This cartoon shows the flying spaghetti monster (FSM) with his noodles caught in several of Behe’s mousetraps - the idea being that even the great FSM cannot escape from intelligent design and its implications. (In his book, Michael Behe uses a mousetrap to represent a system that cannot work properly without all of its parts, and thus it offers no selective advantage until it is mostly complete. He then makes an analogy to life, which shares many of the same constraints).

Intelligent design can be used to build a bridge between science and religion. But because intelligent design cannot determine which religion is correct, critics have introduced the flying spaghetti monster parody. Intelligent design would perhaps be better served by not letting the question of the designer’s nature unanswered. The fsm did not create anything. Intelligent design implies that Christians are correct when they assert that God created life.

Unfortunately, it is a no win situation. If intelligent design advocates infer design and then conclude that God created life, critics will say that their logic is driven by religion and thus all of their conclusions are flawed. If instead the movement decides not to make such a jump, critics will create fictitious creatures like the flying spaghetti monster and start a mock church to worship him.