Shitty AP Coverage of the Flying Spaghetti Monster

I know it's hard, but...

(AP) -- When some of the world's leading religious scholars gather in San Diego this weekend, pasta will be on the intellectual menu. They'll be talking about a satirical pseudo-deity called the Flying Spaghetti Monster, whose growing pop culture fame gets laughs but also raises serious questions about the essence of religion.

(my bold)

Right. A "pseudo-deity." As opposed to...? Say it.

"A real deity."

I would love to see the AP's official list of non-pseudo deities.

I imagine the writer was trying to make some point along the lines of the unique properties of a language like Esperanto, but as written, this is bunk.

It doesn't end there, however, and on the whole I was pretty disappointed with the article. As I said, I know it's tricky to cover exactly what the FSM represents, since it cuts to the bone about the undebatable pedestal we tend to let religious beliefs sit on. But this kind of coverage is so oddly irrelevant.

Lucas Johnston, the third Florida student, argues the Flying Spaghetti Monsterism exhibits at least some of the traits of a traditional religion -- including, perhaps, that deep human need to feel like there's something bigger than oneself out there.

He recognized the point when his neighbor, a militant atheist who sports a pro-Darwin bumper sticker on her car, tried recently to start her car on a dying battery.

As she turned the key, she murmured under her breath: "Come on Spaghetti Monster!"

A. In what delusional word do you believe that FSM represents a "deep human need to feel like there's something bigger than oneself out there?" Absolutely not. It's about the authority vested in some myths, and how that authority gets there. The whole thing springs from a bit of skepticism over this "deep human need" shit.

B. "militant atheist?" Where'd you get that language?

C. When your atheist neighbor whispered "Come on Spaghetti Monsters!", you thought that that indicated that the atheist believed there was something "bigger" than herself, and she was unconsciously asking the Spaghetti Monster to help her car start? Thus indicating her hypocrisy or something and proving that all humans are "religious?" Actually, that does seem to be the overall lazy premise of the article:

In short, is an anti-religion like Flying Spaghetti Monsterism actually a religion?

This misses the point entirely.