Blowing hot air

In a type of mock ceremony that’s now been performed in at least four states, a robed “priest” used a hairdryer marked “reason” in an apparent bid to blow away the waters of baptism once and for all. Several dozen participants then fed on a “de-sacrament” (crackers with peanut butter) and received certificates assuring they had “freely renounced a previous mistake, and accepted Reason over Superstition.”

For Gray, the lighthearted spirit of last summer’s Atheist Coming Out Party and De-Baptism Bash in suburban Westerville, Ohio, served a higher purpose than merely spoofing a Christian rite.

“It was very therapeutic,” Gray said in an interview. “It was a chance to laugh at the silly things I used to believe as a child. It helped me admit that it was OK to think the way I think and to not have any religious beliefs.”

…Atheist Gary Mueller recently mailed his de-baptism certificate to St. Bonaventure Catholic Church in Concord, Calif., and asked to be dropped from its baptismal record. The church told him, in effect, that he was all wet.

“While we do not remove a name/person from a Baptism register, we can note alongside your name that ‘you have left the Roman Catholic Church,’ ” the Rev. Richard Mangini replied in an e-mail. “I hope that God surprises you one day and lets you know that He is quite well.” [reference]

As a former atheist I would like to debunk what they are saying, but since I can only rely on superstition and not reason I am unable to. When I became Catholic I had to sign one of those documents about promising to abstain from reason and other bad habits I had picked up in a lifetime of atheism. In the last ten years I have been much happier now that religion is a crutch and life is easier now also since I don’t have to think anymore and can just blindly follow some foreign guy in a robe! I embrace my sheepleness.

Besides reason is not what it is cracked up to be. Just what had it done for St. Augustine, St. Thomas Aquinas. Pascal, or even our present Pope? Remember that encyclical Pope John Paul II wrote “Faith and Superstition”? Oh wait.

Now if these people were serious about giving up Christianity and the fruits of Christendom, they should also denounce hospitals, universities, and even modern science, and of course acts of charity. They want to denounce Christianity while at the same time enjoying the fruits of it.

I am so glad that this man showed us how to use reason! Forming judgments by a process of logic always leads you to sticking a piece of paper with REASON on it to a hair dryer. Mocking Christians with phony rituals that have not ability to cancel out an ontological change screams reason. Though ‘Reason itself is a matter of faith,” G. K. Chesterton wrote. ”It is an act of faith to assert that our thoughts have any relation to reality at all.”

Faith and reason are like two wings on which the human spirit rises to the contemplation of truth; and God has placed in the human heart a desire to know the truth–in a word, to know himself–so that, by knowing and loving God, men and women may also come to the fullness of truth about themselves. – Pope John Paul II Fides et Ratio.

The Catholic Key blog titled the post on this “Atheists Need Better liturgists” Actually a stunt as silly as this sounds just like something a liturgist would recommend. Rocks in baptismal fonts and blow-dryers marked reason kind of go together.