@saab,
With a name like Saab I expect that you are both a Swede and Lutheran. Go back and look at the your Church's confessional writings and you will see the Nicene Creed as faithful exposition of Holy Scripture truth.
Your remarks are an important example of the thesis of this thread, viz., the adherents of most religions are generally woefully ignorant of the tenets of their faith.
The function of a baptism is symbolic, it remains to the individual to accept the faith and its tenets. You don't have to, but you are in fact losing the essence of the faith by rejecting the Resurrection as untrue. The Resurrection of Jesus is the first and only time in human history that a person rose from the dead (disregarding Lazarus, since Jesus did the rising of) and is the jumping off point of Christianity that reconciles waking consciousness to the mysterium tremendum et fascinans of this universe as it is. Accepting as Faith the Resurrection is a metaphysical function to awaken us to the mystery and wonder of creation, to open our minds and our senses to an awareness of the mystical "ground of being," the source of all phenomena.
There is a scene in the third Indiana Jones movie where the hero has to "believe" and take a step out into thin air in order to save his father. He does. his foot lands on solid ground and by that act of faith alone saves his father. In a similar fashion that is the pyschological basis for believing in the Resurrection. It awakens and maintain in the individual an experience of awe, humility, and respect, in recognition of that ultimate mystery, transcending names and forms. If one can believe in life arising from death, the final conquerer, then there is the possibility for the eternal life the Church preaches.
In other words, its all connected.
I think that if one understands why a religion "works," meaning giving succor to its adherents you can grasp a greater understanding of your own religious belief and how the entire artiface has to taken as a whole in order to produce its most profound affect on the individual.
To reiterate:
The four functions of religion:
1. Mystical – realizing the wonder of the universe, awe before the mystery
2. Cosmological – a picture of the universe (e.g., Hebrew worldview).
3. Sociological – supports and validates a particular social order.
4. Pedagogical – how to live a human life.
So, as the other poster pointed out about Liberal Christians who look upon the Resurrection as "metaphor," that subtracts the mystical function of religion, making it little more than a set of ethical pronouncements.
Don't mistake what I am saying, because I too look at such stories metaphorically; the Resurrection story as an example to all humanity as a metaphor for dying to your animal nature and being "reborn" as a truly sentient and spiritual being. But even Gnostics like me recognize that there are more things in heaven and earth, than are dreamt of in my philosophy.
