Thoughts of a sunburned atheist

[sniffnoy]

Added to my nonexistent list of religions to start: One that uses full-body sunburn as a baptism-sort-of-thing rite. I mean, it just fits so well. Your skin peels off; thus it's like shedding a skin, sloughing off the old self. Furthermore, it burns - and while there's no actual fire involved, we all know the idea of purification by fire - and hey, it burns, and then your skin peels off, why, it's almost like the rebirth of the phoenix! Terribly symbolic, no? So I bet someone sufficiently charismatic could convince enormous numbers of people to deliberately sunburn themselves.

-Harry