YOUR
BABY BAPTISED?
BAPTISM_AND_RELIGIOUS_INFLUENCE_
BAPTISM_DOESNT_REALLY_CARE_ABOUT_THE_CHILDS_SPIRITUAL_OR_RELIGIOUS_WELFARE_
BAPTISM_MAKES_IT_EVERYBODYS_BUSINESS_WHAT_YOU_BELIEVE_AND_DO_
BAPTISM_ATTEMPTS_TO_MAGICALLY_MAKE_CHILD_OPEN_UP_TO_EVIL_FORCES_AND_EVIL_DOCTRINE_
THE_WORSE_THE_RELIGION_THE_WORSE_THE_BAPTISM_
BAPTISM,_AN_INEFFECTIVE_VACCINE_
BAPTISM_WANTS_FANATICAL_LOVE_OF_GOD
BAPTISM_OFFERS_YOU_A_GOD_WHO_DOESNT_LIKE_YOU_
CHRISTIANITY_AND_BURDEN_OF_GUILT_
BAPTISM_CALLS_YOUR_BABY_A_BASTARD_
Most Christians take babies to church to have water poured over them by a minister or priest who says, "I baptise you in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit".
The Roman Catholic Church claims that baptism is a big deal.
It says it is of utmost importance to be baptised for it makes you a member of God's one true family of love the Catholic Church. This membership confers the alleged benefits of the sacraments - you can't get any sacraments without baptism. And the benefits of having the Catholic Church to teach you for God guards the pope and the bishops from doctrinal or moral error under certain conditions.
It says that baptism infuses faith in the teaching God gives you through the Church. It gives a miraculous inclination to obey the Church and thus it obligates you to support Church doctrine to remain Catholic.
It says that baptism removes and heals much of the tendency to despise God's laws that we have from the first moment of our existence.
It says that baptism forgives original sin and if this is not done the baby will not go to Heaven if he or she dies.
It says baptism makes God dwell in you and gives you your best friend who matters more than your parents or anybody else.
Catholic doctrine is very serious matter when deliberately choosing to reject it will land you in Hell forever.
To agree with the Church that your baby should be baptised is to say that the Church has authority to teach. It would then be a mockery of the ceremony to have your baby undergo it while intending to raise the baby to pick and choose as it suits from the Catholic faith.
BAPTISM AND RELIGIOUS INFLUENCE
If we could persuade society to stop bringing babies to clergy for baptism we would manage to avert much of the damage that religion is accountable for and get rid of its dangerous influence. Religion uses infant baptism to accustom society and desensitise it in relation to the exploitation and manipulation of the vulnerable children. People bring their babies to get them baptised and promise to have them conditioned to follow the teachings of the denomination providing the baptism. The result is that people are reluctant to protest against the unfair advantage over the child's mind that the religion seeks. They are reluctant to protest against religion's plot to keep the child away from truth if the religion doesn't have the truth.
We are not saying that stopping infant baptism will stop the indoctrination of children. But it does stop an attempt to use baptism to justify that indoctrination. We are saying that once we get infant baptism stopped it will be easier to stop indoctrination.
It is nobody's business, not even the parents's, what a child believes. Parents might condition their children to live and think like Catholics but that is not making them real believers. It is nobody's business what a child believes for no amount of conditioning can make a child truly believe. It may make the child think he or she believes. Conditioning or indoctrinating means you are hypnotised into agreeing with something while belief means you came to agree through thinking and considering valid evidence and logic. Real belief comes from freedom and free inquiry.
BAPTISM DOESN'T REALLY CARE ABOUT THE CHILD'S SPIRITUAL OR RELIGIOUS WELFARE
Some religious parents think that babies should be baptised to make them children of God so that they will know God loves them. The insinuation is that a child as a person isn't great and needs a God to be good. They urge the child to want to be loved by God and they express that intention during the baptism of the child. But wanting to be loved is loving yourself and putting yourself before God. Jesus said that the greatest commandment is for us to love God totally and above ourselves and people. This tells you that Christianity is not about you needing God to love you. It is not about you needing to love God for that implies that you should love him to satisfy a need in yourself. It is about what God needs. Thus we see that Christian parents should be only worried about the child loving God. If they are not then they are not consenting properly or validly to the baptism. No sane person would be capable of wanting their child to love God and not care about being loved. The religion of the baby baptisers is idolatry and hypocrisy. Atheists who refuse to have their children baptised are avoiding the cruelty of Christian parents.
