Unbaptism Revisited

A few months ago unbaptism was in the news.  At the time it struck me as odd. 

As usual a number of atheists voiced some of my bewilderment.  Surely to demand your baptism is undone is to attribute to baptism the very efficacy atheists deny?  If it is meaningless, to have it undone implies it has a meaning.  Why not just ignore it? 

One reply was that the aim of this particular demand was to undermine the Church of England.  The Church of England would no longer be able to claim them as members.  There may well be other arguments for unbaptism and I’ll willingly have a go at them, if someone tells me what they are.

The main problem is that the Church of England does not have members.  It is organised into parishes and anyone living in a parish has a right to participate in the services of their parish church or churches.  If they wish to ignore them, they are free to do so.  It is not just atheists who ignore the services, Christians of other traditions, some of whom might have been baptised in the Church of England, will rarely take part if ever.

Those who wish to support the Church of England opt in through the electoral roll.  These people might never have been baptised (in which case they are able to ask to be baptised), they might have been baptised by the Church of England or by another tradition.

So, to be unbaptised makes no difference whatsoever to the Church of England in terms of its legitimacy as the established church in England.  If you’re an atheist the only thing you can do is to opt in.  (After this you could opt out again but it seems fairly pointless to me.)

One other point.  Is it actually possible to renounce baptism?  The question I would ask is this.  Rebaptism is forbidden in the majority of churches.  If an atheist who renounces baptism, takes their unbaptism certificate to a minister of most traditions, would they be able to rebaptise them?  I suspect not.  So, a hypothetical person baptised as a baby, grows up atheist and renounces their baptism, then changes their mind and becomes a Christian.  Do they need to be rebaptised?  I suspect not because the churches would see this as a rebaptism and not as a first baptism.  I’m sure someone will tell me if I’ve got this wrong.

Unbaptism looks to me like a campaigning tool but I'm not sure it has been thought through.

The way I see it is baptism is a covenant initiated by God.  From this perspective, even if you are an unbeliever, it is hard to see how you can renounce your baptism.  Atheism doesn’t need this type of gimmick; it is what it is.  In my view atheists are particularly loved by God, because they reject the idolatrous images of God so many religious people take for granted.  Many are therefore closer to God than Christians who separate themselves from the pain of being human, through their illusions about God.  So, there is probably a very comfortable corner of heaven set aside for atheists (unbaptised or not).  (The picture is of Homer and the Ancient Poets in Dante's first circle of Hell by William Blake.) 

Comments

[Miguel Pereira]

