Does a Child have the Right to be Baptised?

Baptism is not two parents or whatever bringing the baby to be baptised.  It is the CHURCH acting through and in the parents.  Baptism is a religious act not a parental one.  That is why you cannot be told, "It is none of your business", if a child is being baptised. Baptism is meant to have social consequences and it is not a private act.   Baptism not about the baby nor parents and is not welcoming and arguing that the baby can choose for herself or himself later is invalid.  Religion encourages the perception that baptism welcomes the child.  Baptism is about fixing the child FOR God and what kind of welcome is it that accuses her of having a spiritual defect that needs to be fixed?  There are other ways to welcome.   If baptism forgives sins and prayers for mercy are fruitless unless you have been baptised and thereby connected to God then it follows that Catholic baptism is a sham welcome. And as for the child choosing later baptism claims to be choosing for the child and in practice the child rarely gets a choice later on.

Christians take their babies to the clergy to get them baptised. Water is sprinkled on them and magic words are said and this is supposed to remove a sin they never committed but which they are blamed for (original sin). God then adopts them as his children - he rejected them before. They are made members of his Church and given the power to believe and love God. The gate of Heaven is opened for them and they belong to God meaning they must obey him instead of pleasing themselves.

Baptism of a baby is trying to make your baby public property.  The meaning intended by baptism in a particular Church is what counts.  If baptism can mean anything it means nothing which raises the question of why you are having your baby baptised.  It is not your own business - it is a private matter.  Baptism not only has a public meaning it has public consequences.  Imagine how different Europe would be if children were not made to follow Catholic motions.  It is the reason the Church gets into schools.

There is no such thing as your child having a right to be baptised. Those who have the child baptised a Catholic have less right to get this done than somebody getting the child baptised a Protestant who will not impute the Catholic meaning to baptism. The reason is that with a Catholic baptism the child is put under laws that may affect her or him adversely later in life. Those consequences are usually never spelled out by priests which is very manipulative of them.
 
Here is a list of reasons how baptism degrades the child.
 
*A Spirit is put into the child. But if the Holy Spirit does not exist then the Spirit is only in the child's head. If you believe in spirits then what spirit is going in if it is not the Holy Spirit? Any answers for the problem of evil fail if there is no God. They are themselves evil for they excuse the inexcusable and see less evil where more should be seen. If a child's suffering is randomless and purposeless and disgusting then you are condoning it by saying there is a divine plan if there is no plan at all. If there is no God then because of evil, you are unwittingly (and sometimes wittingly!) adoring evil when you adore God. A baby suffering is just evil and purposeless and thus you would be evil yourself for trying to say God has a plan unless there really is a God. Otherwise you are telling yourself that the cruelty of existence should in some way be allowed to happen. You are seeing blind pitiless nature as God and thus giving it glory. To worship a non-existent God does not mean you don't worship anything. You are mistaking the works of nature for God and your imagination for his voice.
 
*The child has to be indoctrinated by parents and the school. It is stupid to argue that you will raise your child Catholic for she can leave the Church later if she thinks it's rubbish. This overlooks the power that conditioning has over a child who is learning about the world and whose feelings are being shaped by it. If the child is raised without religion, the transition into religion will not be traumatic or very painful. If the child was raised Catholic and has to transition out of it into humanism or atheism or another religion that can be agonising and religion tends to section people into a community in the middle of a wider community because it wants to manipulate our natural tendency to want to fit in and copy the people in our community. Remember the non-religious child does not fear hurting God or fear Hell or fear divine punishment but the Catholic child will if she has a proper Catholic education.
 
* Man's interpretation of God is not God. If a man is right about God there is no evidence that this is nothing more than luck. If a message comes to you from God, it is not really going to be taken as proper message from God if you are not sure of its origin. If there is no God, then the child is going to mistake cruel random nature for God and treat man as the voice of God. If there is no God, that means you worship something but it is not God. It is worshipping evil for nature is cruel. It is very serious to risk a child becoming a believer in a religion concocted by man. Baptism is dedicating a child to lies and man's delusions about religion - if the religion really is not from God.
 
*The child might be excluded from a good school because of the religious affiliation imposed on him by baptism.
 
*The child is obligated to adore and obey Jesus Christ under the threat of everlasting punishment and the Church holds that God can arrange that if you sin you will get cancer to make you consider giving up the sin.
 
*The child is obligated to hail vindictive scriptures in which God commands violence and makes threats. Jesus treated the Old Testament as God's inerrant word and based himself on it and even told the Jews off for not executing children who cursed their parents. He said that whoever relaxed the laws in the Old Testament would be dirt in the kingdom of Heaven. He did not repudiate the divine commands that demanded that certain sinners be stoned to death. He did not apologise. And you want to put the spirit of a man like that into a child?
 
