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This atheist phantasm is not a good argument against belief in God. It's not even a good parody.
So. The Flying Spaghetti Monster. Let’s talk about this.
The idea is that theism is unreasonable (or just plain stupid) because it is no better motivated than believing in a creator or designer that is, essentially, a sentient ball of noodle appendages that can somehow fly. It’s a funny example—funny enough to have become a general symbol of religious parody. But is it effective?
Is belief in God really no better, rationally speaking, than belief in the Flying Spaghetti Monster?
To address this, we need to consider
relevant differences. In other words, are the motivations for theism the same as those for believing in the Flying Spaghetti Monster, or is theistic belief different in important ways that make belief in God reasonable without having to accept belief in a Flying Spaghetti Monster? (Most of us, I think, would agree that belief in a Flying Spaghetti Monster is not well motivated.)
To answer the question of relevant differences, we need to look at the ways people have historically thought about or argued for the existence of God.
If we consider traditional arguments—such as those from Aristotle, Plotinus, or Aquinas—it becomes clear, almost immediately, that the Flying Spaghetti Monster is not an effective parody. For example, one
major line of thoughtamong Neo-Platonists is that all composite objects (anything “made up” of parts) must have a cause, and that whatever is truly fundamental or ultimate must be absolutely, ontologically simple. Reasons are then provided for why an absolutely simple being, whose essence just is its existence, is rightly called God. But the Flying Spaghetti Monster, being a composite entity with many different types of parts (both physical and metaphysical), clearly does not meet this criterion.
So we see a relevant difference: what motivates theism in this respect does not equally motivate belief in the Flying Spaghetti Monster. In fact, if these traditional arguments hold any weight, they just as easily prove that the Flying Spaghetti Monster, if it did exist, could not be truly ultimate. It would have to have some further cause or explanation for its existence.
Similarly, if we follow Aristotle’s argument from motion, where anything moving from potentiality to actuality—which is Aristotle’s metaphysical analysis of change—must ultimately be moved by that which is purely actual (I’m skipping steps), this also rules out the Flying Spaghetti Monster. Being susceptible to change—even in the angles of its noodly appendages—it could not be the immutable being of pure actuality. We have another clear relevant difference. What is good for the classical theist is not good for the Pastafarian.
I’m not detailing or defending these traditional arguments at length here—just highlighting enough of their features to show that, if—
if, if, if!—one finds these traditional lines of thought convincing (which I do), then the Flying Spaghetti Monster is no real threat. The parody fails.
In fact, even if we consider more
modern arguments from contingency (something is contingent insofar as it is possibly nonexistent), the Flying Spaghetti Monster doesn’t fare well. After all, it’s described in such a way as to exhibit all the usual features that imply contingency—features that suggest that it is not the sort of thing that could be necessary in itself (himself?) or truly existentially ultimate.
Philosopher Joshua Rasmussen, for example, argues that anything with
arbitrary limits—sudden, unexplained cut-offs in terms of power, geometry, knowledge, etc.—always points beyond itself for further explanation. Clearly, the Flying Spaghetti Monster is arbitrarily limited—it has only so many noodly appendages of certain strength, length, and so on. God, however, is not arbitrarily limited, but qualitatively unlimited along relevant dimensions: immaterial (no restricting shape), omnipotent (no restricted power), omniscient (no restricted knowledge), and perfectly good (no restricted goodness or value).
Let’s turn now to another way of motivating God’s existence: inference to the best explanation. Perhaps the Spaghetti Monster will fare better here.
The basic idea of this approach is to compare different hypotheses and see which can explain the most with the least. That is, we want to hit the ideal balance, if we can, between explanatory comprehensiveness and
theoretical simplicity. As many theists argue, theism has enormous explanatory power, and there’s a strong case to be made that it’s an extremely simple and elegant theory—perhaps the simplest and most elegant of all, especially if we think simplicity matters most at the fundamental level.
Classical theism, in particular, with its commitment to the ideas that 1) God is pure goodness itself, and 2) goodness is naturally self-diffusive (naturally seeks to communicate itself), anticipates that if God creates, he will create a world with a vast hierarchy of beings that exhibits layered structures and is generally orderly, stable, and in many respects beautiful—and, importantly, will include persons. Why? Because people are good! God, being omnipotent, has the ability to bring this state of affairs about, since omnipotence is the power to bring about any possible being.
Finally, classical theism is a simple theory because everything that isn’t God is grounded in God (or God’s will), and God himself is a single ontologically simple entity with no arbitrary limits or complexity. That seems like a pretty good theory—indeed, I argue that it is one—even when we consider the problem of suffering and evil, often thought to be the
strongest anomaly for theism.
What about the Spaghetti Monster, then? Honestly, not so much. First, the being is obviously limited and not omnipotent, so there’s no reason to think it could produce much of anything. Even if it’s described as extremely powerful, it’s still clearly a physical being and so cannot possibly account for all physical reality (since self-causation is absurd), unlike God, who is not self-caused, but a necessary immaterial being. In this sense, the Spaghetti Monster is deficient in explanatory comprehensiveness. There is something—namely, the physical realm—that God can explain but the Spaghetti Monster cannot.
Given its other limitations, the Spaghetti Monster also doesn’t seem able to explain much else that God can, such as order, stability, integrated complexity, teleology, etc. The monster
assumes all these things, whereas God—as
classical theists understand him, as the absolutely simple, incomposite, undirected director of everything—explains them. Moreover, even if the Spaghetti Monster could account for
some things, there is no reason to expect that such a limited being, just by getting drunk,
would create anything that resembles a world like ours. But theists have good reason to think that God, just by his nature (no alcohol required), would create a world like ours!
On all accounts, the Flying Spaghetti Monster is a terrible objection, because it’s a terrible attempt at parody. There’s a reason you don’t find serious, sophisticated atheists throwing this objection around: they know it’s stupid!
However, I am grateful for the invention of the Spaghetti Monster. For one thing, it’s good for a laugh. Beyond that, it’s useful in allowing the theist to spell out why his belief is actually well motivated, whereas the Spaghetti Monster isn’t.
The Flying Spaghetti Monster is supposed to be an atheist's devastating parody of God. But it fails as an argument, because it fails as parody.
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