Baptism represents the view that the sacrament of baptism is more important to a child than getting the doctor or protecting the child from a murderer or paedophile. It is anti-human. Instead of being on your knees, instead of giving sacraments and baptising, instead of receiving sacraments and being baptised, instead of reading and kissing bibles, instead of trying to believe dogmas about a man who supposedly came back from the dead, go and do good works. Make those your dogmas and prayers. The epistle of James the Apostle in the Bible says that true religion is doing good works - if he proclaimed faith in the resurrection of Jesus it was not that he considered that resurrection important. Most people are decent enough and don't have the sacraments. God didn't need Christianity that badly when the vast majority of the people who have ever lived lived and survived and did good without it and the faith is only a couple of thousand years old when man has been around for millions of years.
Considering few people and few religions could have a correct belief the child is just being entered in on a path of what is probably error and based on lies. Is it not manipulative to enter a child into the authority of a religion that most people in the world don't believe in? It is not even worse to enter a child into a religion like Roman Catholicism that few Catholics themselves understand or would willingly join if they knew what it really taught and knew the nasty implications of Catholic doctrine. Most Catholics don't care much for the faith and pick and choose.
It is vile to enter a child to a faith that can't prove it isn't just more manmade claptrap. Take the pope. He doesn't know if Catholicism is true. He only believes, assuming he is sincere, that his beliefs came from God through men and aren't simply the inventions of men. He admits he cannot prove that birth-control is so bad that you should prefer to get AIDS than to use it to protect yourself. He admits he cannot prove that we are not obligated to live a basic life so that we can send all we can to the poor. It doesn't even bother him that Jesus would have been horrified at his attitude (I'd say Jesus would be as bad but if Jesus is as gentle and good as the pope pretends then that version of Jesus would be horrified!). He admits that beliefs can be wrong but he refuses to take the safe side and have his beliefs but take care in case he is wrong. He should for example provide for people who listen to him on birth control and give them money to deal with the consequences of this obedience. He should part with all he has for the sake of the poor even if he thinks he is not obligated for he only thinks it and could be wrong. To enter a child into religion is to make the child less moral not more moral. If you want your beliefs you must take on the obligations that come with them. If you don't want your child to have those heavy obligations then don't have her or him baptised unless you want her or him to be a hypocrite and being a hypocrite leads to bigotry. If a child is made a Christian by baptism, that child is to support and represent a strict and frightening code of morality and doctrine. Remember that Jesus said that the Pharisees and scribes were bad for giving burdensome teaching and not living it themselves. If you require the rich to give money to the poor, be harder on yourself and give even more than what you require of others.
Jesus promised us that he would give us the truth and the truth would set us free. This freedom was supposed to mean we would enjoy doing his will and find it easier with the help of God. This is the Christian answer to those who wonder how one could be called free if one's marriage breaks up and one is not allowed by Jesus to remarry or if one is forbidden to use contraception to avoid a pregnancy that is likely to be fatal or when the baby is unlikely to survive. But all these rules one would not have if one was not religious or not very religious can hardly be described as freedom. If you feel free in your religion that does not mean you are actually free. The best way to keep people in bondage is to make them feel free. Slaves frequently felt free in the past despite being slaves. The worst bondage is bondage during which you feel free but when you actually are not - ie when you are drunk for then you are not you. A person or God who really loves you will give you freedom. God will not care if you get baptised or not. The Christian God claims to be love but he actually is not.
If baptism works we have the right and responsibility to know how it works. There are no sensible or rational reasons. The Church gives dogmatic reasons, "Oh Jesus died to get help from God for us for our sins and that help is given out in baptism". Those really amount to trickery in the form of circular arguments like, "Baptism works for we say it does. And we say it works for it does work." Baptism is a denial of our rights and those of our children.
If somebody grows up and wishes to make his or her baptism ineffectual, he or she is renouncing the power of God and rejecting salvation. Such a one will be damned in Hell forever according to the doctrine of the Catholic Church. The idea of baptism having saving mystical power is an intimidating and bullying one.
