Edible Googly Eyes Undermine Faith in God

Katherine Mangu-Ward | October 30, 2008

The New York Times food section is always a joy, with its declarations that a $65 sushi prix fixe is "affordable" dining, its demands that we schlep to Brooklyn for the authentic experience of drinking beer made in Utica, and articles titled things like "Vinegars Hear Muses of Long Ago." (All this, just in yesterday's edition!)

But the good people at the NYT have let me (and Serious Eats) down. In an article about food-based science projects, they failed to property identify a flying spaghetti monster, captioning it: "Malted milk ball eyes atop a noodle monster."

Here at reason, we know anti-creationist humor when we see it. Jesse Walker explains:

Behold the Flying Spaghetti Monster, noodle-god of the Pastafarians....The monster was created—or revealed?—by Bobby Henderson when Kansas decided to teach “intelligent design” alongside evolution. “I and many others around the world are of the strong belief that the universe was created by a Flying Spaghetti Monster,” he wrote to the state board of education in 2005, urging that this theory receive equal time.

For an brilliant, obsessive account of how to make your own edible googly eyes without a single drop of divine intervention, go here.

For a comprehensive source on flying spaghetti monster sightings, go here.

Comments

|10.30.08 @ 4:47PM|#

Forgive them Oh Saucy one, for they know not what they do. May your noodly appendage embrace us all.

|10.30.08 @ 4:58PM|#

"The greatest trick the Flying Spaghetti Monster ever pulled was convincing the world he didn't exist..."

Some James|10.30.08 @ 4:58PM|#

I take exception to your blasphemous reference to "a" Flying Spaghetti Monster. As though there is more than one, or worse, that he is not entitled to the definite article.

|10.30.08 @ 5:01PM|#

I go back and forth with regards to the FSM - at times I think it's pure genius, and the rest of the time I realize that genius flies distinctly over the heads of the people it's making fun of.

gorgonzola\'s foil|10.30.08 @ 5:11PM|#

I for one toast the FX Matt brewery's genius market positioning as the outsourcing supplier for craft breweries making the jump from 'brewpub' level to investing in a major production facility. Plus, their own Saranac 12 Beers of Winter is a seasonal favorite.

|10.30.08 @ 5:14PM|#

Does the fact that I can make my own FSM highlight the theistic problem of infinite regress?

Mad Max|10.30.08 @ 5:21PM|#

The NYT should consider changing the focus of its food section to reflect the economic downturn:

YES, YOU CAN EAT VEGETARIAN AT MCDONALD'S

SAVE MONEY ON LUNCH BY STEALING, EATING PRETENTIOUS FOOD-THEMED ART EXHIBITS

STOUFFERS UNVEILS NEW FROZEN TOFU DINNER

HUNTING PIGEONS IN CENTRAL PARK IS "ALL THE RAGE"

WHERE TO FIND THE BEST DUMPSTERS

Just Plain Brian|10.30.08 @ 5:24PM|#

I go back and forth with regards to the FSM - at times I think it's pure genius, and the rest of the time I realize that genius flies distinctly over the heads of the people it's making fun of.

True, but I'm not sure those 2 ideas are mutually exclusive.

Does the fact that I can make my own FSM highlight the theistic problem of infinite regress?

It would, but while I have little doubt about the SM, I'm afraid you're going to need to prove you've made one that will also F.

|10.30.08 @ 5:46PM|#

rAmen

|10.30.08 @ 6:16PM|#

I think I'm going to riot in the streets and burn down an embassy because of this blasphemous attempt to create an image of the Flying Spaghetti Monster.

zoltan|10.30.08 @ 6:20PM|#

Marcvs, you need to also threaten the creator of this blasphemous "artwork". Only then will He be satisfied.

|10.30.08 @ 6:21PM|#

HUNTING PIGEONS IN CENTRAL PARK IS "ALL THE RAGE"

You laugh. After the huge influx of Southeast Asian refugees in the mid to late '70s, the stubborn feral cat and dog problem in Golden Gate Park went away. Without the government spending any money.

Of course, many people were upset about this. Not me though. I loved it. Fido gets out of the yard and ends up on a serving platter sounds like justice to me.

|10.30.08 @ 6:27PM|#

For an brilliant, obsessive account of how to make your own edible googly eyes without a single drop of divine intervention

...divine intervention, no. Intelligent design, on the other hand... ;)

(Wait, if the directions are sufficiently step by step enough, maybe that would mitigate the whole "intelligence" requirement...)

