NASHVILLE (RBN) — Echoing similar comments from President Bush, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist said "pastafarianism" should be taught in public schools alongside evolution.
Frist, R-Tenn., spoke to a Rotary Club meeting Friday and told reporters afterward that students need to be exposed to different ideas, including pastafarianism.
"I think today a pluralistic society should have access to a broad range of fact, of science, including faith," Frist said.
Frist, a doctor who graduated from Harvard Medical School, said exposing children to both evolution and pastafarianism "doesn’t force any particular theory on anyone. I think in a pluralistic society that is the fairest way to go about education and training people for the future."
The theory of pastafarianism says the universe was created by a Flying Spaghetti Monster and all evidence pointing towards evolution was put in place by His Noodly Appendage. Nearly all scientists dismiss it as a scientific theory, and critics say it’s nothing more than religion masquerading as science.
Bush recently told a group of Texas reporters that pastafarianism and evolution should both be taught in schools "so people can understand what the debate is about."
Evangelical Scientists Refute Gravity With New ‘Intelligent Falling’ Theory
Posted by: DharmaBum | Aug 20 2005 12:00 utc | 3
SEVENTH DAY AGNOSTICS ARISE:
You Have Nothing To Lose But Your Stereotype
So completely is this belief system excluded from our national consciousness that we do not even have a name for it. So let’s give it one, at least for this article: shafarism – standing for secularism, humanism, atheism, free thought, agnosticism, and rationalism.
Shafars are 850 million people around the globe and at least 20 million at home who are ignored, insulted, or commonly considered less worthy than those who adhere to faiths based on mythology and folklore rather than on logic, empiricism, verifiable history, and science.
This might be considered just another of the world’s many injustices were it not for the fact that the globe is currently exceptionally endangered by a madness driven by false prophets of major traditional mythologies such as bin Laden, Bush and Sharon. Seldom has organized religion been so ubiquitously harmful. Even in our own country the dismantling of our republic and its constitution is being led by a extremist Christian cabal that not only is a political travesty but a mockery of its own professed faith.
In short, this is not a wise time for those of alternative beliefs to be banned from the airwaves and the public prints, especially since they have contributed so little to the current troubles….
Posted by: Uncle $cam | Aug 20 2005 12:45 utc | 4
Just when I’d given up in despair on so-called Christians I read the following, by a Baptist named Charles Reed from Waco TX:
Pax Americana and Christian Values
It’s simply a very powerful statement of Christian values… coming from an unbelievable source!
Posted by: John Francis Lee | Aug 20 2005 14:44 utc | 5
@John Francis Lee,
It is only unbeleivable if you unquestioningly accept the theocrats’ premise that fundamentalist or right wing christianity represents all christianity. As long as liberal atheists let the GOP define christianity and then paticipate in demonizing all christians even liberal ones, the right wing so-called christians can paint liberalism as godless and alienate the majority christian public from liberalism.
Posted by: gylangirl | Aug 20 2005 15:11 utc | 6
LOL!!! thank you Bernhard and all others with links.
After reading this, I felt compelled to to very rigatonious penne-ance. (ba-dum shuuuu <-that's a drum, btw)
Also, I wonder if the Hindus drew on the lingus from the Indo-European religious root linguini? Gnocchi, seriously folks. I cannoli imagine that pastafarianism was also the basis for the idea of a man of goddi.
Okay, I'll stop now. I'm embarrassing myself.
Posted by: fauxreal | Aug 20 2005 16:57 utc | 7
While I understand the dogmatic contentions between the Pastafarian movement and their detractors (let’s say anyone on the Atkins diet program), I would hasten to remind everyone that His Holiness, Big Kahuna Bush, has already weighed in (while he was serving as the Most Divine Grand Inquisitor of Texas) about which religions are permissable for us to practice.
What is irksome about the above link is that I specifically remember seeing Governor Bush on television during the pre-election of 2000 stating that Wicca is “not a real religion” and therefore should not be tolerated by the US Army… but no search engine that I am using can narrow it down any closer than this (viz. “Exact date and program unknown”). I remember thinking at the time that his casual statement revealed a certain airy contempt for the first amendment of the US constitution, but during that period I also thought the election could as easily go to Al Gore and didn’t make any notes. As usual, if I had known then what I know now… the screaming sound in the back of my head would be louder.
