However, if you believe only the baptized are saved, you worry that your beloved ancestors might not be with you in heaven, so baptizing the dead is a ceremony that lets you help them.
It is a gift of mercy,
We Catholics believe in baptism of desire and praying for the dead. That drives the Baptists crazy too.
I don't agree with the LDS ideas of Jesus and heaven, but baptism of the dead is an act of charity not something bad.
as for being creepy, well all religions are creepy to outsiders, especially when zealots distort what is going on.
Not just Baptists, since it is just one of the many distinctive Catholic teachings are not manifest in the only wholly inspired substantive authoritative record of what the NT church believed (which is Scripture, in particular Acts through Revelation, which best shows how the NT church understood the gospels).
Despite the Spirit inspiring the recording of over 200 prayers by believers, and despite this being a most basic practice, and despite there always being plenty of created beings to pray to, and occasions for it since the Fall, yet there are none in the Hebrew canon or the NT for the departed (and 2 Mac. 12 does not teach Purgatory) by believers for the departed (despite Cath. extrapolative attempts to divine such), nor addressed to anyone else but God.
The only prayers or offerings in Scripture to anyone else in the spiritual world is by pagans, including to the only Queen of Heaven. (Jer. 44)
It’s irrelevant. You had choices in this life. Baptism is a choice. It’s a ritual to demonstrate your choice in Christ. It is nothing more. Baptism itself does not save or provide salvation. Otherwise, as a baptized believer, I could sin forever and depend on baptism as my salvation. It didn’t work that way and Christ says it doesn’t work that way. The born again has to do with the spirit not a bathtub.