[ExI] atheists de-baptize unbelievers:

[Joseph Bloch]

 It's a clever enough symbolic act, but ultimately it has no real meaning
(any more than baptism itself does).

Now, find a retrovirus that deactivates the "belief in God is a beneficial
trait" gene (if there is such a thing), and you might have something...

Joseph

Gregory Jones wrote:

  Why didn't we think of this?

http://www.foxnews.com/us/2010/07/17/atheists-reportedly-using-hair-dryers-baptize/?test=latestnews

American atheists<mailbox:///C%7C/Users/Joseph/AppData/Roaming/Thunderbird/Profiles/9ord16pv.default/Mail/mail.josephbloch-1.com/Inbox.sbd/Bills.sbd/Websites?number=7425830&part=1.3&type=application/x-message-display&filename=Re%3A%20%5BExI%5D%20atheists%20de-baptize%20unbelievers%3A.eml#>lined
up to be "de-baptized" in a ritual using a hair dryer, according to a
report Friday on U.S. late-night news program "Nightline."



Leading atheist Edwin Kagin blasted his fellow non-believers with the hair
dryer to symbolically dry up the holy water sprinkled on their heads in days
past. The styling tool was emblazoned with a label reading "Reason and
Truth."



Kagin believes parents are wrong to baptize their
children<mailbox:///C%7C/Users/Joseph/AppData/Roaming/Thunderbird/Profiles/9ord16pv.default/Mail/mail.josephbloch-1.com/Inbox.sbd/Bills.sbd/Websites?number=7425830&part=1.3&type=application/x-message-display&filename=Re%3A%20%5BExI%5D%20atheists%20de-baptize%20unbelievers%3A.eml#>before
they are able to make their own choices, even slamming some religious
eduction as "child abuse." He said the blast of hot air was a way for adults
to undo what their parents had done.



"I was baptized Catholic. I don't remember any of it at all," said
24-year-old Cambridge Boxterman. "According to my mother, I screamed like a
banshee ... so you can see that even as a young child I didn't want to be
baptized. It's not fair. I was born atheist, and they were forcing me to
become Catholic."



Kagin doned a monk's robe and said a few mock-Latin phrases before inviting
those wishing to be de-baptized to "come forward now and receive the spirit
of hot air that taketh away the stigma and taketh away the remnants of the
stain of baptismal water."



Ironically, Kagin's own
son<mailbox:///C%7C/Users/Joseph/AppData/Roaming/Thunderbird/Profiles/9ord16pv.default/Mail/mail.josephbloch-1.com/Inbox.sbd/Bills.sbd/Websites?number=7425830&part=1.3&type=application/x-message-display&filename=Re%3A%20%5BExI%5D%20atheists%20de-baptize%20unbelievers%3A.eml#>became
a fundamentalist Christian minister after having "a personal
revelation in Jesus Christ."



"One wonders where they went wrong," he chuckled to the TV show.



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