ROSEBURG (AP) — With his tongue planted firmly in his cheek, sort of, Bobby Henderson has injected his Flying Spaghetti Monster into the straight-laced squabble over the creation of humanity.

Henderson and his growing legion of "Pastafarian" followers say they believe the universe was created by a giant Flying Spaghetti Monster, a clump of tangled spaghetti with two eyes and "noodly appendages."

His Web site, www.venganza.org, has drawn more than 30 million hits in recent months.

Pastafarians say if alternatives to evolution such as intelligent design must be taught in schools, then the Spaghetti Monster theory, which is just as well founded, deserves equal time.

The Web site features letters, games, scientific testimonials, fan art and a forum for the debate of the finer points of Pastafarianism.

It has a fan base, but the humor escapes some people. A Web site illustration shows Spaghetti Monster seated at the table of the Last Supper.

One message told him to blow his face off with a shotgun, and that one was relatively mild.

"I am not too worried about the angry religious people who e-mail me," Henderson said. He said the project is an attack on dogma, not on religion.

Henderson, 25, a recent Oregon State University science graduate who is between jobs, wrote to the Kansas Board of Education in response to its plans to allow evolution and intelligent design to be taught side-by-side.

If the Intelligent Design theory is not based on faith, but instead another scientific theory, as is claimed, then you must also allow our theory to be taught, as it is also based on science, not on faith.

"We tend to be very secretive, as many people claim our beliefs are not substantiated by observable evidence," he told the Kansas board.

He said the Spaghetti Monster built the world to make us think it is older than it really is by fooling with the Carbon-14 system used to date artifacts.

"What our scientist does not realize is that every time he makes a measurement, the Flying Spaghetti Monster is there changing the results with His Noodly Appendage," he wrote.

And so forth.

He said he posted the letter online after getting no answer from Kansas.

He's since received some sympathetic e-mails from liberally inclined school board members. But nobody has said whether Flying Spaghetti Monster will join Darwin and the Diety in Kansas classrooms.

Advocates of teaching intelligent design, who include President Bush, say evolutionism, Charles Darwin's theory of natural selection and gradual biological changes cannot address how life originated.

They conclude that guidance from some external intelligence must be involved.

Critics call it religion masquerading as science.

As the Web site has grown, it's attracted more acolytes. Luke Bovard of Vancouver, British Columbia, is one of the moderators for the site's message boards. More than 1,100 people are registered members of the site's online family.

To handle the huge volume of traffic, Henderson has leased a dedicated server. He also sells Flying Spaghetti Monster T-shirts, posters, coffee mugs and other paraphernalia through the site.

That helps pay for the server and a cubicle.

Henderson gets hundreds of e-mails a day now.

Topics range from topics such as Viking pirate spaghetti to serious debates on evolution and religion.

"Hopefully this will continue," wrote Bovard, the Web site moderator. " The community will continue to grow and grow so we can have many more intelligent debates about science and many other things.

"Who else knows who needs to be touched by his Noodly Appendage?"