I wonder if other religions, like the flying spaghetti monster, will follow his lead?
Vod, I have to argue against you here. The FSM is in no way a valid counter argument to the existence of a monotheistic god.
The FSM is meant to be an analogue of a polytheistic god, not a monotheistic one. There's a huge difference between the two. Same thing goes for the teapot orbiting Venus.
Could you source your argument for me? I couldn't find anywhere that the FSM is a polytheistic god. As a matter of fact, what I found seems to describe it as being a monotheistic one. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flying_Spaghetti_Monster
This is from the wiki:
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Because of its popularity and exposure, the Flying Spaghetti Monster is often used as a contemporary version of Russell's teapot
Now, referring to the teapot...
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Russell wrote that if he claims that a teapot orbits the Sun somewhere in space between the Earth and Mars, it is nonsensical for him to expect others to believe him on the grounds that they cannot prove him wrong. Russell's teapot is still referred to in discussions concerning the existence of God.
So, there you go. Likening FSM to a monotheistic god is stupid because FSM is likened to a teapot, and likening a teapot to a monotheistic god is also stupid.
What is being highlighted by those analogies is the lacking falsifiability of the theory of "God" theists often espouse.
But it's not a sound analogy because, first of all, we already know that a monotheistic god is completely off the table as far as empirical study goes; the scope of empiricism doesn't extend that far. Second of all, there are different types of falsifiability and the empirical kind differs from the logical kind.
Science yields a posteriori knowledge, i.e. knowledge derived from experience and empiricism. However, philosophy yields a priori knowledge which is independent of both experience and empiricism. Scientists often forget this type of knowledge exists, and in fact scientists rely on a priori knowledge upon which the scientific method is founded.
Therefore, the question shouldn't be one in terms of empirical falsifiability, which, while great for the teapot and FSM, cannot be reasonably applied to a monotheistic god. Instead, the question is whether we have access to enough a priori knowledge to formulate conclusions about the Universe/God.