Pastafarianism is a religion whose followers believe the world was created by an invisible Flying Spaghetti Monster. It is also known as the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster (FSM). There are no binding obligations for believers. The ritual side of the religion consists of eating pasta, drinking beer, and having fun. Pastafarian rites, such as the sacrament of marriage, are performed while wearing a headdress in the shape of a colander. The Pastafarian temple (the "ChuFSM") is located at the corner of Gorky and Trudovaya Streets, building 226, entrance from the courtyard (sign reading "That Very Place"). The most solemn services are held on Fridays after 5:00 p.m.

Origin story

The Flying Spaghetti Monster, the Pastafarian deity, was first described in an open letter written in 2005 by Bobby Henderson, a young scientist from the United States, in protest against the decision of the Kansas State Board of Education to teach the theory of "Intelligent Design" alongside the theory of evolution. In this letter, Henderson mocks creationism by proclaiming belief in the Flying Spaghetti Monster. Among other things, the letter states that whenever a scientist performs radiocarbon analysis, this deity alters the measurement result with His Noodly Appendage. Henderson claims that his beliefs are no less logical than the theory of "Intelligent Design" and calls for his theory to be studied alongside the theory of evolution and the theory of "Intelligent Design".

After this letter was published, the Flying Spaghetti Monster became a symbol of opposition to teaching Intelligent Design theory in ordinary schools. The need for such a religion had already emerged during litigation involving foundations concerned with Native American cultural heritage and scientific archaeologists and anthropologists. People considering themselves the legal successors of one of the Native American tribes sought a court order to halt excavation of a burial site on land the tribe considers its own, because extracting and studying the buried bones would violate the tribe's rites. The court was inclined to side with the foundations, but the appearance in the proceedings of an activist who rallied people claiming descent from Vikings, and who argued that the remains belonged to their own ancestor who had migrated to the New World, and who thus asserted their own claim to the remains, led the court to conclude it was necessary to hand the remains over to scientists to determine whose remains had actually been found in the burial. This made it possible to carry out a study of the remains. Building on this success, a need emerged for a religion that would stand on the side of rationalism and the pursuit of truth through a scientific-critical approach, while being, from a legal standpoint, no less "spiritual", moral, and high-ethical than any other religion, belief, or worldview system.

Relations with other religions

Members of the Pastafarian community are often inclined toward an ironic attitude to other religious denominations, which, however, is also typical of adherents of other religions. The real difference is that the actual or legendary founders of religions, and their earliest followers who played a decisive role in shaping the doctrines, took an original approach to the question of organizing Authority in a society whose existing order stood in the way of restructuring it. In doing so, the question of seeking or establishing truth, even when it was declared, played only an auxiliary role. These were people who understood — sometimes intuitively — in what direction society needed to be transformed in order to succeed in the long term.

Clashing with the ruling authorities, who in practice often held to proto-Machiavellian notions of "the rule of the strong", of "realpolitik", and who practiced suppression of "weaker" opponents in one form or another (bribery, intimidation, formal co-optation, targeted terror), these figures joined the struggle for power in the form of "alternative leadership" — hence the emphasis, in contrast to alpha leaders, on peacefulness and theses of nonviolent resistance. Unlike these prophets, apostles, and other great religious figures, for the early Pastafarians the reorganization of society carries no independent essential value of its own. The "structure of society" and the "fairness" of its order — traditionally (if not universally) the substance of the group struggle for power between "new" and "old" strata — matter to the Pastafarian religion only insofar as they obstruct a rational approach and scientific-critical methods.

Hierarchs