Some days I just adore this job. This week, a man in Austria won the right to wear a pasta strainer on his head in his photo ID because he is a Pastafarian.
Pastafarianism is a parody religion which arose out of the Intelligent Design debate. Basically, someone challanged that if students were to be taught in public school about the possibility that God had a hand in the creation of the universe, then they should also be taught that the universe might have been taught by the Flying Spaghetti Monster, as we have no objective proof for either.
The sheer ludicrousness of the pasta strainer hat illustrates a growing problem we are facing: how does a government remain non-biased about religion without legislating what is a real or a fake religious practice?
Brilliant!
I think it’s easy in this case: the government made the right choice. There’s no need to ask what is a real or “fake” religion, since these are straightforward freedom of speech issues in both instances, even thought they are not the same freedom of speech issue. (In one case it’s freedom of religion, in the other it’s freedom to comment on religion.)
Great day for pastafarians everywhere!
A great day for the all mighty Spaghetti Monster!
The man is clearly very religious and wearing a strainer, as is tradition, is his god given right.
I found this photo;
http://newslite.tv/2011/07/14/man-wore-pasta-strainer-for-dr.html
Its a really nice strainer almost like a yamaka, quite stylish.
He should sell them on ebay.
Pastafarians are one of my favorite. I can’t help but hope that they get recognized as an official religion.
@Blayze: In which country? In the US, there is no such thing as an official religion. The act of declaring official and unofficial religions would in and of itself be a blatant violation of the 1st amendment.
Religion is religion. All are protected. That’s why people get dodgy about how one defines a religion, which the US government generally avoids doing.
The government doesn’t need to rule on a religion being real or fake. The government needs only to stick with the laws of society, such as no covering of the face for driver licenses, some yahoo would demand to wear a mask as a religious rule about no photos, public nudity laws, or incest and child molestation to name a few.