 So I have a story for you that I think is just wonderful So a school in North Carolina came out and apologized after holding a baptism marathon where more than 100 students were baptized Without the parents permission Now just knowing that you're gonna think what is going on here have have these school administrators gone rogue It's not actually that shocking considering this was a private Christian school But the circumstances are still a little bit weird and the response from the parents Bizarre I mean their Christian parents sending their kids to a private Christian school, but nonetheless still relatively bizarre So this is from the Hill a North Carolina school apologized after baptizing more than 100 children Without their parents permission according to the Fayetteville observer Northwood Temple Academy a private Christian school in Fayetteville Posted on Facebook on Thursday quote. I feel it in my bones. You're about to move today We had over 100 middle and high school students spontaneously declare their faith and get baptized today We will have more pictures of these powerful moments posted over the next couple of days that morning three students had their scheduled Baptisms at school as part of spiritual emphasis week The offer was then extended to other students who had not been scheduled more than 100 students in total were baptized Renee Mclam the head of the school sent families a letter to explain now Here's where it gets good Mclam told the paper that the school should have given students a chance to contact parents and ask permission What we were not expecting such an overwhelming response to the message that was spoken But as a mother I certainly can empathize with why some parents were upset She said Mclam said that most of the parents that contacted her were glad But some were unhappy with the move some of the children had already been baptized And at least one family was concerned that the second baptism could undo the first Okay, first of all just to be clear Baptisms do nothing. You are dipping a child in what you believe is magical water and It is meaningless so doing one two or three baptisms makes no difference in Actuality, but for the family in particular that thought that the baptism the second baptism would cancel out the first one That's just that's beautiful. Look, I talked about before how I grew up evangelical I've never heard a Christian say that but if you actually believe that like genuinely so all you needed to do Was get a third baptism and that would cancel out the second one and restore everything back to the first baptism And just to show you like how insane this school is I mean as the article stated they capped off spiritual emphasis week with this baptismal marathon And they claim to be on fire for Jesus and I just want to stress that we're talking about a school that teaches preschool through high school When you send your children to school, I mean, there's this expectation that they're learning about science and math and history But this is what's happening here. Now, that's not to say that they can't do fun things, right? Like Spirit week or something like that But I mean really what they're doing is brainwashing children These are brainwashing factories like for all the conservatives who claim that colleges are brainwashing factories and they turn kids liberal This is explicitly what they're doing and having grown up in the church. I know that these baptisms They didn't just come organically. They probably guilt-tripped people with some nice music Into doing it, right? And it's the response to the parent from the parents rather is really weird to me I get the parents who are angry because they weren't there to see their child's baptism because this is a very big deal You know in Christianity, but for me, I always was raised Todd with my church at least that baptisms are something not to be taken lightly and the same is true with communion so if you get baptized or you take communion and You're not like fully committed To Jesus's message, then it could actually backfire and you could go to hell So for that reason like my parents did not let me get baptized until I was 13 years old Because they had to make sure that it was actually right and I was ready So that way I didn't get like incorrectly baptized and end up sending me to hell because if you don't like Genuinely commit or something like that then that's that's bad So, you know for them to kind of just have like a baptismal marathon I feel like it kind of you would think anyways reduces the significance of the baptism and as a Christian institution You feel like they know about this, but apparently not maybe my church was the outlier I genuinely don't know but as a kid who was raised in the church I can tell you like 50% of these students are going to grow up hating their parents for sending them to this school Because even if in the moment your brain washed and you think that it's good And if your parents asked you do you like this? You'd say yes You know deep down that that's not true like deep when my parents were in their evangelical phase. I Couldn't do anything. I couldn't live a normal life Literally because every single waking moment of my life had to be dedicated to Jesus Christ So I couldn't listen to music on the radio unless it was Christian music because if it doesn't glorify God Then what's purple? What's the purpose of it? Anything that I had like video games that didn't glorify God or at least were Spiritually ambivalent I had to get rid of that even things as innocuous as Mario brothers because they had ghosts in it Simply the inclusion of ghosts was an affront to God because there are no ghosts There are people that go to heaven and hell and to suggest that there's ghosts means that God doesn't have a plan for those Ghosts when he does they go to heaven or they go to hell so every little fucking detail of my life was hyper-analyzed and My parents like they had a little bit more of a laissez-faire view compared to other Christian parents but The church where my parents like said okay, you can have Pokemon the church would then guilt-trip me Into getting rid of all of my Pokemon cards as a child by the way when you shouldn't be thinking about these things Heaven or hell like you should be thinking about enjoying your life because you're a kid But my church had guilt-tripped me into getting rid of all of my Pokemon cards because they convinced me as a child that I would go To hell if I didn't do that so overall like while you're in that experience and your brainwashed you you accept it You accept things that happen as normal in the same way That you accept things in a cult as normal because this is what it is Let's be clear it is a cult just because it's larger just because it's an organized religion doesn't make it any less Coltea it's still a cult by nature But while you're in that cult, you know you respect the cult leaders You want to make sure you appease the cult leaders You want to make sure that you do what is going to get you into heaven or good graces with God or whatever the fuck And so these students now because they're knee-deep in that cult They're not going to come out and tell their parents that this is making them unhappy But odds are it's probably making them very unhappy not all of them I'm sure many of them are making friends, but like What these parents are doing to their kids? I Genuinely believe it's harmful and depending on the family it borders on child abuse I genuinely mean that for what they subject their children to I mean Christianity ruined my childhood and I will forever hold that against People in my church who like turned my parents into fucking drones and again my parents like weren't the worst offenders But still it really affected me all throughout my life And what I think that these parents don't realize is that when you really force this on your child Oftentimes you see blowback in the future So like I was one of the individuals that went through a really vocal atheist phase Because everything that was instilled in my brain after learning it was bullshit. I had to lash out right? Learning that you know the church They hated gay people so much and then having to suppress my own homosexuality I mean that led to me really hating the fucking church rightfully. So so you know This is kind of a little bit of a tangent But like this made me think of that right because I was baptized I was there and it's just weird think about this at the end of The day you're dipping your child in Magic water. That's that's weird. That's that's freak shit. Okay. I think that as an Antithiist we all would be better off like humanity would be better off if we all left religion I'm not gonna judge anyone if they are religious and they're not judgmental and it just makes them happy from a personal standpoint But overall humanity is better off without religion because rather than focusing on what's going to happen or what might happen in the afterlife You should focus on this life. Don't take this life for granted. You don't know if there's gonna be a heaven There's no evidence that heaven exists So the more you focus on heaven the less value that this life has and that's kind of what they're doing to all of these Kids, they're devaluing their life. They're making it seem as if what's in front of them is not as important as the afterlife And I think that that is a really Negative way to raise your children. So, you know look For all the conservatives who claim that it's the liberals who want to indoctrinate their children This isn't just indoctrination right here. This is worse than that like again depending on the circumstance it borders on child abuse and That's just my opinion That's my uneducated opinion to be clear because I'm no expert on this But religion is trash and if you raise your kids to not be religious or at least give them the opportunity to make the choice They're gonna be much much healthier. I promise you that Watching so I definitely won't be hitting the subscribe button or turning on notifications By clicking the bell. No way. It's very sad