Monthly Archives: November 2008

The Providence of Pasta

Ever since converting from Christianity to Pastafarianism, I find that the Flying Spaghetti Monster makes his presence known to me constantly, reassuring me by his active involvement in my day-to-day life.

One might suppose that, having rejected the One True God in deference to the One True Monster, I would cease to reap those little beneficial coincidences-that-aren’t-coincidences, those thoughtful reminders that a deity is in fact watching over and actively manipulating events in my life. One couldn’t be more wrong.

Several months back our next-door neighbors moved out, and some new ones moved in. Blessed be the Bucatini, the new neighbor was a Linux Software Engineer, who likes Star Trek and plays the Piano, and was even a fellow Pastafarian—just like me! Such a meeting of kindred spirits couldn’t possibly be coincidence! Unfortunately, the FSM placed the call on him to serve His Noodliness in San Diego just a short few months later, so I probably won’t have any more contact with him. Which is alright, really, ’cause it turns out he had some just-mildly-irritating social idiosyncrasies, but hey, if everything the FSM sent my way were perfect, where would be the challenge to life, and the need to depend on Him? I’m not quite sure what the FSM’s purpose was in introducing someone like that into my life only to snatch him away again before there’s any chance to form any sort of a relationship, but anyhoo, I guess it’s the thought that counts.

Having an obscenely large number of accounts with various machines at various points on the Internet, I’ve recently taken to pre-generating a set of secure passwords, and whenever I need a new one, I just grab the next one on the list. These passwords typically consist of a randomly-chosen pair of dictionary words, with a randomly-chosen punctuation character between them. Imagine my surprise to find that the randomly generated passwords for two of my accounts are direct (if terse) descriptions of what I use the accounts for! Clearly the odds of this being simple. unguided chance is too high for this to be a mere coincidence (I calculate the odds at one in two-and-a-half billion (thousand million), which is precisely the chances of a particular pair of words being chosen at random from a dictionary of 50,000 words). I’m mystified as to what the purpose might be that the Flying Fettuccine has deemed worthy to place His Noodly Appendage upon my laptop’s pseudo-random number generator, and why these particular accounts and none of the dozens of others; but I take comfort in the knowledge that He has done so, and that the Lasagna works in mysterious ways.

Yesterday was truly a day of Remarkable Reminders of Pastafarian Providence. Why, just last night I was taking the bus home as usual, and was amazed to discover that I had precisely enough quarters—no less, no more—to pay the fare. Praise Pasta! And earlier that morning, an old, old acquaintance friended me on Facebook—she was a classmate from first grade. First grade! What are the odds that we’d even remember each other, let alone the odds that she would find me through another mutual friend who had just added me because that friend had found me through my best friend’s ex-girlfriend of a decade ago, who happened to have a friend in common with me. Way too many coincidences to be “Just Coincidence”. Truly, the Might of the Macaroni is terrible to behold! How humbling and awe-inspiring it is to know that the Flying Spaghetti Monster devotes his vast and eternal energies into arranging such Divine Appointments. Truly I am blessed! I have no doubt that the Almighty Pasta has arranged just such a meeting so I can tell her all about Him.

The proof of His Divine Pastaness is all around. I marvel that so many don’t see the signs—or, as I must sadly conclude, turn a blind eye toward them. How do they not see these daily testimonies to his presence? If they’d just take the time to offer up a prayer (“Grace” seems appropriate), or spend a little time to read The Recipe Book a little every day, maybe they’d come to know Him as I have. All these signs I encounter every day prove beyond any shadow of a doubt, the undeniable reality of His Daily Presence and Providence, and provide me with the absolute surety that My Monster Is Real.

Or maybe just that people tend to be abysmally poor at estimating probabilities. Shrug.

(Note: just to be clear, I didn’t make a single one of the above stories up. If you really believe things like these are uncannily unlikely, you should probably take a closer look at what you think you know about statistics, chance, and math.)

Deconstructing the Myths of “The First Thanksgiving”

http://www.oyate.org/resources/shortthanks.html

Myth #11: Thanksgiving is a happy time.

Fact: For many Indian people, “Thanksgiving” is a time of mourning, of remembering how a gift of generosity was rewarded by theft of land and seed corn, extermination of many from disease and gun, and near total destruction of many more from forced assimilation. As currently celebrated in this country, “Thanksgiving” is a bitter reminder of 500 years of betrayal returned for friendship.