*The child has to attend Mass and worship and that takes time and money and an emotional investment.
*The child has to pay money to the religion. It is not right for a man-made religion to take money on the basis that God set it up for he didn't.
 
*The child is put under Canon Law.
-Canon Law discriminates against women - they are barred from the priesthood.
-Canon Law condemns heresy - having a view that is not the Church's view and the child could lose a job with the Church over growing up to express heresy.
-Canon Law regards her same-sex marriage or marriage to a divorced person/pagan/cousin undertaken without a dispensation from the bishop as a fiction.
-Canon Law obligates the child to obey the pope. Catholics are to obey the pope even when he is wrong because nobody can discard authority just because he or she thinks it is in error.
 
*Religion likes to look harmless but it is not - it is easy to enjoy a Catholic wedding mass when you forget that this religion may have imagined there is a God who judges people (a good person does not want Jack the Ripper judged in the afterlife. It is this life he needs to be judged in for he needs to be stopped from killing) or who regards women who have abortions as murderers. Religion needs to be taken seriously and it demands that it be taken seriously. If religion is man-made it will have man's flaws such as his love for hypocrisy and lies and violence.
 
*There is enough to create concerns and troubles without having membership of the Catholic Church to add to it.
 
*Making a child a Catholic when many people hate Catholics and many Catholics even hate Catholics is not fair.
 
*A child cannot really be Catholic. Giving her the label is meaningless and is really about using her by trying to slot her into a socio-political structure. Do not underestimate the power of a culture, especially a religious one, to silently pressure and implicitly bully.
 
*Baptising your child a Catholic is a great crime if being Catholic is a hindrance to salvation. What if Islam is in fact the one true faith? The less research you have done the more disgusting having your child baptised is.
 
*Baptising the child is more about imposing a religious label and identity on the child than a faith. This makes baptism a lie for in reality there is no such thing as a Catholic or Protestant or Muslim baby. A baby is a baby and not a religion. Don't demean your child. And religious labels serve a cultural and social and therefore directly and indirectly political function both in principle and practice.
 
*Finally don't make baptism about you or your parents or the community or the party. It is not. There is a child there!
 
Many carrying their child to the Catholic baptism font do not take Canon Law seriously. If some people think none of it really matters, they are denying the right of religion to make whatever crazy laws it wants. And they are real laws to that religion. Obey the laws or get out of the religion. Anything else is disrespectful to the religion and to its right to make laws - and laws by definition are to be taken seriously. Some atheist people are okay with having their babies baptised BECAUSE chances are the baby will grow up to be a religious sceptic of some kind anyway. That is not acceptable. There are no words to describe the hypocrisy and the amorality of people who submit a child to a religion they do not believe in themselves or who actually know the religion is untrue.
 
Water baptism is supposed to put supernatural power into a baby to live as a member of the Church - it is obligated to obey the rules of the Church and the Bible.
 
Would the baby really want somebody trying to open it up to the unknown and the supernatural? Parents have the right to fear the alleged supernatural power. Some people may believe that if there is power in baptism that this power, despite the way it seeks to appear, is evil. Or they may not be sure if it is evil - they will not then want their child to receive the power. There is conclusive proof that the worship of God is the worship of a form of evil. If it is nutty to fear the power of baptism, then why is it not considered nutty to believe in the power or to believe that it is good? Fearing the unknown and fearing the supernatural is a more natural reaction than not fearing it. We tend to be afraid when we hear of people supernatural powers. Atheists and sceptics fear belief in the supernatural rather than the supernatural itself. Even religionists fear many forms of supernatural belief. Roman Catholicism for example says superstition is a sin. So it is normal to fear or doubt the powers of baptism.
 
The child cannot have a right to be baptised even if baptism is harmless but does nothing. Baptising the child is against the child's rights for baptism has bad implications.

Baptism is not just about the sacrament of baptism but about qualifying you to receive the other sacraments so if the sacraments are bad then baptism is the worst one for it is the key to the door.  Some say like Pope Benedict that it is a mystery why people can receive the body of Christ and confess their sins and still go out and abuse children. If we depend on sacraments that do not work then there is no mystery! If the sacraments work Catholics would be better than other people. But they are neither better or worse. Where are the tests and trials to see if the sacraments really have an effect on people? Sacramentalism is in violation of the fact that religion should stick to the evidence. It does not respect our right to truth and evidence.  Disrespect or disregard for evidence is the same as disregard for truth and all who oppose truth must take responsibility for the downgrading of justice that can and will follow

Also, the goal of baptism is to be able to take communion.  The church says the Eucharist does not physically change into Jesus but it still says it is Jesus. Sounds like pretending to me! The Bible is very severe against the worship of something that when attacked cannot defend itself.  Idolatry is an insult to religion and if religion is bad it still does not deserve that! 

The key to overthrowing baptism is to get people to challenge the parents and godparents who got them baptised and the religion that did it.  Education is the only hope.