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In the beginning there was the Flying Spaghetti Monster
(Filed: 11/09/2005)

In recent weeks, a satirical attack on the teaching of Creationism in American schools has become the world's fastest growing 'religion'. The Noodly Saviour looked at the furore He had created and pronounced it good, writes James Langton

For a growing band of devoted followers, He is the Supreme Being; creator of the universe and all living things. To the rest of us, the Flying Spaghetti Monster looks like a giant heap of pasta and meatballs topped with eyeballs on stalks. As it turns out, both interpretations are correct.

In the past few weeks, the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster has become perhaps the world's fastest-growing "religion" and maybe its most improbable. While no one can be sure of the exact numbers of "Pastafarians", as acolytes are called, they may number in the millions.

All of which has come as something of a shock to Bobby Henderson, an unemployed physics graduate from Oregon. According to Mr Henderson, the FSM - as His Noodliness is sometimes known - "revealed himself to me in a dream". Like most mysterious prophets, Mr Henderson communicates with the outside world only occasionally, although this may be more to do with having only one telephone line to his home in the small town of Corvallis and a Google e-mail account swamped by hundreds of messages every day.

Not that he ever saw himself as a rival to Mohammed or Abraham. The divine inspiration that came to the 25-year-old one night earlier this year was originally intended as a satire on attempts by some Christian groups to change the way evolution is taught in science classes in some American schools.

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Pastafarians

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