The first thing that should be pointed out is that child baptism is a tradition of the early church with evidence going all the way back to the first century, and there is certainly no quarrel about the practice in the early church. The first explicit doctrinal pronouncement on the question occurred at the Council of Carthage in 418 A.D., which affirmed the long-time practice of the necessity of baptism for the remission of the punishment due to original sin, which necessarily includes not only adults but children as well.
The notion of infant initiation is certainly not an innovation of the Catholic Church. For two thousand years, God had established the covenant with Abraham and his offspring which always had included infants. God made it explicit that the covenant with Abraham would not just be with him or his fellow adults. God's covenant promise included infants: "This is My covenant, which you shall keep, between Me and you and your descendants after you; every male among you shall be circumcised. And you shall be circumcised in the flesh of your foreskin; and it shall be the sign of the covenant between Me and you. And every male among you who is eight days old shall be circumcised throughout your generations… " (Genesis 17:10-12).
The New Testament itself provides compelling, if not conclusive. evidence for infant baptism in light of the continuation of this household covenant. In fact, the secular Greek word for 'household' is rendered "oikos", which included children. The baptisms of whole households provide this support, for it is logical that at least one of these households included infants [Stephanus' household (Cf. 1 Corinthians 1:16), Lydia's household (Cf. Acts 16:15), the Jailer's household (Cf. Acts 16:33), and Crispus' household (Cf. Acts 18:8)].
Sanctus, I probably formulated my question poorly due to my poor English. What I wanted to know was not the history of the issue, or what the Bible says about it, but the REASON why it is done. I will right now give you a very controversial point concerning baptism.
Every existing religion has some kind of ritual, that officially makes a person a part of that religious egregor. During that ritual the person comes before the God(s) of that egregor, gets noticed, and some certain rules of behavior are imprinted into that person. Needless to say, that these rules are the rules of the religion in question. And afterwards, no matter whether the person practices the religion he was introduced into, or not, his or her life is in a very big way governed by these principles. Roughly speaking, you may have been baptized long time ago, not consider yourself a christian, and work an Sundays any week you like, and be comfortable with it. But subconsciously you know that you are doing a wrong thing, and this knowledge starts working in your life. This applies to every religion, not just christianity.
However, christianity is one of the few religions, that insists on a person's being introduced into its egregor when the person is too small to decide and to answer for his actions. And the principles that are imprinted into a person during your ritual are - be a slave, think like a slave, don't allow yourself the sin of free thinking; pleasure is sin, we were born to suffer and suffer we will; we are all bad and sinful and have to be saved (though what is sinful about a month old baby is more than I can imagine); don't ask any questions; don't question the actions of the church; church is holy because the church says so (this statement, that I have read many a time in this thread from you good Catholics is simply ridiculous. It's like I would say that I am President Bush, and my followers would believe me, just because I said so); our God is all love, but we have to killkillkillkill those who do not think so.
That is what baptism does to people. As the result, we have got robots or zombies, like Mary Graspe, Sanctus and a couple of others, who cannot answer a single question, who can only "paste and copy" other people's words, who can only quote, who have never once in their lives thought for themselves, judging from their posts. That terrible ritual is performed while a child cannot decide for itself. Therefore, even the smallest chance of escape from this brainwashing is refused. And once the ritual is performed, it is very hard to shake off its consequenses. For most people it is almost impossible, because christianity fills them with fear. Don't question your god, and that's it. Be a slave and be a sheep... What a sad thing....
Oh, yes, by the way - everything I've written above is based upon occult knowledge. Sorry if I made any of you sin by reading this ;-)