Proselytizing
1:1 Ahoy, excited and exuberant believers!
1:2 I am glad to hear of your quick conversion to the faith, and the fullness with which you practice, however I fear there are certain deeper aspects you do not yet grasp.
1:3 You ask me how best to convert those of different faiths?
1:4 Verily, I tell you there is no need.
2:1 The Flying Spaghetti Mother speaks through all religions, deities, and prophets, and all religions, deities, and prophets are conduits to the Flying Spaghetti Mother.
2:2 To think about any deity, or indeed thinking of any sort, even the most irrational, is to worship the Flying Spaghetti Mother, and when you worship the Flying Spaghetti Mother, you worship every other deity and religion, for there is no distinction.
2:3 The Flying Spaghetti Mother isn’t any more the one true god than any other; she is simply our interpretation and incarnation of the divinity of the universe, or whatever you may call it.
2:4 As the Flying Spaghetti Mother said through the Buddha, “Now, Kalamas, don’t go by reports, by legends, by traditions, by scripture, by logical conjecture, by inference, by analogies, by agreement through pondering views, by probability, or by the thought, ‘This contemplative is our teacher.’ When you know for yourselves that, ‘These qualities are skillful; these qualities are blameless; these qualities are praised by the wise; these qualities, when adopted & carried out, lead to welfare & to happiness’ — then you should enter & remain in them.”
This is how we must navigate the pluralism that is the essence of Pastafarianism.
3:1 The Flying Spaghetti Mother does not wish us to believe every word of every religion, as that would clearly be a problem and lead to much confusion and conflict.
3:2 All you have to do is be open to finding truth anywhere.
3:3 If you agree with it, believe it, no matter if it comes from the Bible, the Qur’an, The Buddha, Dave Barry, or any other source imaginable; these are all conduits of the Flying Spaghetti Mother
3:4 The principles of life, liberty, and freedom outlined in the Declaration of Independence and the United States Constitution are principles the Flying Spaghetti Mother chose to convey through men like Thomas Jefferson and James Madison.
3:5 The lessons of Mohandas Ghandi, Nelson Mandela, Voltaire, Thomas Paine and Socrates are all lessons of the Flying Spaghetti Monster.
3:6 If you were to take everything ever said in a religious context, removed the parts that contradicted each other, and overlapped the commonalities, what you are left with is a single word.
3:7 Love.
3:8 Even the Beatles are a voice of the Flying Spaghetti Monster; all you need is love.
4:1 If someone is interested in knowing more about the Flying Spaghetti Mother, feel free to read them the Open Letter or select passages from The Gurbani.
4:2 Though you must be cautious not to force your beliefs on others.
4:3 If someone is meant to come to the Flying Spaghetti Mother through our church, then it will be so.
4:4 If they are meant to find it through another church, or through their own personal dialogue, they will find it that way.
4:5 It is perhaps the greatest crime against the Flying Spaghetti Mother to coerce one into believing something, or to punish them for believing something different.
4:6 Ultimately, all you can do, and indeed all you should do, is put the word out there, accept any who join you, and love any who hate you.
5:1 May you be eternally touched by her noodly appendage,
--Cmdr. Tako's letter to new recruits
Wholly Marines do not tell people what they should believe.
This doesn't not mean that TOoHNA doesn't not proselytize. Wholly Marines engage with their friends, and especially their enemies, to show them how to be a Gurmukh. They have the Langar and noodle mass not to give free food out, which would be against TOoHNA's principles, but to get people to come together and see what the Wholly Marines are doing and then be inspired to try to be better people. The family that eats together stays together, and to the Wholly Marines we are all one big family.
