FSM statue inaugurated

In a magnificient throwback to the 2005 erection of a Ten Commandments monument in front of a Kentucky courthouse, the Crossville, Tenn. chapter of the Church of Flying Spaghetti Monster have now inaugurated a statue of His Noodly Appendage in front of their local courthouse. In fact, they have made it into a monument to all faiths and to freedom of speech. Of course, beyond the hilarious goofiness of the whole Flying Spaghetti Monster movement lie the extremely serious issues of the separation of Church and State and, equally importantly, the separation of religion and science in general.

Coming from a Roman Catholic family and having grown up as an agnostic physicist myself, I am indeed feeling very much concerned by this question. In Europe one would hardly ever hear the suggestion that creationism, the biblical description of how God created the Universe and the Earth in seven days, should be taught in public schools. So it's always come as a shock to me, as I was living in the United States, that some states were imposing the teaching of neo-creationism, also called intelligent design, alongside evolution in biology classes.

Of course, I have nothing in general against people who do believe in the Genesis. I have always had friends of extremely diverse religious backgrounds, whether Buddhist, Christian or even Hindu, and who each have a completely different understanding of how the Universe and us inside it ever came into being and, perhaps more importantly, why. Since I've studied quantum physics, I am indeed well aware that characterizing what reality really is is a complicated question and that science does not always have all the answers yet, and perhaps never will. In fact, as U.S. president Bill Clinton once famously put it, "it all depends what the meaning of is is."

But I do find the Flying Spaghetti Monster both so hilariously funny and philosophically essential when it comes to making it clear that religion is not science and conversely science should not be confused with religious beliefs. From Darwin's first observations of evolutionary patterns within populations of Galapagos tortoises and mockingbirds, to the very contemporary experiments in genetics and all of the serious problems we are now having with TB germs that have evolved to become resistant to antibiotics, there is no doubt in my mind that much value is to be found in modern biology.

Most importantly, science does have its own clear set of rules that one must follow in order to come up with reasonably meaningful experiments and conclusions. From this point of view, intelligent design is not at all science and should not be taught either as such or even alongside Darwinian theory in biology classes. For this would be very much like imposing the teaching of, say, Karl Marx's Das Kapital at Sunday school-not very appropriate. I am all about exposing young people to a variety of points of view but at the very least it seems to me that education ought to be about teaching kids something both meaningful and consistent.

The Flying Spaghetti Monster is indeed a wonderful reminder of that and an illustration of how teaching creationism in biology classes is complete nonsense: it will only sow confusion in the minds of young children who are otherwise quite capable of recognizing the value of both science AND religion to their own intellectual development. RAmen!