Look, we all know that Pastafarianism—the worship of the Flying Spaghetti Monster—is a faux religion like Dinkoism, a “faith” constructed merely to show how silly real religions are. So I’m not surprised that the District Court of Nebraska just ruled that Pastafarianism is a satire, not a religion. (You can read the full Cavenaugh v. Bartelt et al. decision here.)

Why, you ask, did this wind up as a federal court case? Because a prisoner sued (from the decision):

 IN THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE DISTRICT OF NEBRASKA

STEPHEN CAVANAUGH,Plaintiff, vs. RANDY BARTELT, et al., Defendants.4:14-CV-3183

MEMORANDUM AND ORDER

The plaintiff, Stephen Cavanaugh, is a prisoner in the Nebraska StatePenitentiary. Cavanaugh says he is a “Pastafarian,” i.e., a believer in the divine “Flying Spaghetti Monster” who practices the religion of “FSMism.” His suing the defendants, who are all prison officials, because of their refusal to accommodate his religious requests. The defendants move to dismiss his claims. 

And the key finding by Judge John M. Gerrard:

This case is difficult because FSMism, as a parody, is designed to look very much like a religion. Candidly, propositions from existing case law are not particularly well-suited for such a situation, because they developed to address more ad hoc creeds, not a comprehensive but plainly satirical doctrine. Nonetheless, it is evident to the Court that FSMism is not a belief system addressing “deep and imponderable” matters: it is, as explained above, a satirical rejoinder to a certain strain of religious argument. Nor, however, does FSMism advocate for humanism or atheism, which the Court acknowledges have been found to be “religious” for similar purposes.

Those belief systems, although not theistic, still deal with issues of “ultimate concern” and take a position “on religion, the existence and importance of a supreme being, and a code of ethics.”

The judge was not without humor:

Cavanaugh’s contention seems to be that denying him a pirate outfit prevents him from evangelizing about FSMism. But it is not clear to the Court how such a limitation significantly burdens Cavanaugh’s practice of his “religion,” as opposed to constraining his ability to preach to others. Cavanaugh does not specifically identify the other “religious” practices he seeks; they would presumably include such things as grog, a parrot, a seaworthy vessel, a “Colander of Goodness,” and to take off every Friday as a “religious holiday.” But even if denying those accommodations would make it more difficult for Cavanaugh to practice FSMism, it would not make him effectively unable to do so, or coerce him into acting contrary to his beliefs.

h/t: Aneris

Dr. Coyne,

I listened attentively to your hour interview with Sam Harris on his podcast and have cursorily scanned your new book, “Faith versus Fact.”  While I found myself agreeing with much of your perspective, I found your understanding of the epistemic nature of faith to be quite misguided.  I have found virtually all of the “new atheists” making the same mistake; attacking a “straw man” instead of the understanding of faith articulated in the mainstream Christian tradition.

In the interview, you rightly defined science as a means of discovering “reality.”  But you seem to mean by “reality” only that which is verifiable by scientific investigation, and “evidence” only that which is reducible to scientific experiment.  But this account seems to hardly correspond to human experience.  In human relationships, we have “faith” in another person or “believe” in them if a past track record gives us the probable indication that they will produce the expected result in the future.  Faith, in this human sense, is evidentiary and has an epistemic value.  It is not scientific reasoning, but it is still a form of reasoning based on character observation and probable cause.  It would be foolish to say on a human level that to trust another person if they have given evidence of trustworthiness is irrational.  In fact, it is highly rational, but simply a different kind of rationality than scientific rationality.

In the mainstream Christian tradition, this human epistemology of faith is simply raised to the supernatural level.  As articulated well by Thomas Aquinas and John Locke, faith is the indirect verification of a divine message based on the direct verification of a divine messenger.  This allows Locke to call faith a “species of reason.”  Faith reasoning goes like this: if someone makes a claim to some reality that goes beyond my natural investigative abilities, the only reasonable question is: why should I believe you?  If there is no answer to that question other than further truth claims, then the claims would be irrational and foolish to believe.  However, if the messenger can prove his credentials, then there might be reason to have “faith” in that person.  In fact, I would argue that it would be God’s duty to vouch for any messenger He sends.

A supernatural message requires supernatural evidence.  This is why the evidence of a “cluster of miracles” is significant.  This theory says that one supernatural miracle can easily be naturally explained away (e.g. calming the storm as superb meteorological awareness).  But a “cluster of miracles” increases the credibility of the messenger.  Arguably, the two greatest cluster of attestation miracles in the history of the world are Moses and Jesus.  The resurrection, of course, being the pinnacle of this evidence.

Notice that God concedes this viewpoint when Moses says that the Israelites will not believe that he is called to free them from slavery.  God grants this point, and thus gives him the ability to perform three miracles to vouch for his message.  And also notice that the New Testament defines faith as “evidence of things unseen.”

This evidentiary and rational approach to faith is the mainstream of the Christian tradition.  Of course, it has sadly been hijacked by “fideism” in many circles, but this is not the Biblical or historical understanding of the epistemology of faith.

It would be helpful if you would attack this version of faith, not the fideistic “straw man” that the new atheists are always opposing.  Obviously, with this understanding of faith, I believe that only Christianity can make a claim to revealed supernatural truth because of the credentials of Jesus.  I find that Buddha, Mohammed, and all other religious founders to be lacking in producing the evidence necessary to substantiate their message.

In conclusion, with this account of faith, I would like to be enlightened about how this is “believing something with no evidence.”  I am a Christian precisely because I believe the testimony of Jesus is the most evident and the most compelling.  Just like I would have faith in a person that has shown himself to be trustworthy.  This is the height of rationality, not the absence of it.

I would very much appreciate a response.

*********

A quick response by PCC(E):

• The writer should have read my book rather than skimming it, as I explicitly discuss the notion of “faith” in science versus religion, including the evidential basis of statements like, “I have faith in my doctor,” or “I have faith that my wife loves me.” I won’t reiterate it here, but I use the notion of “science broadly construed,” to show that that form of “faith” is really “confidence based on experience or evidence.”

• The notion that New Atheists attack religion as a “straw man”—that believers are all quite liberal, don’t take anything in the Bible literally, and that religion has nothing to do with truth claims about reality—is totally misguided. Has this person seen the statistics about what believers in the US and UK believe? Hint: it’s not about an apophatic God. Even 23% of Catholics in America are young-earth creationists, despite their own Vatican asserting that it has no problems with evolution. (It really does though, as it claims the existence of a soul and that Adam and Eve are the literal historical ancestors of all living humans.)

• “A supernatural message requires supernatural evidence.” What the writer means is that we should weaken our standards of evidence for those “supernatural messages.” In fact, supernatural messages can be addressed with natural evidence, as Sanal Edamaruku showed when revealing that “miracle water” emanating from a statue of Jesus in Mumbai was really leached water from a clogged toilet nearby. For his pains, Sanal was excoriated by believers and charged with blasphemy by the government; he’s now a refugee. I guess the “natural” evidence wasn’t convincing!

• The Bible is hardly a “rational messenger” that has “proven its credentials.” After all, think of all the stuff in there that we know is historically wrong, like the Exodus, the census of Caesar Augustus, and so on.

• The stuff about the testimony of Jesus being compelling will convince only those who have already drunk the Kool-Aid. And what the Bible says is not the testimony of Jesus, but of people who wrote, at the least, decades after he died.

Now, you can respond as you’d like; I’ll point the letter writer to my own response and to your comments.