This story on CNN is a fun read if nothing else.

So these guys are going to meet to determine if the satirical Flying Spaghetti Monster is in fact a real religion.  What makes a "real" religion and how people who think there's more to our interaction with reality than rational epistemology are going to make this determination is anyone's guess.  Oh to be a fly on the wall...

On the surface this is a joke, but there may be something more sinister going on.  One of the favorite weapons of religious apologists these days is Equivocation.  I have observed and participated in debates where the apologist all too quickly abandons any attempt to defend the actual veracity of their supernatural beliefs but instead takes one of two approaches: one is to instead focus on all the good that has come from the faith of believers, the other is to claim that rejecting religion is just another form of faith, being an atheist is just a different cult, that aruing for religion to be kept out of our schools and goverment makes one "just another kind of fundamentalist.  In a small way, the religious declaring the following of the FSM to be a "real" religion seems to me an under the radar attempt at equivocation yet again, an attempt to rob the Flying Spaghetti Monster of it's satirical value.  An attempt, in other words, to furthur the view that there is no difference between believers and non believers.

The idea that being an atheist or rejecting specific religious claims makes one "just another kind of fundamentalist" seems absurd to me.  What dogma have we all embraced to assume that lightning in the night sky is not Thor throwing his hammer at Giants?  To quote Sam Harris "What dogma have we all embraced to not take the wishes of Zeus into account during our daily affairs?"  Usully, when arguing semantics, I start with the Dictionary. So, when consulting Merriam-Webster I learn the following:

fundamentalism

One entry found.

fundamentalism

So, looking at #2 put me into a conumdrum.  I am indeed a strict adherant to the basic principles that indicte if I try to walk out of the 3rd story window of my office here, I will accellerate towards the ground due to the force of attraction between my body and the earth.  Does this make me a "gravity fundamentalist", and my views on gravity deserve no more or less consideration than those of the "Intelligent Falling" movement?  Am I by denfinition a "Science Fundamentalist" or "Rational Fundamentalist"?  Religious fundamentalists make the claim that the words in their sacred texts are true in the most literal sense; these words do not change with the times, they are not metaphors to be interpreted and they are unchanging.    I make the claim that through rational observation of reality we can predict and describe the behaviors of the natural universe.  That, to me, is a difficult claim to argue with, and it it turns out to be incorrect, what are the alternatives? 

We may some day discover some "Unified Theory" that ties together relativity and quantum mechanics.  Rational people will welcome this as another leap in human knowledge.  Sure, there will be some people who cling to their old pet theories.  I don't see the words of the old testament being re-written to include equal rights for women, or the words of Isaiah prescribing the murder of children "toned down" to be better aligned with what we now know about morality.  That's why I don't like being called a fundamentalist.

{Edit: I should have gotten the rest of the way through my RSS reader this morning.  The same topic on Richard Dawkins's site: http://richarddawkins.net/article,1881,n,n}