To entrust your child to a religion that puts religion before people when it accuses the unbaptised of not having God and his protection against evil in them and of not being members of God's Church or community is child abuse. It is putting the religion before the child. If the child embraces that evil, the child should embrace the other religious evils too.
Atheists should admit that they are doing wrong by living lives of comfort and relative luxury while the poor need help. We can do that. Religion can't. It builds churches and pays priests and prints Bibles and prayer books and so on. At least as bad as we Atheists are we are hiding nothing and are not saying we approve of what we do.
Christian doctrine says that the Church is the mystical body of Christ and are supernaturally united. This follows the teaching of the apostle Paul and Jesus himself which say that if a part of the body is sick the whole body is sick. So Catholics cannot pretend that the sins of the clergy are not their responsibility. If your king declares war, because you are under his authority and associate yourself with it you are responsible. He declares war on your behalf. The sins of the clergy which have included the worst kind of child sexual abuse only happened because the laity gave them the support and power and the position they abused. Do you want to make your child responsible in a sense for clerical sex abuse by enrolling that child in the Catholic Church membership by baptism?
BAPTISM MAKES IT EVERYBODY'S BUSINESS WHAT YOU BELIEVE AND DO
If you join a community, it is the community's business what you think, believe and do in relation to religion. It is everybody in the community's business if a baptised child gets a bit bigger and starts to scoff at religion. It is their business because baptism entered the child into their community. It is their business because baptism is a promise to believe what the community believes and stand by the community.
Christians have so little enthusiasm for their faith that they don't bother running after those who fall away from the Church. But baptism gives them the right and authority to order you if you are baptised to believe and do what the Church wants. They have the right to be offended and to hate your sin if you leave the Church. In fact they have the duty to. Infant baptism is about control. It still is. It is just that most Christians are so disobedient that the controlling can't be done. But it was done in the past and it might be done again. And in many parts of the world it still happens. But disobedient or not, baptism is blessing and condoning and encouraging the pressure put on you by the religious community you are in. It is still subjecting the child to a degrading and bigoted principle.
Baptism removes or seeks to remove the right of the child to autonomy and to form her or his own relationships and religious or non-religious opinions. It is putting serious obligations on the child without the child's consent. It isn't fair.
BAPTISM ATTEMPTS TO MAGICALLY MAKE CHILD OPEN UP TO EVIL FORCES AND EVIL DOCTRINE
The Church says we are all tainted with original sin and there is a bit of sin in all our actions and even our good works. Some Protestants say that none of our good works are really good. Either way there is an element of abuse in deciding to have your child baptised if Christianity is right about the effects of original sin.
But the Church will have to answer that it is worse abuse if the child is not baptised.
This assumes that baptism works. It assumes it without regard to evidence. There is no evidence that unbaptised people are any worse than baptised. Their answer is certainly evil.
It assumes that baptism is not an attempt to put a dangerous and malign spiritual power into the baby. But when it does nothing for the baby, it does evil to the baby. It tells the baby he is healed of sin when he is not. The Devil will be very pleased with it.
Baptism is trying to put a power that violates the rights of the child, that encourages the child to absorb and follow a harmful hypocritical faith into the child. It is an act of worship for a despicable God.
We know most parents do not want their children to be very obedient to the Church. So they have the babies baptised under false pretences. If baptism is really the new birth then these parents are not having the baby baptised to help it but to make it defy that help. The baby must end up worse in the end than she would have been had she never been baptised.
The idea of original sin and that there is a bit of evil in all you do urges you to have that evil in your heart. Original sin itself is an evil doctrine and it is not original sin that tries to taint good works. It is belief in it. Original sin does not exist. So baptism is based on an evil doctrine. It pays homage to it and so it is evil itself.
If baptism does not work and does not heal original sin, then it is the best initiation to the craftiest kind of evil. Evil likes to have a beautiful side. It needs that to attract people. The person who thinks they are healed of sin when they are not are in the same position as the Pharisees were according to the New Testament. They were confident in their holiness though they were not holy.
