The Austrian government recently made policy changes to allow citizens to wear “confessional headgear” of a religious orientation in official photographs, like driver’s license pictures. Well, never ones to miss a good loop-hole, the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster (also known as Pastafarianism) has won the right to have members don a pasta strainer as a hat in photographs for official government documents.

Niko Alm of Austria has won his three-year battle with the government, which included a mandated psychological evaluation to see if he had the mental ability to drive at all. Alm passed with flying colors and was granted government permission under the religious statute to sport a pasta strainer on his head in his official driver’s license photo. For those not familiar with the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, it was founded in 2005 in opposition to the teaching of intelligent design in American schools.

The Flying Spaghetti Monster is a deity created by Bobby Henderson, in response to a statement by the Kansas Board of Education that said intelligent design (the idea that God created the Earth) should be taught as an alternative explanation to life on Earth besides evolution. Evolution would also need to be explained as a theory, not a fact.

Well, the Board made the mistake of not specifying a specific deity that was responsible for intelligent design. Loop-hole alert. Thus, The Flying Spaghetti Monster with his delicious, blessed noodle tentacles was born. While the Board wasn’t particularly amused, the internet found a new savior and a new meme started popping up all over the place.

While Alm would seem to be a particularly devoted member of the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, he has admitted to actually being an atheist. But that won’t stop him from continuing to crusade in the name of the great noodly-one. He intends to try to get authorities to recognize Pastafarianism as an official religion.

(via The Escapist)

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