Weird religion and the Academy - Flying Spaghetti Monster to star at American Academy of Religion.

The American Academy of religion is the most prestigious academic gathering for theologians across the globe. Today boingboing.net reposted that the Flying Spaghetti Monster will be making an appearance!

If you don't know who the Flying Spaghetti monster is, you're not up to date on mythology and religious eccentricity on the internet...

Here's the story (this is one conference I would love to attend - this is where culture, faith, and technology colide):

The Flying Spaghetti Monster will be discussed at the American Academy of Religion's annual meeting

The title: "Evolutionary Controversy and a Side of Pasta: The Flying Spaghetti Monster and the Subversive Function of Religious Parody."

"For a lot of people they're just sort of fun responses to religion, or fun responses to organized religion. But I think it raises real questions about how people approach religion in their lives," said Samuel Snyder, one of the three Florida graduate students who will give talks at the meeting next Monday along with Alyssa Beall of Syracuse University.

The presenters' titles seem almost a parody themselves of academic jargon. Snyder will speak about "Holy Pasta and Authentic Sauce: The Flying Spaghetti Monster's Messy Implications for Theorizing Religion," while Gavin Van Horn's presentation is titled "Noodling around with Religion: Carnival Play, Monstrous Humor, and the Noodly Master."

Using a framework developed by literary critic Mikhail Bakhtin, Van Horn promises in his abstract to explore how, "in a carnivalesque fashion, the Flying Spaghetti Monster elevates the low (the bodily, the material, the inorganic) to bring down the high (the sacred, the religiously dogmatic, the culturally authoritative)."

Link (Thanks, Rick!)

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