Posted by: Monolycus | Aug 20 2005 22:03 utc | 9
Sorry, Momolycus, but this is the best I can do with the Bush quote for now (I have to go cook dinner, lol)
“I don’t think that witchcraft is a religion. I wish the military would rethink this decision.”
— George W. Bush , Good Morning America, ABC NEWS, June 24, 1999
Posted by: Ensley | Aug 20 2005 23:13 utc | 10
@Ensley
Thanks for your help, but it certainly wasn’t Good Morning America that I was watching. It was footage shown on a local evening news broadcast on one of the big three affiliates (I am not now, nor have I ever been, a member of the cable television party). The story was about how enlisted Wiccans at Fort Hood Army Base in Texas were being singled out from practicing their religion, and they asked then-governor Bush his thoughts. I remember distinctly that he was sitting outdoors during the segment. He shook his head and gave the camera a withering look and said “That’s not a real religion” while rolling his eyes.
I thought at the time that it was an oddly divisive statement coming from a Presidential candidate (he had announced his candidacy but had not yet beaten McCain for the Republican nomination… I also remember that). I had friends at that time who identified themselves as Wiccans and when I asked for their reactions, they seemed not to care. I never saw any further references to that statement nor heard any group cite it. This was peculiar to me, because I also recall that in November of 2001 he tried to assuage domestic Muslims by saying that he had “…respect for all the world’s organized religions; Christianity, Judaism and Islam.” The phrase “end of list” seemed to me to have been strongly implied.
This memory-hole thing is bugging me. Did I or did I not see Bush during a press conference in his first term admit on camera that the whole thing was scripted? The comment was quickly expunged from the official White House transcript and nobody anywhere, as far as I have been able to tell, has ever commented upon that statement. This is supposed to be the Information Age, but it seems to me that just means that the archives become digitally sanitized and revised more quickly and efficiently. Did Lonesome Rhodes really say that? Nobody remembers it and I can find no reference… I must have dreamt it.
Posted by: Monolycus | Aug 21 2005 2:12 utc | 11
Monolycus, there are dozens of links where people say he made that statement during a segment of Good Morning America on that date. Unfortunately, the links to the show are no longer operational. It is certainly possible that the news media picked it up and broadcast his words later that day, and that’s what you heard. It was made in reference to religion in the military.
Here’s just one:
http://tinyurl.com/ajer4
Posted by: Ensley | Aug 21 2005 4:33 utc | 12
@Ensley
Yes, I must have caught an ABC-sponsored rebroadcast of the remark. Thank you for your help on that one. I’m either going to have to become a better Googler, or pounce on these things sooner than I do. If you ever find a solid reference to the “I know, this is scripted” press conference gaffe, make some hard copies.
Posted by: Monolycus | Aug 21 2005 6:36 utc | 13
monolycus-
We’ll be there in a minute. King, John King. This is a scripted — (laughter.)
Posted by: b real | Aug 22 2005 1:33 utc | 14
Mock away, heretics! But I am saved. I have been touched by His Noodly Appendage and have seen the Light. Pass the Parmesan!
But what amazes me is the Pirate/Global Warming graph. I never made the connection before, much to my personal loss. If you recall, last week I told you of my formation of the Pirate Party in Lincoln Nebraska. I had no idea I was saving the planet in doing so!
Posted by: Diogenes | Aug 22 2005 14:02 utc | 15
@b real
Well, I’ll be damned. I hadn’t dreamt that little gaffe after all. In saner days, that alone would have been a serious blow to an administration… and the failure to find WMD would have finished them off. I guess “credibility” is simply quaint in these times.
Thanks for finding that, b real. I’ll save it in spite of the fact that it would have been more reassuring to me to have decided that I had dreamt that was what I saw and heard after all.
Posted by: Monolycus | Aug 26 2005 18:51 utc | 16