40 Fun Facts About Flying Spaghetti Monster

Flying Spaghetti Monster followers have won the right to wear which utensil in driving licence photos?

Colander photos began with one campaigner who spent three years, and passed a psychological fitness check, before his licence arrived in 2011. Many others have copied him since.

According to the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, heaven features a volcano of which drink?

Beer from that volcano left the deity hung over in the world's first week, so He forgot He had already made the land and made it all over again.

A graph in the original Flying Spaghetti Monster letter shows what rising as the number of pirates falls?

Global temperatures climb as pirates dwindle after the 1800s on the graph, a deliberate jab at anyone who mistakes a correlation for a cause.

The eight 'I'd Really Rather You Didn'ts' in The Gospel of the Flying Spaghetti Monster parody which biblical list?

The Ten Commandments became eight because, in the book, Captain Mosey dropped two of his stone tablets on the way down from Mount Salsa.

The best-known Flying Spaghetti Monster image, made by Niklas Jansson in 2005, reworks which Renaissance painting?

The Creation of Adam, from the Sistine Chapel ceiling, was redrawn with the pasta deity in God's place, and the picture became the movement's de facto logo.

Flying Spaghetti Monster lore holds that ghost pirates are behind the mysteries of which stretch of ocean?

Bermuda Triangle disappearances of ships and planes are pinned on spectral buccaneers, in a creed that insists history's sea rovers were peace-loving explorers.

The name of the Flying Spaghetti Monster's religion blends the word 'pasta' with the name of which older movement?

Rastafarianism plus pasta gives Pastafarianism, which its adherents insist is a real, legitimate religion, as much as any other.

Which animated series gave the Flying Spaghetti Monster a role in its 2010 episode 'A Clockwork Origin'?

Futurama has the pasta deity turn up at an anti-evolution rally, in a story where Professor Farnsworth watches robots evolve from scratch on a lifeless planet.

The Flying Spaghetti Monster is often called a modern take on Bertrand Russell's argument about which orbiting object?

A teapot too small for any telescope, circling the Sun between Earth and Mars, was Russell's example of a claim that nobody could ever disprove.

Which US state's Board of Education received the 2005 open letter that introduced the Flying Spaghetti Monster?

Kansas later reversed course: in 2007 its board voted 6-4 to throw out the evolution-doubting standards it had adopted in 2005.

Which 24-year-old American created the Flying Spaghetti Monster in a 2005 open letter to a school board?

Bobby Henderson signed the letter as a concerned citizen and later said he wrote it as much for his own amusement as for anything else.

The Flying Spaghetti Monster was invented to protest plans to teach which idea alongside evolution in public schools?

Intelligent design never names its designer, so the letter's author reasoned that any entity at all could fill the role, even one made of noodles.

The original Flying Spaghetti Monster letter says His Noodly Appendage alters the results of which lab technique?

Carbon dating only seems to reveal an ancient planet, the letter argues, because the unseen deity built the world to look older than it really is.

Which biologist welcomed The Gospel of the Flying Spaghetti Monster in his 2006 book The God Delusion?

Richard Dawkins was himself lampooned that year in a South Park episode whose teacher taunts believing pupils with the pasta deity.

In 2008 the Flying Spaghetti Monster's founder cited a surge of pirates off which country as support for his theory?

Somalia saw piracy boom in the Gulf of Aden that year, and the founder cheerfully claimed the trend as fresh evidence for his tongue-in-cheek theory.

In The Gospel of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, the deity plants evidence of an older Earth for which stated purpose?

To test believers' faith is the book's answer to anything older than its 5,000-year-old world, a send-up of some biblical literalists.

What did the 2005 Flying Spaghetti Monster letter demand for its theory alongside evolution in the classroom?

Equal time meant a three-way split in the letter: a third of lessons each for the rival idea, the pasta deity and observable evidence.

Skeptics cite the Flying Spaghetti Monster to argue that whoever makes an unfalsifiable claim has what?

The burden of proof is the point of the comparison: the pasta deity can be neither seen nor detected, so nobody can ever show that it is not there.

The Gospel of the Flying Spaghetti Monster puts the first man and woman in a paradise named for which restaurant chain?

Olive Garden of Eden is where the pair live happily in the book, which sets the making of the world only 5,000 years in the past.

Flying Spaghetti Monster teaching recasts history's pirates as peaceful explorers who gave children what?

Candy was their gift, and the story goes that Christian theologians in the Middle Ages smeared these kindly sailors as thieves and outcasts.

