Atheists Break Out New Ritual Tool: The Blow-Dryer
Nonbelievers Adopt Provocative Ceremony to Make a Point About Baptism
At the annual American Atheists Convention, one of atheism's premier provocateurs, Edwin Kagin, faced the crowd and raised high a hairdryer labeled "Reason and Truth."
Said one woman who travelled from Cincinnati to undergo the de-baptism, "I was baptized Catholic. I don't remember any of it at all." The woman, Cambridge Boxterman, 24, added, "According to my mother I screamed like a banshee, and those are her words, 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, who is American Atheists' national legal director, firmly believes that regardless of one's religious beliefs, each person has the right to say or do what he or she wants, provided it is within the law. In the past, he has reportedly called out parents who subject their children to strict fundamentalist religious education, referring to it as child abuse.