Just Plain Brian|10.30.08 @ 6:29PM|#

Of course, many people were upset about this. Not me though. I loved it. Fido gets out of the yard and ends up on a serving platter sounds like justice to me.

Agreed - there's no better justice than forcing Michael Vick to live the rest of his life on a dog-only diet (no, I'm not kidding)

|10.30.08 @ 6:40PM|#

Agreed - there's no better justice than forcing Michael Vick to live the rest of his life on a dog-only diet (no, I'm not kidding)
I acknowledge that animals are property and believe you should be ablee to do as you wish with your own property. Contrary to those libertarian thoughts and principles I support animal cruelty laws. I'm not going to try to justify justify it. I just do.

Wait until Vick finds out that no NFL team wants to hire him. Then he'll realize what justice is.

Just Plain Brian|10.30.08 @ 6:51PM|#

Wait until Vick finds out that no NFL team wants to hire him. Then he'll realize what justice is.

Ok, fair enough - that will be good, too.

Although part of me still wants to make him eat every dog he ever killed.

|10.30.08 @ 6:52PM|#

Mad Max | October 30, 2008, 5:21pm | #
HUNTING PIGEONS IN CENTRAL PARK IS "ALL THE RAGE"

But of course. Some of the finest restaurants in the world offer breast of squab sir.

Just Plain Brian|10.30.08 @ 7:01PM|#

I acknowledge that animals are property and believe you should be ablee to do as you wish with your own property. Contrary to those libertarian thoughts and principles I support animal cruelty laws. I'm not going to try to justify justify it. I just do.

Well, I'm not sure how far I'm willing to go with the first part of your statement, with the obvious exception of food - it's hard to argue that you aren't harming your food. So, you can do any harm you want to your animal "property", but you'd better be prepared to eat it when you're done.

|10.30.08 @ 7:19PM|#

That looks quite disgusting.

Just Plain Brian|10.30.08 @ 7:38PM|#

That looks quite disgusting.

Yep, but all faith is disgusting, eg transubstantiation

|10.30.08 @ 8:34PM|#

J sub D,

There is room in libertarian thought for a class of entities that are somewhere between property and free persons. Children, for example, are not considered free to decide with whom to associate and where to live...but we do consider harming them to be just cause for govt intervention.

Myself, I would say wanton harm to animals justifies government intervention. So a slightly lower standard than that for children, but still above your toaster.

|10.30.08 @ 9:08PM|#

Some of the demonstrations I have seen of communication with animals convinces me that, in many cases, killing of an animal might well be charged as murder. This doesn't make me vegetarian (though that's killing too, isn't it?). But it does make me stop and think, and there are certain animals that I will never kill nor eat, squid being the most recent addition to the list (as the larger food-squids are, to the giant squids that are probably VERY intelligent, as monkeys are to humans). I really used to like calimari, but have lost the taste for it. Crocodile meat tastes similar and, grilled well-done, has a similar consistency.

Also, wasn't it once the case that slaveholders could kill their slaves under law for such things as disobedience, attempt to escape, etc., DESPITE demonstrated intelligence in being able to talk, learn and perform complicated tasks, etc? (I'm not just talking about black slaves, either, in case anyone wonders.)

The general principles seem to be: Killing in self defense is OK, though regrettable. Killing another species is OK (except in recent decades, when it is not OK to kill an "endangered" species), especially for food. Owning and killing humans that are not as mentally or spiritually advanced as a particular society likes to think it is, is OK (though that point of view now seems archaic and even somewhat barbarous to a good number of the world's people).

It seems like a slam dunk (except in the eyes of PETA) to kill a member of another species that is considered inferior to us, if done in self defense and if one eats the remains. What happens if a species is ever judged to be equal or superior to us (at least in mental capacity, if not demonstrated human-like mental ability or intelligent performance), remains to be seen.

|10.30.08 @ 9:23PM|#

Myself, I would say wanton harm to animals justifies government intervention. So a slightly lower standard than that for children, but still above your toaster.

You make sense. Harm for entertainment is where I'm drawing the line. I imagine it would suck being a factory farm cow.* You can easily argue the beasts are being tortured. But they're not being tortured/abused/raised in the most profitable manner for entertainmet. Dog fights and bear baiting is a whole different thing. I've never been to bullfight. Even when I was young, irresponsible and living a short distance from the Tijuana bullring, I refused to have anything to do with the barbarism.

* I also imagine it would suck to be a cow, period.

|10.30.08 @ 9:34PM|#

Cephalopod intelligence is being investigated. We may not learn much because due to a much different evolutionary history (they are mollusks for chrissake) the "intelligence" may be too different for us to puzzle out. If there is any.

