Start your day with pasta:
Further to Pastafarians not giving up their claim to be a religion, we hear lawyers seeking clients are asking: Do You Have To Accommodate An Employee Who Worships The Flying Spaghetti Monster? JD Supra:
Employers are generally aware of their duty to accommodate an employee’s religious beliefs. Whether that means rearranging work schedules, permitting modifications to dress codes, permitting prayer breaks, or any number of other alterations, you know that the law requires you to be flexible when it comes to religion. But what if your employee claims he is a “Pastafarian” who worships the Flying Spaghetti Monster? A recent case from Nebraska might shed some light on your religious accommodation obligations.
We didn’t say “asking in all seriousness” because few seem to think that the Pastafarians are serious about their claims. Their activities now appear to be an obscure satire on accommodations of religion in employment law, etc.
Their Flying Spaghetti Monster deity certainly did not start out that way (brief background). It was a physics student’s satire on intelligent design (approximately 2005)—the stuff of Wikipedia and instant books.
The anti-ID aspect seems largely to have dropped from view now. For one thing, the law firm noted above does not appear to have been much interested in getting the fact base underlying the original spoof right:
In response to a 2005 Delaware court case involving whether public school children should be taught the theory of ‘intelligent design’ as an alternative to evolution, the Kansas State Board of Education began considering whether to require its students be taught intelligent design. More.
A knowledgeable reader writes to wonder whether anyone would be well-advised to take this firm’s advice because
– The Dover case that sparked the spoof was heard in Pennsylvania, not Delaware.
– The Kansas controversy didn’t revolve around whether to teach ID but whether to teach critiques of Darwinian evolution.
– The chronological order is wrong. The Kansas controversy preceded the Dover case by some months so it was not a response to events in Dover (which took most observer by surprise in any event).
It sounds like a group with political objectives is now running the FSM circus: What happened before that doesn’t apparently matter even to would-be experts.
See also: Dover is over
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