Have you ever wondered why it is said that those who haven't been baptized go to "limbo" after they die, while those who have been baptized are either saved or go to Hell?
Coincidently, the Cathars invented their sacrament of unbaptism as a solution for this problem, and thereby were the target of the first crusade, the Albegensian Crusade, that attempted to exterminate all who knew this secret. More about this later.
The original baptism was an ordeal akin to waterboarding. Waterboarding has been used to replace LSD for the Clockwork Orange treatment, just as sure as Dr. Stanislav Grof's Holotropic Breathing replaced LSD therapy. But, waterboarding is a more direct vagal stimulation by directly stimulating the root of the vagus nerve as it emerges from the brain in the nasopharynx. It is a fact that vagal stimulation is as effective as LSD.
Why is it said that the baptized are immortal? Those given the original waterboarding kind of baptism experienced that they were immortal.
LSD wakes up the brain by blocking seratonin the neurotransmitter of the inhibitory neurons that ordinarily keeps the brain down to 10% brain use. The MRI shows that, though areas of light move around as various regions of the brain are used, normally, the total sum of the area of these areas of light is not more than 10% brain use.
Vagal stimulation works by this parasympathetic, also called muscarinic after the psychedelic drug muscarine, stimulation spreading up through the brain, thereby overriding the inhibitory neurons, awakening more than the normal 10% brain use.
The psychiatric term for more than 10% brain use is psychosis. Real schizophrenia is more than 10% brain use caused by the gene DISC1 causing more linkage between the brain's neurons by the growth of more axons and dendrites than normal.
From 10% to 19% brain use there is a euphoria called perinatal matrix one. From 20% to 49% brain use there is an awesome perception of our larger universe, also known as "the knowledge of good and evil", called perinatal matrix two. From 50% to 100% brain use is perinatal matrix three, where the tremendous mind powers of perinatal matrix two have grown to such proportions as to be uncontrolable, and all Hell breaks loose.
As percentage of brain use increases the mind becomes more and more powerful to manifest its imagination. From 30% to 39% brain use all that is written will become the writer's reality. From 40% to 49% brain use all that is spoken will become the speaker's reality. But, from 50% to 100% brain use every thought manifests as the thinker's reality.
Soon the thinker wishes he were someone else, and "zap" he finds himself in the body of that someone else, but most probably with a brain with only 10% brain use. But, it not being his body, when that body sleeps or dies, it's off to another body, and on, and on, body switching backward and forward in time, for about a hundred years duration, called in the Bible the "aioniu amartematos", aeon of failure.
With this experience the ancient baptized figured that they were immortal, thus, the baptized couldn't "go to Limbo" which was secretly identical with the Eastern "Nirvana", nonexistence, but were immortal to suffer on "forever" if a conspicuous heaven wasn't granted.
Crucifixion, by forcing holotropic breathing, also causes enough vagal stimulation to put its victims in perinatal matrix three; thus, Jesus Christ, being God the Son, body switched backward and forward in time into everyone who ever was, is, or will be, and therefore He is in you an I right now and always.
Advanced yogins used a technique of accute vagal stimulation by putting their tongues up behind their noses. In order to do this they have to cut the tissue that holds their tongues down, and sometimes also stretch their tongues. This techniques is called the "khechari mudra", that is, the "fig gesture".
When such a yogin puts his tongue up behind his nose he goes into suspended animation by vagal syncope. Such yogins have been known to have been buried in the sands of the Ganges and resurrected two weeks later. This shows that enough vagal stimulation can be followed up by resurrection, if there is not too much brain death, and, this suspended animation preserves from brain death. There is no real death without enough brain death.
The Clerics of Azagthoth, among others, extensively use vagal stimulation, for the "magical power" of perinatal matrix two. The only secrets such true Black Left Hand Path orders like the Clerics of Azagthoth keep are names and places. In fact they want the world to know about all such suppressed knowledge.
The Clerics of Azagthoth have ten degrees corresponding to the Hebrew Sephiroth, Malcuth, the first degree and tenth house, to Kether, the tenth degree and first house. But, this scheme is through three major stages: the Purple Counts, the Blue Rangers, and, finally and understandably, the Green Barons, called today "zombies".
The Cathar sacrament of unbaptism is also vagal stimulation, but, only to perinatal matrix two, "the knowledge of good and evil". It was figured that the "original sin" committed by Adam and Eve was that Adam and Eve caused each other enough vagal stimulation, by the "apple", to have "the knowledge of good and evil" of perinatal matrix two.
And, since the sacrament of baptism is said to be the remedy for the "original sin", but renders the baptized subject to heaven or Hell, rather than the "limbo" of the unbaptized, recommit the "original sin" to give up heaven to avoid Hell, and go to "limbo", nonexistence, like, supposedly, the animals do.

[Chris Sissons]

Thank you Miguel, I can't really argue with you because I don't know enough about the vagus nerve. I would need to check your sources and I simply don't have time.

However, one thing I can say. I think you may be in danger of an error of logical typing. This is the view that higher order things can be explained by lower order things. So, our thoughts and emotions are caused by chemical reactions in the brain. This may be simplistic but it fits my purpose.

So, it may be true that religious experiences (some of it surely?) are underpinned by vagal stimulation. The error is to believe that if this is true it explains these religious experiences.

So I tell the story of a religious experience I had. A scientist tells me that whilst I was having the experience she measured activity in my vagus nerve. Both observations are true. What is not proven is that the nerve explains or even causes the experience. How do we know for example that when I'm baptised, the baptism triggers a religious experience that in its turn triggers the vagus nerve?

They happen at the same time but which causes the other to happen? But more than that the religious experience is real to me, why should the fact that my vagus nerve was stimulated invalidate it?

I have a horrible feeling that if we really believed these types of explanation that all human experience can be explained by biology or chemistry, then that would put most of the entertainment industry out of business.