Is the Flying Spaghetti Monster possible?

“…Some find that hard to believe, so it may be helpful to tell you a little more about our beliefs. We have evidence that a Flying Spaghetti Monster created the universe. None of us, of course, were around to see it, but we have written accounts of it. We have several lengthy volumes explaining all details of His power. Also, you may be surprised to hear that there are over 10 million of us, and growing. We tend to be very secretive, as many people claim our beliefs are not substantiated by observable evidence…”

The ‘legendary’ Flying Spaghetti Monster was put together by Bobby Henderson, and forwarded in a satirical letter to the State Board of Education of Kansas to protest against Intelligent Design way back in 2005. He runs the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster. He thinks Christians invented Intelligent Design to push Creationism into schools. You can read more about his ‘church’ here.

Now first of all, it is important to realise that Bobby forwarded that creative piece of imagination to the State Board because he thinks the bible is just a piece of fiction. He thinks that believing in God is like believing in Santa Clause or the Tooth Fairy. So he made up the Flying Spaghetti Monster.

Notice that Bobby shares the same false assumption that Richard Dawkins (a famous atheist who wrote the book ‘The God Delusion’) holds to: that God is a created god, which on their view begs the question “Who created God?”.

Obviously neither of them investigated the other side of the coin (Christianity) before putting their foot in their mouth. The God of the bible is uncreated and exists necessarily, Who is the God of the WHOLE show. When we become adults, we don’t persist in believing in Santa Clause or the Tooth Fairy, but many of us do go on to believe in God, sometimes only arriving at His feet much later on in life. That is because there is a vast distinction in created gods vs the Uncreated God. To suggest they belong on the same category together is just silly. Ancient History scholars at top universities have been studying one man for the last 2000 years, and it’s not Thor or the Tooth Fairy! To read more about the distinction I highly recommend this book by John Lennox.

Bobby has jumped to conclusions about the Christian faith without actually examining it in the first place. Nor does he understand Intelligent Design for that matter, which doesn’t go into ‘who’ the Designer is at all. Even the Theory of Panspermia is compatible with Intelligent Design.

Bobby obviously thinks that we can know nothing about the Designer, and his Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster is predicated on nothing more than the imagination as a result, a lame caricature of theistic belief. But is it actually true that we can know nothing about the Designer? Let us put God and the Flying Spaghetti Monster to a few tests.

Consider the Argument from Contigency (thanks Dr Craig for the videos herein)

1. Everything that exists has an explanation of its existence (either in the necessity of its own nature or in an external cause).

2. If the universe has an explanation of its existence, that explanation is God.

3. The universe exists.

4. Therefore, the universe has an explanation of its existence.

5. Therefore, the explanation of the universe’s existence is God.

The contingency argument, if successful, provides evidence for the existence of a transcendent, metaphysically necessary, uncaused, timeless, spaceless, immaterial, personal Creator of the universe, that brought all matter and energy into existence.

But hang on, the Flying Spaghetti Monster is supposed to be a physical object (a couple of tasty meatballs and some spaghetti, even if invisible to us). But then, on the argument from contingency, the cause of the universe cannot be the Flying Spaghetti Monster, because it wouldn’t posses the characteristics of being metaphysically necessary, timeless, spaceless and immaterial.

In fact the Flying Spaghetti Monster reduces to logical incoherence, because it supposedly exists of stuff, found only IN the universe, PRIOR to the universe’s existence.

The God of the bible on the other hand, is completely compatible with this argument.

Let us look at another argument.

The ontological argument brings the probability of the Designer being the Flying Spaghetti Monster into even more doubt.

It goes like this:

1. It is a conceptual truth (or, so to speak, true by definition) that God is a being than which none greater can be imagined (that is, the greatest possible being that can be imagined).
2. God exists as an idea in the mind.
3. A being that exists as an idea in the mind and in reality is, other things being equal, greater than a being that exists only as an idea in the mind.
4. Thus, if God exists only as an idea in the mind, then we can imagine something that is greater than God (that is, a greatest possible being that does exist).
5. But we cannot imagine something that is greater than God (for it is a contradiction to suppose that we can imagine a being greater than the greatest possible being that can be imagined.)
6. Therefore, God exists.

Again, the God of the bible is described as being the greatest conceivable being, metaphysically necessary and maximally excellent(omnipotent, omniscient, and all-good). But what is maximally great about the Flying Spaghetti Monster? Well, real spaghetti with meatballs tastes great, but that’s subjective, not objective. And it is possible that in some possible world it tastes awful! LOL.

There are more many more arguments we could look at, but after only two I think it is safe to conclude that there isn’t much that is maximally great about the created god that is the Flying Spaghetti Monster!

In closing I think it is important to realise that the Designer we are talking about is based on sound reasoning, something very far from the assumed fairy tale that occupies Bobby’s mind. I am sure if he and his ‘congregation’ sat down and actually thought about the point they were trying to make, they would realise that they were only undermining their own intelligence. With logically incoherent nonsense of a high order no less. He built a church to press a point that doesn’t exist in any thinking Christians mind. Our belief in God is an evidence based belief. He, and his ‘congregation’, are only showing up their own ignorance.