Born Again

There is a history of referring to people who have made major changes in their lives as "born-again;" the usage afaik (without looking it up or anything so this is pretty apocryphal) came mostly from "born-again Christians," mostly evangelicals.

This seemed like a weird metaphor to me last night, so I thought I might consider how well-rounded it is.

Okay so let's take a look at some features that babies have.

-helpless
-stupid
-believe anything you tell them
-need their diapers changed
-can't speak any language
-don't know how to get to sleep
-ready to grow
-adorable until they start pooping
-not much hair
-it's VERY bad to have a romantic attachment to them
-you can steal candy from them easily
-they have a long life in front of them and lots of potential
-innocent

okay that should be enough for now. Now let's see how a "born-again" person compares!

-someone born-again has just made major changes in their own life, which they are happy with. This isn't very helpless.
-I'll try not to tackle the issue of whether "born-agains" are stupid directly.
-"born-agains" may have just been converted to a religion, so perhaps they are overly credulous
-as recent converts, "born-agains" may have memetic immune system weaknesses, and need to be told which parts of a religion to pay attention to (thou shalt not kill) and which not to (stone adulterers)
-I'd think that after undergoing an enlightenment-style revelation you would have an easy time sleeping, not a hard time
-I would think that a "rebirth" would come after a period of growth, but entering a new community gives you new opportunities to get ahead.
-older members of the religion may be happy about new converts, until the memetic immune weaknesses require "diaper changes"
-okay putting "not much hair" or "really small" would be silly nitpicking, I admit it.
-it may be hard for people from the "born-agains'" "past life" to maintain their romantic attachment, or they may need to find a new partner who subscribes to the same religion. But I hardly think that's a vicious social stigma. This may also be nitpicking
-when Jehovah's Witnesses (I think?) go door to door, they always go in pairs with one less-experienced partner to make the pitch and a more-experienced partner to catch them if they get a vicious militant atheist or something. So there are practices in place to prevent recent converts from having candy stolen from them, this makes it seem likely that they're vulnerable to it
-I can't really speak to the "long life ahead of them bit" since I'm not particularly familiar with the demographics. Of course that hasn't stopped my wild speculation so far, so I suppose that if you start believing in an afterlife that's the real for realzies one this time that you're totally getting into with all the cool kids that's kind of like having a long life ahead of you
-I don't know that there's any sense in which "born-agains" are innocent, although perhaps naive I could get behind.

Well I originally thought that this would be a terrible metaphor that fell apart easily. But going through my lists it seems like there are a lot of similarities between "born-agains" and "born-for-the-first-times." I don't know that they're terribly flattering, and I will continue to snidely giggle at and steal candy from anyone I meet who claims be be born-again, but I won't object to their comparison of themselves with a helpless, pathetic pile of poopy diapers and whining.