There’s nothing wrong with enjoying this festive holiday (I certainly fully intend to do so); but let’s not entertain the pretension that it was originally a celebration of friendship and harmony with the native peoples of the area, or that God had miraculously “provided” food for the “pilgrims”. Instead, let’s enjoy the opportunity to dine, celebrate, and enjoy the company of our friends and family.

Fear? Politicking? Religion? Ignorance?

Repost of my response to a comment at The Barefoot Bum’s blog.

Fear? Politicking? Religion? Ignorance?

Having been raised as a fundie Christian, I’ll go with Ignorance (well, and Religion, obviously, but that’s redundant).

In the church I was raised in, we were not taught to hate¹ homosexuals, we were taught to “love the sinner, hate the sin”. We could genuinely feel kindness and good-will toward someone we knew to be homosexual, while condemning their lifestyle².

But the Bible condemns homosexuality³. It’s a “sin”, and the Bible tells us that temptation can always be avoided, so therefore it must also be a “choice” to be gay. It also goes against nature (never mind that there are numerous observed instances of homosexual behavior throughout nature; bonobos for example routinely use it as a relationship-building means). God created HIV as a punishment for homosexuality (never mind that its first sufferers would not have contracted it in that way; I suppose God hates African hunters, too).

Probably due to Paul’s language in Romans about God giving men over to unnatural desires, “[burning] in lust one toward another”, I believe most Christians associate homosexuality entirely with ravenous sexual desire, and do not realize that deep, unconditional and selfless love, thoughtfulness, and human affection play as much a role in gay relationships as they do in straight ones. This makes it easier to despise. For me personally, I think being exposed to the humanity of homosexual relationships may have played a significant role in my own change of perspective.

I suspect that most proponents of Prop 8, perhaps contrary to expectations, don’t actually support civil unions between homosexuals either, but referred to it as an attempt to placate. “Look, this law (as opposed to our desire) isn’t taking away your rights to a relationship together, just marriage!”

Ignorance really is the rule. But combatting it is difficult, when the biggest root of the problem is the belief that the Bible (or the Church) is the Word (or Voice) of God. Still, it can be eroded through steady exposure to the many evidences that the Bible is the work only of men, that homosexual preference is not a choice, that homosexual relationships can be as loving as heterosexual ones, that there’s no such thing as an engraved definition of “traditional marriage”, etc. It’s an uphill battle, but society is slowly coming around.

A decade ago, Prop 8 would’ve won by a landslide—in fact, a decade ago, no one would have bothered to propose it, because no one would have feared that their precious “definition of marriage” was in jeapordy. It’s a desparation act, and despite the temporary victory, its existence is in itself something of a good sign, I think.

That the proposition was accepted is also no reason to feel that we can’t repeal it in the next election: it succeeded in large part due to heavy financial support from outside the state; it may be that they’ll feel safe enough not to spend so much money in defense of their creation. Either way, we’ll never defeat it unless we remain steady and continue to challenge it at every turn.

¹ By “hate” here I mean intensely negative emotional feelings. I generally prefer to view “love” and “hate” in terms of the actions one takes, and not just emotions; from that perspective Prop 8 is absolutely an act of hatred. Also, I don’t mean to imply that my church experience is universal, or even necessarily usual: there are certainly plenty of examples of church atmospheres where the attitude toward homosexuals is unquestionably hateful.

² in much the same way we would accept unmarried couples but condemn their lifestyle. However, while many churches had unmarried couples the church would try to “love into righteousness”, I know of few to no churches that would admit gay couples under the same terms.

³ Despite having heard arguments to the contrary, I still find this a hard conclusion to escape. Fervently devoted gay Christians continue to fascinate me.

Obama Quote on “Doing Green Things”

My new favorite Obama quote, from the highlights from Newsweek’s Special Elections project:

I often find myself trapped by the questions and thinking to myself, ‘You know, this is a stupid question, but let me … answer it.’ So when Brian Williams is asking me about what’s a personal thing that you’ve done [that’s green], and I say, you know, ‘Well, I planted a bunch of trees.’ And he says, ‘I’m talking about personal.’ What I’m thinking in my head is, ‘Well, the truth is, Brian, we can’t solve global warming because I f—ing changed light bulbs in my house. It’s because of something collective’.