Colander!

November 14th, 2015| Topic: RaMbLeS | 2

In some states you can’t even smile when posing for your driver’s license photo. But things are different in ye olde commonwealth of Massachusetts.

You can wear a colander on your head while getting your mug shot. You read right: a colander.

Lindsay Miller cited religious reasons for doing so and the Massachusetts Registry of Motor Vehicles complied. (They first refused, but when the American Humanist Association’s Appignani Humanist Legal Center intervened, the MA RMV did an about face.)

Ms. Miller identifies herself as a “Pastafarian” and a member of the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster! She was delighted with the outcome.

I do hope this decision encourages my fellow Pastafarian Atheists to come out and express themselves as I have.”

The Ch of the Flying Sp Mon was conceived by Bobby Henderson in his open letter of protest to the Kansas State Board of Education a decade ago. He was against the Board’s decision to permit the teaching of intelligent design in public schools as an alternative to evolution.

Henderson declared:

Let us remember that there are multiple theories of Intelligent Design. I and many others around the world are of the strong belief that the universe was created by a Flying Spaghetti Monster. It was He who created all that we see and all that we feel. We feel strongly that the overwhelming scientific evidence pointing towards evolutionary processes is nothing but a coincidence, put in place by Him.”

Among other odd beliefs, the Ch of the FSM holds:

We believe that Pirates were the original Pastafarians and that they were peaceful explorers. It was only due to Christian misinformation that they have an image of outcast criminals today. No one knows what the afterlife really holds, but we are told FSM Heaven has a Beer Volcano.”

This tongue-in-cheek “church” also believes that Fridays are national holidays. Now there’s a respectable belief—I wouldn’t mind a four-day work week.

Coming back to colanders …

If people are given the right to wear religious garments in government ID photos, then this must extend to people who follow the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster.”

So said David Niose, legal director of the Appignani Humanist Legal Center.

But I would agree with Quebec Superior Court Judge Stéphane Sansfaçon’s dismissal of a Montreal woman’s plea that she be permitted to don a colander while being photographed for her driver’s license.

Too many people implicated in real litigation with consequences that could affect their lives … are waiting their turn in court [while others monopolize] resources to determine if the plaintiff can be photographed wearing a colander or pirate hat. We forget too often that the courts are a public service with limited resources that must not be abused.”

Whatever the motives of Pastafarians and their ilk, the Bible is clear:

Know this first of all, that in the last days mockers will come with their mocking,
following after their own lusts, and saying,
“Where is the promise of His coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep,
all continues just as it was from the beginning of creation.”
For when they maintain this, it escapes their notice that
by the word of God the heavens existed long ago and the earth was formed out of water ….
But by His word the present heavens and earth are being reserved for fire,
kept for the day of judgment and destruction of ungodly men.
2 Peter 3:3–7

Yup, God did cause to exist all that is seen and unseen. And, yup, there is a judgment and an afterlife.