The Flying Spaghetti Monster (FSM) is the All-Supreme deity of the make-believe religion, “The Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster”. The religion was spontaneously brought into existence in 2005 by Bobby Henderson as a humorous protest to the Kansas State Board of Education’s plan to require teachers to also present Intelligent Design as an alternative to evolution. The Intelligent Design supporters constantly used ambiguous references to an unspecified “Intelligent Designer” to attempt to bypass court rulings prohibiting the teaching of Creation in classrooms as a viable and supportable scientific theory. This ambiguous definition of the “Intelligent Designer” opened up the possibility that any imaginable thing (person, deity, object, mythological creature) could fill the role.
In an open letter to the pinheads at the Kansas State Board of Education, Henderson presents his concept of intelligent design by declaring belief in a supernatural creator that closely resembles a flying plate of spaghetti and meatballs. Hence the creation of the Flying Spaghetti Monster. He labels his theory as the “Pastafarian theory of creation”, and demanded that it be taught in Kansas classrooms along side Intelligent Design.
The humorous nature of Henderson’s argument made the Flying Spaghetti Monster a instant cult sensation and became immensely popular with bloggers as well as humor and Internet culture websites.
In August 2005, the Swedish concept designer Niklas Jansson created, an adaptation of Michelangelo’s The Creation of Adam (superimposing the Flying Spaghetti Monster over God) which became and remains today the FSM’s de facto brand image. He declared his image “pretty much free to use for press and such as far as I’m concerned”.
Flying Spaghetti Monster Geocoin
The Flying Spaghetti Monster trackable geocoin is the personal coin of the “often-imitated, but never duplicated” leader of the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster. FSM splits his time between being a moderator in the Geocaching.com Geocoin Forums and tirelessly trying to educate the world on the inverse relationship between the average global temperature and the alarming decrease in the number of pirates left in the world.
Flying Spaghetti Monster Geocoin was released in July 2007 at CoinsAndPins.com, but quickly sold out.
