Purdue's Pastafarian Preaching!

Yesterday the Society of Non-Theists at Purdue University had their annual Pastafarian Preaching. We go out in full pirate regalia preaching the Gospel of the Flying Spaghetti Monster and hand out flyers to the confused students who run into us. One side of the flyer contains the “Eight I Really Rather You Didn’t“s and the other side explains what the FSM is really about. We want to be a satire of your stereotypical fire and brimstone street preacher to show not only how ridiculous these people look, but that we have the right to criticize religious beliefs, especially if they’re silly or hateful.In a stroke of wonderful luck that proves to me that the Flying Spaghetti Monster does exist, we found out Brother Jed was going to be there the same day as us. Brother Jed is a fairly infamous campus preacher who unites all religious denominations in laughing at him. He also looks exactly like Eugene Levy, which makes it all the more hilarious.We basically caused chaos for poor Brother Jed. We had our own readings from the Gospel while he was reading from the Bible, we held up our silly signs all around his, we giggled at all of the ridiculous things he was saying, we skipped around him singing pirate songs…but most of all, we got a great response from students who were sick of Jed’s nonsense.
We started to get a little bored with his ranting, so we decided to commandeer the Boilermaker Special, to the cheers of the crowd around Brother Jed. The train is Purdue’s mascot, so we have a little train looking car thing that you can get rides on on Fridays. So we climbed aboard and enjoyed our new ship, shouting piratical things at the now even more confused Purdue students.
When we returned Brother Jed was still going strong. Two of the Mormon missionaries approached us and asked what was going on. Oddly enough, they became our allies. We talked about how hateful Brother Jed was and how his method of preaching really didn’t make any sense. As silly as I think Mormonism is, I have to admit that the missionaries on campus are generally nice guys. Much preferred to people like Brother Jed.
Overall, the day was a success. We didn’t have any negative feedback, we handed out thousands of flyers, many people thanked us for what we were doing, we got interviewed by the Exponent for multiple stories, and we made the local tv news. I’m not sure how we could have done much better!
I can’t do the day justice through talking about it, so here’s a video of some of our pirate antics and Brother Jed’s hilarious nonsense.

Happy Talk Like a Pirate Day, me harties! Arrrrr!

EDIT: One of our other Pirates has blogged about it too, with more photos and video!

Purdue’s Pastafarian Preaching!

Yesterday the Society of Non-Theists at Purdue University had their annual Pastafarian Preaching. We go out in full pirate regalia preaching the Gospel of the Flying Spaghetti Monster and hand out flyers to the confused students who run into us. One side of the flyer contains the “Eight I Really Rather You Didn’t“s and the other side explains what the FSM is really about. We want to be a satire of your stereotypical fire and brimstone street preacher to show not only how ridiculous these people look, but that we have the right to criticize religious beliefs, especially if they’re silly or hateful.In a stroke of wonderful luck that proves to me that the Flying Spaghetti Monster does exist, we found out Brother Jed was going to be there the same day as us. Brother Jed is a fairly infamous campus preacher who unites all religious denominations in laughing at him. He also looks exactly like Eugene Levy, which makes it all the more hilarious.We basically caused chaos for poor Brother Jed. We had our own readings from the Gospel while he was reading from the Bible, we held up our silly signs all around his, we giggled at all of the ridiculous things he was saying, we skipped around him singing pirate songs…but most of all, we got a great response from students who were sick of Jed’s nonsense.
We started to get a little bored with his ranting, so we decided to commandeer the Boilermaker Special, to the cheers of the crowd around Brother Jed. The train is Purdue’s mascot, so we have a little train looking car thing that you can get rides on on Fridays. So we climbed aboard and enjoyed our new ship, shouting piratical things at the now even more confused Purdue students.
When we returned Brother Jed was still going strong. Two of the Mormon missionaries approached us and asked what was going on. Oddly enough, they became our allies. We talked about how hateful Brother Jed was and how his method of preaching really didn’t make any sense. As silly as I think Mormonism is, I have to admit that the missionaries on campus are generally nice guys. Much preferred to people like Brother Jed.
Overall, the day was a success. We didn’t have any negative feedback, we handed out thousands of flyers, many people thanked us for what we were doing, we got interviewed by the Exponent for multiple stories, and we made the local tv news. I’m not sure how we could have done much better!
I can’t do the day justice through talking about it, so here’s a video of some of our pirate antics and Brother Jed’s hilarious nonsense.

Happy Talk Like a Pirate Day, me harties! Arrrrr!

EDIT: One of our other Pirates has blogged about it too, with more photos and video!