If we have original sin and its effects, which include a bias towards sinning, then we are not going to lose original sin without a struggle. The bias towards sin would lead us to create an ineffective cure that would make us falsely claim to be free from original sin. We would create such a useless rite such as baptism. You would not take your child to the doctor for a vaccine when there is no strong evidence for its effectiveness. And religion says sin is worse than any sickness and at the root of all sickness. It claims that even when it is forgiven the damage is left behind and makes us sick and weak. Without the proof, baptism then is really for KEEPING a child in original sin. Though it is done in the name of God it is anti-god in that sense. It represents the view that a relationship with God is all-important and then it spits on the view in mockery.
Baptism is not so much about healing the child of the tendency to sin as it is to remove the condition of sin the child is in. It is more worried about God not having the child than the healing of the child. It says the faith comes before the child.
There is no law that says that coming into existence in a state of estrangement from God that is not your own fault should result in tendencies to sin. An unrepentant murderer could be made in such a way that his crime does not make him want to do more evil. Yet God blames original sin for those tendencies. He should blame himself. Baptism accuses God of evil and offers you a relationship with this wacky mad and wicked God.
Baptism implies that God and the child do not have a relationship until baptism. To have your child baptised is to give assent to the idea that God comes first and is right even when he is estranged from your baby. If you believe something so awful you can hardly complain about somebody saying your child is evil scum or that your child is as guilty as Adam was when he ate the forbidden fruit. Baptism is declaring that harming and insulting are not bad in themselves but only bad when God feels like condemning them and that he may allow harm and still be good. It is declaring that religion matters and people don't.
If you believe in psychic powers and evil powers then you are dedicating your child to possibly harmful magical forces during baptism. You need to be sure what kind of powers are operating if any. If you are not or don't care then baptism is inviting evil to the child. And religion with its outrageous morality and doctrines devoid of verification cannot prove that it is good for the child. You need proof. Its your child.
The Christian religion is unable to give adequate verification of any of its claims. It claims that the followers of Jesus Christ following his crucifixion left evidence that he rose bodily from the dead leaving an empty tomb and appeared to his friends and now reigns as our king in Heaven and from there he administers the salvation he won for us. We know we have to accept the simplest explanation we can find. The gospels record the alleged evidence for the empty tomb and the visitations of the risen Jesus. If the gospels are convincing (they are not - an empty tomb and apparitions afterwards of the person who had been in the tomb still does not prove a resurrection) in relation to their claim that Jesus Christ rose from the dead then where is the miracle? It is easier to believe that the miracle is in the credibility of the records and not in the miracle of resurrection. The plausibility of the records only means that the records are plausible not that they are correct. Something rather different from an actual resurrection could have been what really happened. Then some psychic or supernatural forces set to work to guide writers to tell a story that supported a resurrection story and was believable. The lesser miracle of psychic guidance of the writers is what should be accepted not the huge miracle of resurrection. The fact that the (fragile but let us put that out of our mind) plausibility of the records only means that the records are plausible not that they are correct suffices to show that the resurrection is false. Had Jesus really risen he would not have made the mistake of guiding his followers to present evidence that is useless never mind insufficient.
Baptism symbolises the resurrection. It is declaring your commitment to it as a historical fact and therefore to the gospels and the Church. It is dedicating the baby to unfair bias and irrationality for the resurrection is a ridiculous belief by any test. The child is called upon to oppose those who know how silly the resurrection idea is. And if occult forces were behind the resurrection of Jesus
Baptism degrades the child and advocates evil. It is inseparable from the lie of the resurrection of Jesus. Jesus lied that his resurrection would be the greatest proof of all of the power of God. It is not. Strange coincidences do happen. Satan is supposed to have some power to guide coincidences. If he has psychic powers there could be other beings that have them. So a combination of mistakes and error and strange coincidences could have let to the testimony of the apostles that the resurrection happened. For example, maybe Peter saw Jesus with cloven hoofs and strangely forgot this. As a result of his forgetting, the resurrection became more believable. It is better to assume strange coincidences have made it look like a miracle happened than that a miracle really happened.