That said, I've eaten dog and probably monkey. Don't feel a bit bad about it. I wouldn't eat dolphin (mammal, the fish is cool for consumption) or one of the great apes, but until science convinces me otherwise, I'll let you do it (assuming endangered species stuff is N/A).

Just Plain Brian|10.30.08 @ 10:01PM|#

That said, I've eaten dog and probably monkey. Don't feel a bit bad about it.

Ok, but generally speaking, if you treat a farm animal well, doesn't it amount to a better meal than one that is tortured/mistreated?

And there will always be exceptions to any rule - if Dahmer was willing to eat the people he killed, I'm sure there will always be some animal killers who will eat animals they tortured first.

But suppose there are 2 classes of animals - those you eat, and those you treat well. Biology will take care of the first group, because in most cases (with the possible exception of the over-fed) mistreatment makes an animal less edible - given a choice, who will pick the steak from the mistreated cow over the well-treated one?

Just thinking out loud here - tell me where I've gone wrong.

JLE|10.30.08 @ 10:13PM|#

Let's not talk shit about the NY Times,. They have enough to deal with. Let's talk shit about your phrase "an brilliant." Hopefully someone already mentioned this.

|10.30.08 @ 10:17PM|#

Ok, but generally speaking, if you treat a farm animal well, doesn't it amount to a better meal than one that is tortured/mistreated?

In many cases with cows and almost all cases with chickens it is cheaper, thus more profitable, to keep the animals is small pens a deliver food and water to them (dunno about swine). Producing meat cheaper or inhumanely as it is argued, gets the Peta types tits in a flutter. They seem to have some sort of romanticized vision of what farms used to be like before modern livestock practices. Like I said, I imagine it would suck to be a cow.

Very few commit suicide though. ;-)

And I couldn't care less than I do about a chickens feelings. Stupid filthy disgusting animals one and all.

Just Plain Brian|10.30.08 @ 10:18PM|#

Let's talk shit about your phrase "an brilliant." Hopefully someone already mentioned this.

Dammit, you proof-reading bastard, I don't know how I missed that. Although you didn't mention the next word, which was "obsessive" - coincidence?

Ok, yeah, it probably was a coincidence. Good catch on the "an", though.

|10.30.08 @ 10:21PM|#

Of course, that brings up the question of very painful deaths brought upon insects, mice, and other vermin. It's popular to claim that they spread disease, but that's not really proven. People primarily don't want them around because their presence is a sign of bad housekeeping.

JLE|10.30.08 @ 10:21PM|#

I'm an English professor, and I just finished grading, and I'm kind of annoyed and kind of drunk. What do you expect?

Just Plain Brian|10.30.08 @ 10:33PM|#

Producing meat cheaper or inhumanely as it is argued, gets the Peta types tits in a flutter.

Let's assume for a moment that those Peta types are only a little wrong (I know it seems unlikely, but go with me here) - wouldn't a cruelty-free farm still have an advantage over one that is cruelty-full?

It's not that far-fetched to think that animals have natural defenses of one kind or another, and even if those defenses are slight, wouldn't they still, at some point, make a difference taste-wise?

Maybe factory-farmed vs free-range is only a small difference in taste at the moment, but wouldn't that difference naturally increase as time goes on?

Like I said, I imagine it would suck to be a cow.

Depends, I hear they have it pretty good in India.

JLE|10.30.08 @ 10:34PM|#

PS: Learn the difference between a hyphen and a dash. It does wonders!

Just Plain Brian|10.30.08 @ 10:39PM|#

PS: Learn the difference between a hyphen and a dash. It does wonders!

Ok, professor, what is the difference? (and where can I find each on my keyboard?)

JLE|10.30.08 @ 10:41PM|#

PPS: I am a jerk right now. I take it all back. Not that I'm not right, but that I'm far too forward for a woman. Oops! Oopsie daisy. I truly fucked up. Darn. You betcha.

Anyway, I just like to read these articles because they make me informed and happy. That's all. I submit myself to your male authority. Oops again.

Do you want to hear that you win? You remind me of the police force.

Just Plain Brian|10.30.08 @ 10:45PM|#

Wow, um, sorry I killed your dog, or whatever.

the innominate one|10.30.08 @ 11:52PM|#

Tulpa | October 30, 2008, 10:21pm | #
Of course, that brings up the question of very painful deaths brought upon insects, mice, and other vermin. It's popular to claim that they spread disease, but that's not really proven. People primarily don't want them around because their presence is a sign of bad housekeeping.

um, it's pretty well established that some mice and other rodents carry disease: Yersinia pestis, the causative agent of Black Death/ bubonic plague/ pneumonic plague and hantavirus.