Best TA ever

Last night I emailed my Physics TA about my Friday 2 hour lab class. It falls directly during the peak hours of our Pastafarian Preaching, which greatly saddened me. Physics lab, however, has set make up dates for if you miss a lab for a valid reason, like illness. I asked if me being in charge of a student organization’s day long counter protest would constitute as a valid reason…and he said sure!

Granted, I didn’t include details of what we were going to be protesting (Brother Jed, I can’t tell you how excited I am for that) or what we’ll be wearing while protesting, or even what club it was for…but he didn’t ask. Maybe his noodliness used divine intervention to sway his opinions.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to get my pirate costume ready.

Creation Museum Lecture

In case you’re anywhere near Purdue, I just thought I’d let you know that I’m giving a talk on the Creation Museum on Monday.

When Dinosaurs Walk with God
A godless biologist’s trip to the Creation Museum
Presentation by Jennifer McCreight, President of the Society of Non-Theists and Purdue senior majoring in Genetics and Evolution

Mon, Sept 21
6:30 – 8:00 pm
LILY G126
Free and open to public

This summer Jennifer visited the Creation Museum, a multi-million dollar enterprise by Answers in Genesis to spread the gospel of literal Biblical Creation. The museum teaches that the Earth is only 6,000 years old, evolution is a lie, and human reason and science are dangerous. Its child friendly environment complete with animatronic dinosaurs and a petting zoo is worrisome to those interested in science education in the US.

She’ll be presenting a virtual tour of the museum with some commentary and rebuttals of the scientific inaccuracies seen within (did you know that a T-Rex was a vegetarian until the fall of man?). There will be time for a Q&A session at the end.

I’ll admit, it’ll be similar to the blog posts I made about my trip, but more cohesive and with more background information. We’ll also probably head out to dinner together afterward, if that’s more incentive for you to come!

Dear Pastor Tom

Hey there! How’s it going? Oh, don’t seem surprised – I know you’re subscribed to my blog since twice now you’ve written a rebuttal to my posts within 24 hours of my original posts. I just want to say it’s incredibly cute how you’re too afraid to mention my name or link to my blog lest someone read an alternative opinion and make their own decisions. I mean, we don’t want people thinking or coming to their own conclusions, do we? I giggle every time you make up a new excuse to not name me, like:

“Many atheist bloggers have expressed joy over this, but it’s not worth taking the time to tell you about any more of them.”

and

“because I don’t subscribe to the language and advertising on the blogs that are defending pornography, I’m not going to give any links, and will not permit any to be posted on this blog.”

But please don’t stop. I get a certain amount of glee knowing someone feels so intimidated by my arguments – must mean I’m explaining my points really well! And what an honor that you’ll mention Pharyngula and Friendly Atheist all the time, but Blag Hag is just too much of a threat! I am a little disappointed, though, that you didn’t come up with some witty pun of my blog to put under your “Evil Sites” links like PharyTales or Hateful Atheist. Can I suggest “She Who Must Not Be Named?”

Your favorite atheist blogger,
Jen

Best Skeptical Shirt Ever

If you haven’t figured this out already, I’ve been in love with Threadless shirts for a little over 4 years now. They make up the majority of my wardrobe because 1) They’re awesome 2) I hate shopping, and I know they fit me. I actually haven’t bought any in a while because nothing has jumped out at me, but I literally just flailed at this new one released today:Excuse me while I go spend my hard earned money on cynical clothing.

Darwin finds the best evidence against his theory

Like always, click for larger.Disclaimer: This is not supposed to mean evolutionary biologists are hostile to any contrary evidence. It’s a joke. I hate to have to include this, but I know if I don’t this comic will get picked up by some creationist site as proof that we’re all dogmatic Darwinists. Actually, that’s probably going to happen anyway, so oh well.

Mmm, his noodliness looks yummy

Society of Non-Theists’ member Bryan was reading the Gospel of the Flying Spaghetti Monster (in preparation for our upcoming Pastafarian Preaching, I’m sure) when he had a religious experience:

“Being in the pasta mood after reading the gospels, I decided to make spaghetti and meatballs. Having completed the task I served up my spaghetti and spaghetti sauce with meatballs, parmesan, and a light peppering. I turned around to grab something to drink and to my astonishment the ground pepper coalesced into pepper corns, the parmesan turned into small wafers of cheese, and noodly appendages sprung fourth from the mass of spaghetti. And BEHOLD, the perfect likeness of the flying spaghetti monster. I decided to eat it instead of selling it on ebay.”

Good call, Bryan. That looks too tasty not to eat.