Armed with nothing but a hair-dryer, a prominent Atheist, Edwin Kagin, conducted a mass ‘de-baptism’ of fellow atheists. The ceremony took place at the annual American Atheists Convention and the hair-dryer was used to symbolically dry up any offending baptism waters that might have been sprinkled on the non-believers foreheads when they were young children.
Edwin Kagin is one of atheism’s most renowned provocateurs and is also American Atheists legal director. He led the service using mock King James language much to the amusement of his audience. Kagin even labeled the hair dryer ‘Reason and Truth’.
Kagin invited people forward to experience the ‘debaptism’ by saying:
"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."
Kagin said that many people have undergone de-baptism."Many have taken it as somewhat of a joke, but some have found it truly, if you will, a spiritually cleansing experience."
He said that the intention in the ceremony is to poke fun at baptisms, saying that waving a hair-dryer around has about the same spiritual power as does any church led baptismal ceremony. Kagin said that he hopes to shock people enough to begin to ask questions so that they might start “to learn a bit.”
Kagin has made headlines in the past for referring to parents who educate their children with fundamentalist religious teachings as abusing them.
"They are practicing child abuse in teaching that the world operates in ways other than it does," he has said. "And in my opinion, they are engaged in terrorism by weakening our nation and our understanding of science and things with which we can defend ourselves and progress. If it had not been for these fools we could have been at the stars 2,000 years ago."
Interestingly enough, Kagin’s own son is a Christian preacher in Kansas. Kagin says that despite this they have a good relationship although there are some things they just cannot talk about.
When asked whether his ceremony was not just in bad taste and poor manners, Kagin responded by saying that bad manners were a reasonable weapon in what he saw as America’s new civil war – the conflict between atheists and believers.
(To read the article in full, please go to http://abcnews.go.com).