy on religion and science. The relationship of science and religion is somewhat of a pet topic of mine, yet somehow Tolstoy has escaped my reading list.
Do you have a suggestion of a book I should check out? I’m quite interested.
Leo Tolstoy: “A confession and other religious writings” and the other book is “The Kingdom of God within you.”(on kindle free download)
Here is a point Tolstoy makes on what science says about religion “‘Religion is obsolete; to believe in anything other than science is ignorance. Science will arrange all we need and we need only science to guide us through life.’ This is what the scientists themselves say, as also do those members of the crowd who, despite being quite unscientific, trust the scientists and share their conviction that religion is an outlived superstition and that we need only science to guide us in life: in other words that we need absolutely nothing because science, by virtue of its very aim of investigating all that exists, can give no guidance to human Life.”
A Confession and Other Religious Writings (pp. 84-85). Penguin Books Ltd.
His response is “Yet it remains the case that today, just as before, not a single human society, or rational being, has lived, or can live without religion.” A Confession and Other Religious Writings (p. 86). Penguin Books Ltd. Enjoy