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Debate Info

43
22
He's as real as any god. He's as fake as any god.
Debate Score:65
Arguments:23
Total Votes:90
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Argument Ratio

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 He's as real as any god. (15)
 
 He's as fake as any god. (8)

Debate Creator

Tamisan(890) pic



I believe in the Flying Spaghetti monster

Pastafarians unite!

He's as real as any god.

Side Score: 43
VS.

He's as fake as any god.

Side Score: 22
4 points

For me, the attractive thing about the FSM religion is that it is no more inconsistent nor improbable than many other organised religions. Many organised religions claim to be "the ONE true way". Some do so by insisting that all other religions are wrong, despite having no proof other than "faith". Others do so by (oddly) accepting, even embracing other religions in a grand gesture of "tolerance", without actually questioning or modifying their own beliefs. A little patronising, perhaps? How can so many different belief systems be accepted equally as "the ONE true way"?

Personally, I'm a Lapsed Agnostic (I used to wonder if there was an intelligent creator but now I just can't be arsed).

Side: He's as real as any god.
4 points

There is video evidence that he exists! How can you deny that?

FSM Spotted in Germany!!!
Side: FSM
altarion(1955) Disputed
0 points

I can deny it because my computer won't load your video!

Side: He's as fake as any god.
4 points

I grew up religious and my father was an evangelical preacher. He read into the Bible what he wanted to believe. So, why not a new God? The reason I was an evangelical Christian was because I was born into an evangelical Christian family. If I was born Catholic, I would have been Catholic. Truth? It depends on the culture or family you were born into.

So, why not CHOOSE a faith? Hey, I just had a spaghetti dinner, and it was great. So, bow your heads and pray to the Flying Spaghetti Monster.

Side: He's as real as any god.
3 points

Exactly.

God(s?) are notoriously hard to verify; they seem to only appear to certain people, and quite randomly, at that.

Who knows if there is more than one God? Does it matter? I personally don't care, so I go with the God whose message I agree with: the Flying Spaghetti Monster! Can't wait for the beer volcano and stripper factory!

Also, subscribing to their feed provides ample opportunities to flex your argumentative skills; the plethora of logical fallacies presented by the hate mailers is always amusing to read as well.

Side: He's as real as any god.
3 points

Religion is a subject I've had trouble getting away from for the last five years or so. My father is, as I've said here before, an Anglican priest. I myself have been a Pastafarian for some years now, and we live happily under the same roof. Claims that Pastafarians lack something that the self-labelled "legitimate" religions have are downright ridiculous: Last year on holiday to Germany, I stopped off with my father at an internet cafe to check my email and ended up spending a good hour or so online, and yet I was charged less than a Euro for what should have cost three. I said, with my limited German, that it was not enough, but the man who ran the place held up his hand and said something. I caught the words "Nudliche" and "Bruder", so I can only guess he made a discount for a fellow member of the Pastafarian faith and, at the same time, to the Christian accompanying me. If Pastafarians are capable of showing friendship to their brothers of Faith, of all Faiths, then surely nobody can fail to recognise us as members of a genuine religion.

Side: He's as real as any god.
3 points

Einstein once famously said "my sense of God is my sense of wonder at the universe". He then ordered a large plate of spaghetti with a spicy Bolognese sauce, proclaimed it wondrous, and said "Mama Mia, that's a spicy, Omnipotent meat ball!".

Vonnegut once said "music is to me proof of the existence of God", and then added " and so is the proper amount of Parmesan cheese on my pasta".

McAllister , in his play Muse of Fire, said "Forever and never and life and death are just illusions we make up to make it easier to understand things." And then he added "And the same goes for God.

And on the seventh day he rested.

Side: He's as real as any god.

I am religious, I believe in gods; but I also find the Flying Spaghetti Monster to be a rather hilarious addition to the Universal Pantheon of gods.

He is as real as any god; in the way that all gods are representations of forces and/or concepts. They are culturally determined faces on fundamental and universal qualities of man and nature.

If you listed the features and powers of FSM and compared him with other gods held be past or present "serious" religions you'd probably find a god that does the exact same things he does; only they look much different.

The ancient polytheists realized this; that's why whenever Greeks would invade a territory they simply merged their beliefs with the locals. (Oddly enough, the Catholics continued this tradition in the form of saints and the Virgin Mary.)

Side: He's as real as any god.
2 points

there is scientific evidence disproving any kind of supernatural being so how do we know that a flying spaghetti monster is watching over us?

there is a website devoted to his almighty Noodleness, along with a published bible, detailing how his followers are to act, what to wear, how the religion came into power, and the prophets of the FSM.

it is an internationally recognised religion, so how can it not be true?

Side: He's as real as any god.
2 points

The shear brilliance of the fsm is, (besides his obvious awesomeness as the only deity out there who also provides you with complex carbohydrates) is the fact that he is ultimately un-provable. After all, he is invisible aswell as hyper intelligent, and any evidence contradictory to his existance is just a joke made by him that we don't understand. Basically, he is as provable as he is unprovable, putting him on the same plane of reality as any other "god", whose only real supporting argument for existance is the difficulty it is to dissprove it. And so in the end, whatever religious teaching you chose to follow is primarily based on A) what you were brought up to believe and B) personal choice. But who would you really want to believe? A control freak Jackass who supposedly gave us free will and then chastizes us for using it in any way that he don't like? Or an all-accepting, all loving tangle of pasta and meatballs who shows us the joy of pirating and promises eternal life in a world of beer and strippers?

