From: nikolai@very.net (nikolai kingsley) Newsgroups: talk.bizarre Subject: baptism wars Date: Mon, 1 Dec 1997 20:00:08 +1100 Organization: anarchartists/FDP Lines: 27 Message-ID: <MPG.eed27a4216b7c38989682@news.mira.net.au> Reply-To: nikolai@very.net X-Newsreader: Anawave Gravity v2.00.753 Consider the next step in escalating conflicts between fundamentalist religions: baptism wars. When you can drag someone into your particular faith simply by sprinkling holy water on their forehead and shouting "hailtheblessedthreeinonevirginofthelordnowandforeverAMEN!" - when you can fly a zeppelin over a football field, douse the crowd with whichever liquid your faith requires and introduce them to your personal brand of salvation via megaphone - then supersoaker attacks as the child is lowered into the baptismal font aren't far behind. While the leaders of orthodoxy argue over how long you have to wait before reclaiming the members of the flock so stolen, what rituals need to be done before someone has been cleansed of the impurities of their previous faith and if their consent is needed, the lower orders can concentrate on delivery systems, accelerated prayer recitation devices, editing the rituals down to their bare essentials for rapidity of invocation, paint-ball guns, registering your particular shade of green with the Vatican so that everyone knows that the man on the street with the Kelly Green stigmata is one of yours; Tibetan prayer wheels mounted on cordless electric drills, revved up to 1400 rpm so you can hear the monks chattering away madly, faster and faster until the words blur together into the drone of an approaching locust horde... nikolai --- still miss old bill