Saturday, December 29, 2007

RELIGION & ITS ALTERNATIVES


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SPAGHETTI MONSTER SCARES OFF CREATIONIST POLS

TAMPA TRIBUNE – [At the Polk County School Board] five of its seven
members declared a personal belief in the concept of intelligent design,
the religiously based explanation of the development of life believed in
by many Christians.

Four of those five sympathetic board members said they would like to see
intelligent design taught in Polk schools as an alternative to Darwinian
evolution, at a time when new state standards mentioning evolution by
name for the first time are under consideration. . .

Yet a few weeks later, the controversy is dying with a whimper. There's
no board support for a challenge to the proposed standards. Some of the
five school board members blame the local newspaper for trying to start
a fight. . .

What happened? You can start with the Church of the Flying Spaghetti
Monster. The satirical religious Web site asserts that an omnipotent,
airborne clump of spaghetti intelligently designed all life with the
deft touch of its "noodly appendage." Adherents call themselves
Pastafarians. They deluged Polk school board members with e-mail
demanding equal time for Flying Spaghetti Monsterism's version of
intelligent design.

"They've made us the laughingstock of the world," said Margaret Lofton,
a school board member who supports intelligent design. She dismissed the
e-mail as ridiculous and insulting.

http://www2.tbo.com/content/2007/dec/22/na-polk-needled-noodled-in-evolution-flap/


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