The battle for public opinion about the irrationality of belief in God is being fought with a flurry of atheist websites, blogs, videos, and articles. Voices are coming from every angle, some wanting to make fun of theological reasoning or demonstrate belief as foolish, others hoping to instill fear and doubt into those who believe in invisible gods. One strategy that is frequently utilized on atheist websites with zealous followers is to parody religious belief by inventing and pretending to venerate ridiculous divine beings. Bertrand Russell anticipated this trend with his famous teapot illustration. He used the example of a tiny teapot in space to show that it may be quite rational to disbelieve in things even if one cannot disprove them.

The Invisible Pink Unicorn is one parody favored on the internet. This goddess was invented in order to poke fun at theism and especially theology, which supposedly wastes everyone’s time by discussing the incompatible attributes of a being that doesn’t exist. Another recent and perhaps the most currently discussed example of religious parody is the Flying Spaghetti Monster. Although the Spaghetti Monster was originally invented to protest intelligent design being taught in Kansas schools, it is often extrapolated as an analogy for belief in God. Richard Dawkins uses all three of these parodies in his book The God Delusion to illustrate the improbability of God’s existence.

In a world saturated with such clever parodies, sardonic tales, and vitriolic arguments about the irrationality of belief, the Christian community often shrinks in fear and defensiveness. When God is compared to other conceivable, but unprovable entities like the tooth fairy or the Flying Spaghetti Monster, we might be insulted or mildly amused, but unsure how to respond beyond a scoff in the atheist’s direction. When the analogies imply that God is like these imaginary deities in being irrelevant, ridiculous, irrational, and explaining nothing, we might cry out at the unfair comparison, but wonder fearfully if these stories really do articulate something sound. Whether in anger, worry, or frustration, God-fearers can simply become fearful in the faces of Spaghetti Monsters and Pink Unicorns.

But Jesus told the disciples not to fear though they would be bombarded with assaults of every kind. “I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid” (John 14:27). There is a world of difference in the story that God has given us and the stories of the Unicorn and Spaghetti Monster. These analogies fail because those beings are just things, things which may or may not exist in the universe. But God is not a part of the universe like an orbiting teapot, but the ground of the universe’s very existence. We can claim very rationally that the concept of science begins to make sense with God in the picture because there is a mind responsible for the order and complexity and laws of the universe. God has explanatory power, and that in and of itself sets God apart from all of the parodies--the Spaghetti Monster explains nothing at all that the idea of an intelligent designer has not already explained, while the Invisible Pink Unicorn and the teapot do not explain anything at all. God is the explanation that makes sense of everything else, including the evidence itself and the minds that interpret it.

Where the Flying Spaghetti Monster attempts to frighten belief and dissuade certainty, it holds no power as an analogy for belief in God because it misses the very heart of why so many people intuitively believe. This was illustrated recently in a debate between Richard Dawkins and Christian mathematician John Lennox. Dawkins referenced the illustration of a person walking through a forest and finding a beautiful garden. He asked, “Isn’t it enough to appreciate the beauty of the garden without having to believe in invisible fairies hiding behind the flowers?” Lennox’s reply demonstrated the fallacy in this analogy. He said, “Of course you wouldn’t have to believe in fairies in the garden, but you would assume there was a gardener, wouldn’t you?” You would believe in a gardener even without seeing him or her because it is the only way to make sense of a garden. Otherwise, how would you distinguish between the garden and the rest of the forest you were walking through? A garden is only a garden if it was planted and cared for on purpose. The God of the Bible is not comparable to a monster, but He is quite like the gardener. He makes sense of the world and He assures us that we are not here by accident, but that we were created on purpose and for a purpose. How true then: we need not be afraid of fairies or the Flying Spaghetti Monster. We need not be afraid.

Rachel Tulloch is a member of the speaking team at Ravi Zacharias International Ministries in Toronto, Canada.

Adapted from "Flying Spaghetti Monsters and Other False Analogies" originally published in inContext, a publication of RZIM Canada, Winter 2008.