Which day of the week do followers of the Flying Spaghetti Monster keep as their holy day?

Friday is the weekly holy day, and prayers close with a word that splices 'Amen' with the name of a Japanese noodle dish.

What do followers of the Flying Spaghetti Monster call their loosely defined festival around Christmas and Hanukkah?

Holiday has no fixed date or rules, and the founder thanked the White House in 2005 when its seasonal cards wished people a happy 'holiday season'.

In 2011 Niko Alm won the right to wear Flying Spaghetti Monster headgear in a driving licence photo in which country?

Austria's authorities later denied that religion was their reason for allowing the photo, though Alm applied because the rules permit only religious headgear.

Which country hosted the first legally recognised Flying Spaghetti Monster wedding, celebrated in April 2016?

New Zealand had already authorised the church's representatives as marriage celebrants, the same standing given to groups that promote religious or philosophical convictions.

Which older satirical deity from the Usenet group alt.atheism is sometimes cited alongside the Flying Spaghetti Monster?

The Invisible Pink Unicorn had surfaced there by 1990, and her two attributes clash on purpose: nobody can see a colour on something that cannot be seen.

What subject had the Flying Spaghetti Monster's founder studied at Oregon State University before his 2005 letter?

Physics was his degree, and he has said his quarrel was never with religion itself but with religion posing as science.

The sea animal nicknamed the 'Flying Spaghetti Monster' belongs to which group, alongside the Portuguese man o' war?

Siphonophores look like single animals but are colonies of specialised units called zooids: some feed, some swim and some reproduce.

Workers in which industry nicknamed a deep-sea animal the 'Flying Spaghetti Monster' after filming it in 2015?

Oil and gas workers at BP caught the trailing, stringy creature on camera with a remotely operated vehicle off the coast of Angola.

Which country's Council of State ruled in 2018 against Flying Spaghetti Monster headgear in a licence photo?

Netherlands judges turned down a law student's appeal, even though the church had been registered there as a church association two years earlier.

On the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster's website, its founder is described by which religious title?

Prophet is the title he carries there, yet he insists the only dogma his church allows is the rejection of dogma.

A Pomfret, New York town council member wore Flying Spaghetti Monster headgear in 2014 while doing what?

Taking the oath of office that way earned Mr. Schaeffer a place on the church's own website, as a model of religious expression at the workplace.

Why did the Flying Spaghetti Monster's creator post his open letter on his own website in May 2005?

Officials never replied to the January letter itself, but once it spread online three board members who opposed the curriculum change wrote in with support.

A Flying Spaghetti Monster pastor gave the opening prayer at a 2019 borough assembly meeting in which US state?

Alaska's Kenai Peninsula Borough had opened its invocations to all comers months earlier, after a court ruled its old gatekeeping policy unconstitutional.

Which blog jokingly offered $250,000 to anyone who could prove Jesus is not the son of the Flying Spaghetti Monster?

Boing Boing later raised the mock prize to $1,000,000, spoofing a cash challenge that a young-Earth creationist had issued over evolution.

A prisoner in which US state lost a 2016 federal case seeking religious status for the Flying Spaghetti Monster church?

Nebraska inmate Stephen Cavanaugh wanted to wear religious clothing and hold weekly services, but the judge called the church's Gospel plainly a work of satire.

The town of Templin approved permanent signs for a weekly Flying Spaghetti Monster 'pasta mass' in which country?

Germany's courts first forced the signs down, and the church lost appeals as far as the European Court of Human Rights before the town council relented in 2021.

A man was arrested for blasphemy in 2012 over a Flying Spaghetti Monster-inspired Facebook page in which country?

Greece saw the case reach its parliament after the page renamed a well-known Orthodox monk after pastitsio, a baked pasta dish.

Flying Spaghetti Monster followers helped dissuade a Polk County school board from new evolution rules in which state?

Florida board member Margaret Lofton complained that the emails demanding lessons on the pasta deity had made the board the laughing stock of the world.

Which Seattle think tank's Casey Luskin called the Flying Spaghetti Monster's Gospel a mockery of the New Testament?

Discovery Institute is the hub of the very movement the book satirises, so the complaint came from the parody's main target.

Which atheist convention was first sponsored in 2008 by a Flying Spaghetti Monster chapter at Missouri State University?

Skepticon began when students invited two atheist speakers to Springfield, a city that houses the national headquarters of the Assemblies of God.