Congratulations to 16-year-old North Buncombe High School student Bryan Killian for standing up—and even dressing up with an eye patch and pirate’s inflatable sword—for freedom of speech, religion and dress. I greatly admire his courage as reported in the April 4 Mountain Xpress [“A Pirate’s Life for He: Suspended ‘Pastafarian’ Speaks Out”]. In that interview, he argued that Pastafarianism—which he claims is his religion—makes as much sense as the beliefs of Christianity. He said Pastafarianists have faith that “a flying spaghetti monster created us all and we were the first pirates.”
He was not burned at the stake for his beliefs, which shows some improvement in Christian morals over the centuries, but he was thrown out of school for a day.
While I agree with Bryan that some basic Christian concepts are difficult stretches for the educated mind to accept, I find [the] belief that a flying spaghetti monster created the world to be lacking in evidence as well.
I am a conservative Mosquitoist myself. I admit that I am the only human Mosquitoist so far, but there are several zillion mosquitoes who share my faith, and the evidence of the veracity of our beliefs is clearly in our favor. I shall summarize our basic tenets:
1. Humans were created not to serve God, but to serve mosquitoes.
2. Catholics make the sign of the cross. Protestants pray. Jews get circumcised. Mosquitoists scratch.
3. The search for the meaning of life is over. Our purpose is clear. We are here to feed the mosquitoes.
4. Do not do unto mosquitoes as you would not have them do unto you. But it won’t make any difference. They’ll bite you anyway.
5. True Mosquitoists, of course, never wear insect repellent. They never buy screens for their houses. And they love to go for summer walks just as the sun is going down. Raid is a sacrilege. So are fly swatters. The entire states of New Jersey and Florida are guilty of attempted genocide.
6. Mosquitoists do not believe that mosquitoes created the world—just that the world was created for mosquitoes. They are not conceited enough to think that human beings are the reason for the universe. If they were, why would mosquitoes exist?
7. Ask not what mosquitoes do for humans, but what humans do for mosquitoes, and you’ll see that the balance is clearly in their favor. Who eats whom, after all?
8. Mosquitoists don’t need to spend a lot of time and energy holding fund-raisers, constructing churches and temples and paying for their upkeep. They make their human sacrifices in nature.
You may not agree with my new religion. Brian might not either. He might consider it so much, well, buncombe. But I’ll bet he’ll defend to his death, or at least to his permanent expulsion from North Buncombe High, my right to espouse it.
— Fred Flaxman
Weaverville
My friend Fred Flaxman argues a strong case in the April 25 Mountain Xpress for his conservative Mosquitoist religion in upholding free speech for himself and North Buncombe High School’s Pastafarian Bryan Killian. But the justification for Fred’s Mosquitoism is not as obvious as the cornucopia of evidence for my liberal religion, Cornisticism.
The rate at which corn is taking over the surface of the earth and populating it with its followers, known hereabouts as cornflakes, puts the global warming crowd to shame. That’s a long way from the heart of Mexico, where corn was born around 5,000 B.C. Corn’s slaves, (i.e. farmers) are subsidized with an ever-increasing share of the federal budget. Corn is moving far beyond feeding humans and livestock to fueling our cars, sweetening our soda, and constituting part of 3,500 products.
Our anthem, incidentally, is “A Maising Grain.”
— Cleve Mathews
Asheville