Supreme Being or Lawn Ornament?
Jeffrey Weiss, on the The Dallas Morning News Religion blog, tells readers about the newest sculpture to grace the lawn of the Cumberland County (Tennessee) Courthouse, an artist's rendition of the Flying Spaghetti Monster. This is a conversation piece on so many levels...
First, the story made the national news on April 1.
Second, technically, the sculpture isn't of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, but a closely related cousin. If you enlarge the photo, you'll see the pasta is hollow. Clearly it's not made of spaghetti.
Third, I never would have picked Cumberland County, Tennessee as the place where county commissioners would open up the courthouse lawn in such a non-discriminatory fashion. The lawn is the home of an Iraq and Afghanistan Soldier's Memorial, the Statue of Liberty, chainsaw-carved monkeys and bears, Jesus carrying a cross, and now the Flying Spaghetti Monster. Is Tennessee trying to make up for the Scope's Monkey Trial, maybe?
Finally, Jeffrey Weiss' spoils the fun by injecting a very serious point. He says that "*any* being who has the power to have created and designed the unverse is, by defintion, supernatural and therefore a matter for religion rather than a science." Well, yes and no. Defining God as a being outside of space and time certainly sits well with scientists because then they don't have to explain Him. They can leave him for religion to talk about. But it doesn't sit well with Creationists because they insist that their God intersects space and time, most importantly in the act of Creation. That forces scientists to deal with God. Just how did being touched by a noodly appendage cause that lump of clay we know as Adam come to life? That's a question worthy of conversation over dinner. Spaghetti, anyone?
By the way, the Flying Spaghetti Monster artist, Ariel Safdie, says, "The Flying Spaghetti Monster is a pile of noodles and meatballs, but it is meant to open up discussion and provoke thought." That it did. Thanks.
No comments:
Post a Comment