Am I nuts? or is this just wrong.

[bballad]

Recently a couple that I'm acquainted with had their baby baptized. This in and of itself is fine, its there reasoning I have an issue with. It took them forever to find a church that would perform the ceremony for them, as they didn't actually belong to any church or religion for that matter. They both claim to be spiritual atheists (I have no Idea what that means), and wanted the baptism because they where both baptized and thought it was a “neat ceremony”. Eventually they found a Universal Unitarian church that charged them a substantial donation and preformed the baptism. Am I nuts, or are both the couple and the minister missing the point on this?

[dublix]

Seems a bit strange an athiest would want a baptism! Sounds a little cooky to me.

And what the hell is a spiritual athiest, someone please enlighten me.

[bballad]

From what I can tell a "spiritual athiest"=kook

Basicly they believe in sperits and angles and demons and just about anyhting else you can come up with bt they do not beleive in a god/"spirtual higher power"

[MrLinus]

I went looking and found the following in a cached version of www.soulfodder.com/god.htm By Ivan Sokolov.

.. spiritual atheist -- someone who could believe in the existence of much more than the physical without having to believe in God

Another definition I found said:

The Spiritual Atheist offers a comprehensive view of the main line positions of Atheism and Agnosticism. It also offers a perspective on spirituality and shows a path for its development that need not include any form of organized religion or formal religious belief system.

(again, another defunct site: http://www.geocities.com/rcdef/aas/index.html )

Last site has an interesting article on "Stages of Faith" .. Hope it helps.

[Ghostdog]

An atheist is someone who reject of believe in god. I think most of people make a confusion between atheist and not have a religion. For example I have no religion but I'm not atheist because for me there is no proof that god exist but there is no proof that god doesn't exist. So we can be without religion and what to be baptize.

[bballad]

I believe that would make you agnostic ghost dog. As for the baptism, part of the ceremony (of at least every baptism I have attended) is to promise to raise the child in the church. So they are lying in the middle of the ceremony I guess that’s not a big deal if you don't believe in that religion but the minister should have a big problem with it, and going through a ceremony whos point is to dedicate a child to a religion while not believeing in that religion only because you think its neat is dumb IMHO.

[KorpDeath]

An agnostic is an atheist who is afraid of commitment... hehehehe

Yeah that sounds pretty lame, but you know what I always say.....

"It takes all kinds."

[Ghostdog]

I don't know if I'm an agnostic because some things can't be explain. For example how can you explain a feeling? My feeling will not be your feeling. Everybody has is own perception.

[bugsthecat]

they should have checked the internet , i am a minister in the universal life church and you can be one too. We accept all faiths and are able to perform pretty much any ceremony ,including custom ones and excluding circumcision go to http://www.universalministries.com/doctrine.cfm if you would like to become a fellow minister ,they could have done their baptism for a lot cheaper . go in peace brothers and sisters . Reverend Tim ( aka btc)

[Ishbar]

I agree that your friends are firstly confused induviduals that are probably actually agnostic. If they are getting batised in the Christain sense, though there reasoning is hidiously poor, is probably still a good thing over all because the idea is he/she gets an extra kick of holyspirt but since they're still baby it's not really a comittment. That's what confirmation is for (a sacrament that they have been moveing to way too low of an age in catholic schools, but that's for anyother time perhaps). The minsiter isn't in the bad so much in my belief, he's supposed to be welcoming. Parents are kooks. And bugsthecat scares me. I'm reading a book about a guy with multiple religions, so we'll see if it can change my mind. But at the moment being a multi-Rev sounds pretty damn wrong to me. In case anyone was wondering, i'm Roman Chatholic Tweaked (Meaning i changed and reworded some minor stuff to my likeing.)