The Catholic Church claims to be one, holy, Catholic and apostolic and that these indicate easily that she is the true Church. The Church always said that invincible ignorance was the only excuse for not being in the Church. So it follows that Protestant ministers and many Protestant laypeople who know of the Catholic Church are deliberately staying out of it. The holiness of the Church must be remarkable to the degree of miraculous. This would mean that if anybody stays out of it after seeing that holiness they are just bad people no matter how holy they pretend to be. They refuse to support the Church and participate in her holiness. Baptism would be the main cause of this holiness for it is the sacrament that creates the Church. It is the only way to membership. But we don't see this holiness.
If a Catholic is very good and holy, the Church points to him as evidence of the power of baptism. But just because he was baptised that does not mean the baptism had much to do with it. It could have been the example of his family and neighbours, it could have been the goodness encoded in his genes. The Church is lying to people and it has no right to. To administer a ritual with occult powers to a child without giving any evidence that it is effective and wholesome is implicitly dedicating the child to evil forces. And the holiness of the Catholic Church is unremarkable. With a hierarchy and papacy that swept clerical child abuse under the carpet it is anything but holy. If the Catholic Church were the true Church, it would have an unusual degree of holiness. For example, the pope would be tripping over his red shoes to sell Vatican art to evangelise and help the dying poor in Africa.
The Church certainly wants babies to be born evil. Catholics will not judge a vile murderer as evil though according to their standards he is but they judge a child as being empty of God! They have no evidence for their belief in original sin so they believe it vindictively. I wouldn't believe they intended baptism to remedy original sin but perhaps to make it look like they were trying to do something about it.
The Church teaches that doctrine and teaching is important but the healing power of the sacraments is more important. For example, the imbecile will be helped by the sacraments though he can't learn many doctrines. Parents stupidly think they should have their children baptised with a view to having them sent to Catholic schools to educate them as good people. They focus on the teaching aspect. But this is misplaced. The main focus is the healing power. Indeed it is the only focus for the Church declares that all the teaching in the world will do no good unless your heart is opened to God by the supernatural power of the sacraments. We are said to be closed to God by nature and we need his grace to get us into a position where we can choose him and his ways and receive his virtue-infusing power. The priests - because they wish to manipulate - don't warn parents to have the right reasons for having their child enrolled in Catholicism and its schools.
To a child’s mind, sacraments and sacramentals are like spells. Catholicism causes an inclination to believe in superstition and magic. Baptism is supposed to be a supernatural rite that turns a baby from a sinner into a child of God and inclines her or him to believe in the truth taught by God. It is supposed to be a bigger miracle to us, to our experience, than the resurrection of Jesus. It is claimed by the Church to be more supernatural in our experience for we don't experience the resurrection but its supernatural results. So baptism encourages the dangerous belief in miracles.
Baptism is doubtlessly the declaration of allegiance to evil spiritual forces and to religious whitewash and hypocrisy.
THE WORSE THE RELIGION THE WORSE THE BAPTISM
Religions like most Christian Churches and others which claim children as members have no right to do so. The practice of a baby for example being counted say a Roman Catholic at baptism shows contempt for the child and what the child may need. Even more so the harsher a religion is. It is bad to baptise a child into a liberal Protestant Church that believes everybody will be saved eventually and that if you die estranged from God and go to Hell you will get out of it sometime. But it is diabolical to baptise a child into Roman Catholicism which teaches that it is possible that most people go to Hell forever for dying in sin and that you should prefer to get AIDS than use condoms to protect yourself even during rape and that you should believe that the Law of God in the Bible given to the Jews that demanded ritual murder on God's authority was right.
BAPTISM, AN INEFFECTIVE VACCINE
You wouldn't vaccinate a child with a vaccine that is dangerous or whose effectiveness is not based on reliable study. Yet religion says a baby should be entered into religion to vaccinate it against evil and error - error meaning any opinion that differs from the official teaching of the religion.
People say if you are obese and you really want to lose weight you will do it. Others say that you do really want it but don't want it enough if you fail to succeed. With God it would be different. If God exists then if you really want him you will find him and believe all his truth and practice all his ways and obey his religion because he helps you to want him. If you don't want him enough then it is because you are fighting him and sinning.
To say you can do anything if you really want to is to burden people. We want to do things but we often fail through weakness or error. But if God exists and provides superhuman power for us if we want it there is no excuse. The atheist wife can understand if her husband forgets her birthday. The religious wife is being inconsistent with her religion if she understands. Her husband turned away from the inspirations and guidance and help of God. Can you see the amount of trouble the doctrine of divine grace can cause? Baptism is an expression and a declaration that the doctrine of grace is true.
