The Netherlands’ highest court earlier this week said that people following Pastafarianism did not have a right to freedom of religion because Pastafarianism, in short, is not anyway a religion. The case came up before the court when a follower of the ‘Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster’ was denied the right to wear a collander—bowl-shaped utensil with holes in it used to drain pasta—on her head in her passport and driving license. It further stated that “Pastafarianism was essentially a satire and not a serious faith”.
But wait!
What actually is Pastafarianism?
Bobby Henderson founded the religion in 2005 in the US in protest to Kansas State Board of Education’s decision to permit teaching a religious argument for the existence of God as an alternative to evolution in public schools. In the letter to the board of education, Henderson described the flying spaghetti monster and demanded equal time in science classrooms for “Flying Spaghetti Monsterism”, alongside intelligent design and evolution. After the publication of the paper, it went viral on the internet and became a symbol of opposition to the teaching of intelligent design in public schools.
The believers of this religion are known to worship the Flying Spaghetti Monster, an invisible deity, and wear colanders on their heads to pay homage to their God. Its followers give importance to spaghetti other than worshipping an invisible deity called the Flying Spaghetti Monster who they believe created the universe. They believe in a heaven that has a stripper factory as well as a beer volcano.
According to the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, around 10 million people globally follow Pastafarianism and the religion is officially recognized in Poland and New Zealand.
