The Flying Spaghetti Monster has joined the array of holiday displays at the Wisconsin state capitol.
The Monster, a symbol of the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, was erected by the University of Wisconsin's Atheists, Humanists, and Agnostics.
"Think this is ridiculous? We agree! Religious ideas should not be promoted in the halls of government. Protect the separation of Church and State, it protects us all," the display says, according to a post on the group's website.
According to the Wisconsin State Journal, the group's president, Sam Erickson, said the AHA "would prefer to keep our Capitol secular."
"But if the state decides to turn it into an open forum, they have opened the floodgates," Erickson said in a statement. "We hope everyone takes advantage of this opportunity to advertise their own viewpoints, no matter how silly.”
The Monster display joins a Christmas tree, a Festivus pole, a "natural" nativity scene and a winter solstice sign in the capitol rotunda.
“The rotunda is getting very cluttered,” said Annie Laurie Gaylor, co-president of the Freedom from Religion Foundation. “But if a devotional nativity display is allowed, then there must be ‘room at the inn’ for all points of view, including irreverency and free thought.”
Wisconsin isn't the only state capitol with a variety of displays this holiday season. A Florida man has placed a Festivus pole made of empty beer cans in the state capitol in protest of a nativity scene, calling it "the most ridiculous thing I could come up with."
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