We are said by believers in God to want God and he alone can fulfil our need. They say then that baptism makes that want stronger for it heals our tendency to go about fulfilling our needs without God - which is sin. But those who are baptised don't feel any different from those who are? They don't find their struggle against temptations suddenly being strengthened. Baptism bases Christianity on lies.
Religion thrives more on people joining it and not taking it seriously than on people joining it and following it properly and being real members who believe all they are supposed to believe. Each religion has few orthodox devotees and any that are orthodox are often orthodox for the wrong reason which makes their orthodoxy count for little or nothing. What is the point of zealously promoting the pope as the head of the Church if you are only doing it in the hope of seeing society controlled by religion better?
Most baptised people feel no inclination to believe and do precisely what their baptismal vows committed them to do. They pick and choose. If you can pick and choose, then why attach importance to baptism? Why is it not optional? To baptise a child is to confess there is an authority that should not be questioned and to attempt to embroil the child into the control of that authority. It is a declaration that there is an infallible religious authority - the Bible for Protestants and the Pope and the Bible and the bishops for Catholics. It is a declaration that that authority must be obeyed without question. And then the religious complain about the Nazis holding that their leaders were virtually infallible!
The Church demands that babies be baptised. It claims that baptism has mystical and supernatural power to heal the babies of spiritual harm. Where is the research to back this claim up? The priests are quacks. They claim that spiritual health is the most important health of all for Jesus said that it profits a man nothing to gain the whole world and lose out spiritually. If they can be quacks then why should the medical quacks who look up to them worry? What a lovely example baptism sets for the world!
Baptism is supposed to heal the effects of
sin and protect a child from error and evil. We see no difference between baptised and unbaptised children.
In fact Muslims are often holier than baptised people. The doctrine of
baptism's healing potencies is laced with bigotry.
The Catholic Church says that baptism washes away original sin
and cures the child of much of the tendency to sin which is why it
baptises infants. The Bible itself never says that baptism does that for the
baptism it stresses is the baptism in the Holy Spirit. “Unless a man be born
again of water and the spirit he cannot enter the
If you subject your baby to a healing ritual that does nothing instead of looking for one that does, then do you love your child as much as you love the approval of the Church?
You can't have your baby baptised just in case religion is true and the baby will suffer if it is not baptised. Then why not get it circumcised a Jew in case Judaism is true as well?
If you can have no better reason for getting the baby baptised than that it might do it harm not to be baptised then you do not have a high view of God. He would want you to come to him for you see him as great and attractive and not because you are scared. Can you really be expecting and asking for a blessing when you come in fear? Its absurd to seek a blessing from a God you don't trust. You are really asking for a curse!
BAPTISM WANTS FANATICAL LOVE OF GOD
People don't behave rationally when they fall in love. Religion says it wants people to fall in love with God even more than they could fall in love with any person. In other words, it advocates dangerous love, the love that makes a wife take beatings from her husband and condone them. Believers condone the terrible things God does to others and to a lesser extent they condone the evil God does to them and say its to keep them disciplined or to make them holy. Believers encourage people to be so interested in God that there will be an insane anger if he is slighted. We know the consequences of that. All we have to do is see the rivers of blood that Christianity has produced.