Side: He's as real as any god.
1 point

neither real or fake. it's the imaginary number. we use it to fill in parts that can not be explained with out it.

really, God and the universe is like 1i

Side: He's as real as any god.
1 point

I want to cast my lot with the FSM, But...Is he short of cash also?

Side: He's as real as any god.
1 point

He is a real and much cuter!

Side: He's as real as any god.
2 points

The Flying Spaghetti Monster is simply another example of the "why should I believe in any god if I can't see/hear/touch/taste/smell him?" argument. In other words why should I have "Faith" in something that can neither be proved or disproved to exist? But there in lies the whole point, "Faith" is a feeling. To truly believe in any religion, or any higher power is to feel that a higher power exists.

One can not quantify a feeling, you can't measure Happy, any more than you can describe a feeling without using other feelings to describe it. You would never be able to truly describe melancholy to a computer in a way it would understand. So how can someone describe their "Faith" in something intangible, to someone who does not feel the same way?

The Answer to that is something theologians have been searching for since the beginning of time. So profits and have built their religions up with fables and parables to help describe their beliefs, and over the years those stories get distorted and picked apart to he point when people use them to back up any side of an argument to further their cause.

Thats where you get someone like Bobby Henderson who creates something so outlandish in order to make a point about how ridiculous organized religion, and the Dogma people create around it, has become. But I say if I believe in a God that is present in all things everywhere, then who is to say it couldn't portray itself as a flying spaghetti monster, just as much as it could be an old man with a long gray beard?

It all comes down to personal perception of how you Feel about God.

Side: He's as fake as any god.
2 points

I'm only arguing for this side because in my opinion, G-d is more of a thought rather than an actual person/spirit thing, and if there was a flying spaghetti monster, i think that either i, or someone else, would have eaten it by now! Muahahahaha! ;]

Side: He's as fake as any god.
2 points

Touched by his noodly appendage...

Side: He's as fake as any god.
1 point

His holiness the FSM doesn't exist outside our imaginations. As cool as it would be.

Side: He's as fake as any god.
-1 points

Actually you do not believe in the FSM, because you cannot believe in something you know to be created for the sole purpose of creating a straw man argument.

Hence, like all followers of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, you are a liar and in bad faith - which lie is your fundamental creed. Questions: Do you trust a liar, especially in matters of ultimate reality and importance? Is the point to win converts or be right?

At the same time, FSM followers are also examples of the paradoxical sentence: "I am lying." Because it is obvious from the context that you do not and cannot believe in the FSM, you are publicly declaring yourself to be a liar, a heretic, and someone insensitive to the sacred beliefs of others. This begs the question of what you do believe, which seems to be that stupid people don't deserve respect, but ridicule.

While this is politically incorrect and tactically questionable, at least it is honest. And remember, some chickens come home to roost.

Side: FSM
Nikobelia(106) Disputed
5 points

Your argument rests upon the idea that the FSM is created to be a straw man fallacy and therefore belief in Him is offensive. Why is that belief offensive, though? Why is it a matter of "ultimate reality and importance"?

The creator of the FSM website, Bobby Henderson, says this: "I don’t have a problem with religion. What I have a problem with is religion posing as science." In other words, it's pointing out the absurdity on imposing beliefs on other people as if they were truth. You talk about the offending the "sacred beliefs of others" and ridiculing people, but you're missing the point. FSMism is poking fun at fundamentalism, maybe. But it's not laughing at believers, Christian or otherwise. It's asking for religious freedom and tolerance, and for all believers to be able to believe what they want, without having Creationist dogma thrust upon them.

Why does that make them "a liar, a heretic, and someone insensitive to the sacred beliefs of others"? Using the FSM as an argument to rebut the teaching of Intelligent Design is no different from using any analogy; it's not "lying", it's demonstrating a point. And as to the charge of 'heresy', I can't see how you can call either someone of another faith or an atheist a heretic. That's religious totalitarianism and it's obnoxious.

Supporting Evidence: FSM - "the cause" (www.venganza.org)
Side: He's as real as any god.
1 point

A vast number of people claims they believe in a talking snake and you tell us that we can't believe in the Flying Spaghetti Monster???

Side: He's as real as any god.
-2 points
-2 points
2 points

I suppose my minimalist statement didn’t come across as clearly as I thought it did. The atheists can whine all they want about how there’s no God and throw tantrums to say that God is a foolish, silly concept but in the end it doesn’t make the slightest difference – the atheists will continue arguing, and believers will continue to hold on to their beliefs.

However, and the reason I’m on this side along with others who say that god is fake, is that God is too easily attributed to anything and everything. I mean, you have sensible people who worship everything from idols to animals as well as people who call a human (who was no doubt a manifestation of God), God Himself, so I guess pasta can have its merits too.

Anyway, I’d just like to add that God is above petty spaghetti, invisible pink unicorns and the like. Anyone who’d like to fool around with noodly appendages is free to do so on his/ her own time, but all that silliness doesn’t get more than a smirk.

Side: He's as fake as any god.