“Your blog reminds me of diarrhoea” says misguided Richard Dawkins fan.

FLYING SPAGHETTI MONSTER WRITES: “Seeing the incredible volume of output on your blog this week, it is as if you've had years of constipation and now suddenly you've had a dose of the runs. Let it flow, let it flow, let it flow”

BB SAYS: Thank you for comparing my website to diarrhoea.

Your moniker appears to be a reference to Richard Dawkins, who uses the example of the Flying Spaghetti Monster to try and expose what he believes to be a fallacious argument sometimes used to defend belief in God. When atheists complain that the existence of God cannot be proven, believers sometimes reply that the existence of God cannot be disproven either, and that one should therefore believe in Him. According to Dawkins, this argument is an example of shifting the burden of proof. The burden of proof exists on the person who claims that a particular entity exists. It is not possible to prove a negative. Suppose I claim that a Flying Spaghetti Monster exists somewhere in outer space. You may object that I cannot prove that such an entity exists. I reply that you cannot disprove the existence of the Flying Spaghetti Monster either, and that therefore you should believe in It.

However, in my own opinion, Dawkins is guilty of using his own fallacy in this argument: the fallacy of false analogy. A Flying Spaghetti Monster would be a physical, material entity that exists in time and space. It would therefore be possible in principle to empirically verify the existence of the Flying Spaghetti Monster – by going and looking at it, for example. However, God is supposed to exist beyond time and space, outside of the physical, natural world. God is a supernatural entity, not a natural entity, like the Flying Spaghetti Monster. God transcends the phenomenal world. Because of this, it is not possible to empirically verify the existence of God. God is a fundamentally different type of entity to the Flying Spaghetti Monster. That is why belief in God tends to be based on faith, rather than evidence. When it comes to natural entities like the Flying Spaghetti Monster, we tend to demand empirical evidence for their existence. But for a supernatural entity like God, no such empirical evidence is possible, because God is a fundamentally different kind of entity. The religious virtues are faith, hope and love. The ability to spot an empirically verifiable hypothesis is a scientific virtue, not a religious one.

In any case, the multiverse is a VERY big, peculiar place, and there may well be Flying Spaghetti Monsters out there somewhere. If people want to believe in the Flying Spaghetti Monster, then I support their right to do so.

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