BAPTISM OFFERS YOU A GOD WHO DOESN'T LIKE YOU
Baptism does not give the child a consoling God. It gives a God who sets up a church that seeks the right to exert an undue influence over the child and an unfair advantage and who thinks the child isn't worth much when he requires a rite to accept the child. That's reluctant acceptance and a bad example for the thinking child. To console the child with tales about God's unconditional love won't help the child. God though all powerful didn't accept the child until baptism and that is not unconditional love. He doesn't forgive the child who is not baptised but he forgives monsters who do terrible things. Baptism is a perfect symbol of the unreasoning "morality" that religion advocates. It is evil to put a child through it. Love the sinner and hate the sin is nonsense for when a person does wrong it is not the action that bothers us but what it says about the person. To hate the sin is to hate the sinner. To oppose the sin is to oppose the sinner. God cannot love unconditionally and such love would be hypocrisy. To console people with tales about God's love is to offer false consolation. To admit that is to take away probably one of the main attractions of belief in God. We only worry about unconditional love and want it when we do something wrong. And then we don't need it or this wish for we should be thinking about earning back people's respect for us instead of looking for it on a plate. The rest of the time it does us no good because we want to be adored for what we do and what kind of people we are. When we are good or weak but not evil being unconditionally loved feels unreal. God's unconditional love does not stop you suffering or dying or getting depressed or going to Hell so there is no point in being grateful for it. It doesn't ring true. It does not even stop babies being born carrying sin and needing baptism because of the natural inclination to defy God and get qualified and in danger of Hell. God's unconditional love does not stop the need for foetuses that are dying to be baptised by a syringe in the womb and ending up stabbed to death by the needle. It is better for death to be the end than for there to be a chance that you might live forever in eternal torment. The adoration of a person who knows nothing about you would not please you - it shows how unconditional love is only appealing on paper and not in life. Parents who hold that bringing a child for baptism is offering them somebody to love them no matter what are deluding themselves. It is vile to take a child to an old man who is pampered and lives in a fancy house and has an easy life and who teaches a difficult message that even he cannot live up to despite the dog collar he sports. The old man by baptising prays that the child will be a saint and live as a real child of God. Baptising professes his belief that God is right to distance himself from the child until the child is baptised. One should live up to strict and hard standards if one asks them of or for others. Baptism is defilement by that old man. It is defilement by the religion.
The practice of child initiation into religion and indoctrination should be illegal and we will do our damnest to get it made illegal for it amounts to spiritual rape. The infant is taken advantage of because it is an infant. We all know that if the child were an adult he or she would make a very different choice in all probability. Jesus said that God has to be loved with all the heart and soul and mind meaning that anybody that really loves God that much will be as sure as possible of being in the most believable religion and should put the search for God and his true faith first. How can that be reconciled with baptising babies and then subjecting them to religious education by the Church that baptised them? The Church claims the right to educate the baptised her way when they were grafted into it by baptism which is understandable because baptism is supposed to be the initiation into the Church. This is really about trying to turn the child into a bigot for it takes a lot of research to work out what the most credible and consistent religion is and that is rarely done. To be in a religion without having done that is to be nothing but a bigot. Jesus said that we know the devil’s disciples by their fruits. He is to blame for Christianity being so full of people who don’t really care for the truth and who are good for nothing but creating different sects so he is condemned by his own standard.
CHRISTIANITY AND BURDEN OF GUILT
The Christian Religion is just a religion of outward appearances. It exaggerates human sinfulness (see what God wrote at Romans 3) with the result that people sin nearly all the time for if you have free will and believe that nearly everything is a sin then you are left intending to sin all the time (Romans 14:14, 23). Good works done without repentance are just insults to God and that is what the Church offers. The religion is not about God. He is only the bait. It is about their own selfish selves. Is that what you want to enter your baby into?
The Church says that original sin is the state of being hostile to God from the first moment of your existence and this hostility is inherited from Adam who rebelled against God. So then the baby that is baptised doesn’t want to be baptised or healed of this sin for it doesn’t like God. Baptism is clearly opposed to the "choice" (for want of a better word for its too young to make a choice) of the baby and religious freedom. What about older people who get baptised? God’s grace can work on their minds and hearts to make them want deliverance from their antagonism towards God in baptism. This cannot happen with a baby. It would make more sense if the Church held that babies should not be baptised and that if they die they will grow up and have to make the same choice between Heaven and Hell as the rest of us.
A baby that is not baptised is far more evil than an adult that sins venially a lot. The Church holds that venial sin does not separate you or estrange you from God. So a baby that harms nobody deliberately is cut off from God and rejected by God and rejects God. The original sin idea says that. And somebody that does harm is accepted by God. A person can commit mortal sin, that is sin that rejects God and cuts you off God, by murder or adultery or doubting the Church and be forgiven easier than an unbaptised baby can be. The person simply has to go to confession to a priest in the Catholic Church and for Protestants, all you need to do is pray for pardon. Even a Hitler could do that so the baby must be extremely evil. The unbaptised baby is at the mercy of its parents and will be in sin as long as it is not baptised. The baby then must be despised by God. It must be worse than the mortal sinner. A being that is rejected by an all-good God despite having done nothing wrong must be far more repulsive and evil than a sinner who has done wrong and very serious wrong at that.