Mad Max|10.31.08 @ 12:05AM|#

Shouldn't we at least be able to kill apes *in utero*?

Mad Max|10.31.08 @ 12:07AM|#

What if the ape-mother consented?

When does a fetal ape acquire full ape-rights?

A Duck|10.31.08 @ 12:47AM|#

Oh man, I just realized I how high I was when I saw the picture of the spaghetti monster and got really hungry.

alan|10.31.08 @ 1:28AM|#

That is not an image of Flying Spaghetti Monster at all. It is a fraud. In fact, it is made out of Linguine. You heretical bastards, prepare for SCHISM!

|10.31.08 @ 4:55AM|#

OLD MEMES ARE ARE SO EXCITING!

|10.31.08 @ 5:46AM|#

Ok, professor, what is the difference? (and where can I find each on my keyboard?)

A hyphen is the ( - ) key. You may use it between the elements of compound words, to indicate a line break, after/before prefixes and suffixes that you type by themselves, and for phone numbers and numerical dates. Close up around it when typing.

If you want to avoid confusion when typing a hyphen in a manuscript for publication, use the ( = ) key as we (ex-)proofreaders use that as a proofreader's mark for the symbol. Examples: 867-5309, a mouth-breathing imbecile, 15-03-2008, pre-, -ist.

There are two dashes, the en dash and the em dash, named after their respective lengths, the width of an N or an M.

An en dash is used between a range of numbers or dates, or when you are making a compound word and one of the elements is already compound. Type it as a hyphen with spaces on both sides. Proofreaders indicate this using a hyphen with a 1 above it and an N below it, as if it was the fraction 1/N. (I hate subjunctive, sue me.) Examples: November 2 - November 3, well-educated - highly-respected professor.

An em dash is used as punctuation--you would type it using two hyphens like this--to indicate parenthetical statements (because parentheses are used in much the same way). You can also use it to indicate parts of words you'd rather not type, such as "d--d nonsense" or "Mr. B--".

There are other uses for these three symbols, but you're already bored, and I'm tired and stuck in Dubai and wanting a drink. Go find a style manual.

|10.31.08 @ 6:50AM|#

"prepare for SCHISM!"

No! Prepare for the Spanish Inquisition!

CB

Abdul|10.31.08 @ 7:20AM|#

Katherine Mangu-Ward's opening paragraph is the best one I've read on H&R all week.

J sub, please tell me that those feral puppies and kitties disappeared because the south-east aisan immigrants took them to nice farms where they can run and play.

Please.

ed|10.31.08 @ 8:11AM|#

they failed to property identify a flying spaghetti monster, captioning it: "Malted milk ball eyes atop a noodle monster."


To be fair, the FSM is still very much an inside joke, wouldn't you say?

|10.31.08 @ 8:56AM|#

I dont get the connection at all.

Jiff
www.online-anonymity.kr.tc

gerbils|10.31.08 @ 9:16AM|#

My god is an awesome god.

\"Weak atheist\"|10.31.08 @ 1:55PM|#

The most I am willing to commit to on the subject is that there are no Flying Spagetti Monsters that I believe in.

\"Strong atheist\"|10.31.08 @ 1:59PM|#

Come on, "weak atheist," why don't you take the next step with me and say that there are no Flying Spagetti Monsters?

|10.31.08 @ 4:10PM|#

# Cracker's Boy | October 31, 2008, 6:50am | #

## "prepare for SCHISM!"

# No! Prepare for the Spanish Inquisition!

Schism, Spanish Inquisition, it all sounds the same when uttered by someone who is three sheets to the wind, or higher than a kite, am I right?

Nick|11.1.08 @ 11:47AM|#

My friend and I vowed last night that we would write in "Flying Spaghetti Monster" for president.

jtuf|11.3.08 @ 3:30AM|#

I don't personally believe in the Flying Spaghetti Monster, but I love how Pastafarians have enriched the debate.

|11.10.08 @ 3:00PM|#

Wow. A total lack of reading comprehension. You do realize the times article about Brooklyn Beer was mainly about Sixpoint Craft Ales, which brews ALL of their beer in Brooklyn? And the whole point of the Times article was that Sixpoint is making better beer while Brooklyn makes okay stuff that is mostly brewed in Utica?