Catholics claim that their babies can grow up to go to Hell. They need baptism to protect them from the danger. They need absolute proof that anybody can go to Hell forever. They need absolute proof that evil people should go there. They need proof that they deserve it. There is nothing. To baptise babies to save them from a fate they could deserve in Hell is really just being vindictive when there is no proof. It is vindictive to accuse a baby of having the potency to be evil enough to go to Hell forever.
BAPTISM CALLS YOUR BABY A BASTARD
A baby becomes a child of God by being baptised. It follows that whether the Church admits it or not, that its teaching is saying that unbaptised babies are defective and not children of God but little bastards. The Church thinks of children conceived outside of marriage as bastards. If you are a bastard because your father wasn’t married to your mother then how much more are you a bastard if you don’t have God for your father? He doesn’t even want you until baptism magically changes his mind! It follows then that it is a pity unbaptised babies have to exist at all.
Spiritualism says that God has made all things thus God is the father of all things. It says that every man and woman and child is God's child. Catholicism says that God is not your father unless you are on good terms with him by having his spirit inside you. Spiritualism has the right idea. Catholicism is so bent on accusing unbaptised babies of being God's little bastards that it won't base God's fatherhood on his role as creator.
Parents are misled by the Church today to think that the baby is being welcomed into the community. Let us analyse this.
Is the baby not welcome just by being born? It should be.
Is the baby really welcomed when you chose to consider it an outsider until it is baptised? It is like saying Mary is welcome in your house though she is black as long as she puts white powder on her face. We would recognise the hatred and racism if you required such a thing.
Baptism does not welcome the baby into the Christian Church or community. The baby is not welcomed by baptism but allegedly fixed by baptism. Then when it is fixed it is welcomed. So it is not good enough as a person but only as a Christian person. Christianity is one of the lowest religions and a dose of whitewash and an education in the bigotry it has so successfully fomented.
Baptism is not a true celebration. The parents could have a naming ceremony that celebrates the birth of the child and the child as he or she is. That is a genuine celebration.
The Christians may celebrate when and after a baby is baptised but that does not make baptism a celebration. The baptism is not for celebrating the birth of the baby but is about fixing and vaccinating the baby. You may as well say that vaccinating the baby against polio is a celebration. Rather than celebrate the baby, the baptism says the baby is bad the way he or she is.
Catholicism says that baptism puts an indelible mark on the soul. So baptism is an attempt, depending on your viewpoint, to mutilate a child!
There are many people who do not wish to have their babies baptised but feel their decision is going to bring trouble from religious relatives.
They should explain that they respect the views of the relatives and ask the relatives to extend the same courtesy to them. It s their child and their decision.
They should explain that they feel baptism and child initiation into religion is telling the child and everybody else a lie. A child can't be a Catholic or a Protestant or a Muslim or a Jew.
They should explain that they would be disrespecting religion itself by having the ceremony just to please others.
They should explain to say their Christian family that if the family was Muslim they would have much the same feeling about the child being uninitiated.
They should explain how hardly anybody these days who has a healthy baby rushes it for baptism. They may delay it for months. They often delay it out of indifference. They often delay because they want to have a baby born in winter baptised in the summer. They often delay because they want to pick the right time for a good party and when all their friends will be free. If it is okay to delay then why worry about getting the baby baptised at all? What would there be to fear?
No self-respecting or baby-respecting person would have anything to do with the baptism of a child. They should not attend the ceremony or any celebration related to baptism. If they would not consider a child initiated into Hitler Youth to be a true supporter of Nazism, then they should extend the same honour to those who are baptised. Offended at the comparison? Don't be. For all a child knows it could have been initiated into something just as dark. Baptism is nothing yes. It's nonsense. But it should be renounced for certain religions make a lot of it and it still demeans the baptised. Religion claims the baptised as its own and uses this to get power and influence by having them counted as members until they tell it what is what. Is it none of our business if a child is baptised? Yes. But it is our business to express our view on this and to make that view clear to the world.