Circumcision is nothing like clitorectomy. Cliterectomy is analgous to severing the entire head of a penis. A foreskin is just superfluous skin. It’s not the same thing at all and pretending that it is cheapens the real brutality of chopping off little girls’ clitorises.
I can’t say this hasn’t been fun, but I have to go to bed now. Is this thread a hijack or a train wreck? Or a hijack of a train wreck?
The whole thing started with Ann Coulter, so let me bring it back full circle. All she is doing is going a little further with the obvious conclusions of religious faith. That is what the rest of you people cannot admit. Ann is just showing the ugly reality of religion.
OF COURSE she is being bigoted and unfair. That is what religion is all about. Jews fighting Muslims in the middle east. Catholics vs. protestants in Northern Ireland and for the past 500 years in Europe. Crusades. Massacres. Witch trials. Programs. Inquisitions.
Did you know that except for Sri Lanka and Northern Ireland, every one of the religion-based conflicts in the world today involves Islam fighting someone? You know, the famous “religion of peace”? By the way, my cite for that is a book I just finished by Élie Barnavi, entitled “Les religions meurtrières” (Murderous Religions). I hope it gets translated into English. One of his basic points is that all reveald religions are by their nature agressive.
Barnavi is a former Israeli ambassador to France and a brilliant author. I assume he is a Jew, although I suspect he may be a secular Jew. But his message about religion (he does not spare Judaiism, I assure you) is very eye-opening. But that is a matter for another thread. See you around.
I never said the two were exactly the same. But your arrogant dismissal of the foreskin as “superfluous skin” cheapens the real brutality of circumcision. By the way, why did your God put it there if he did not want it there? 
no thanks. I’m not interested in this being a JDT repeat I’m ok w/ the whole debate, but not the circumsciion hijack. Mods, please close, if that’s the only way to stop this JDT wannabe. thanks.
pisses me off, it was one of my best threads evah.
Over land and resources. Do you honestly think it would be different if the whole of the Middle East suddenly turned atheist? If so you’re a fool.
Bankrupt kings looking for money
Be specific or I can’t rebut you.
I’ll give you Salem. But according to Cows, Pigs, War And Witches by Martin Gardener, witch trials and the Inquisition were a case of wagging the dog to create a false enemy and allow the nobility to hold onto power.
You mean pogroms? The name given to the Soviet governments beating and killing of Jews? The Atheist] Soviet government?
I already adressed this.
Sounds like an unbiased source without an axe to grind :rolleyes:
Um…you know that Diogenes is an atheist, right?
Calling circumcision “brutal” cheapens any kind of genuine brutality.
I don’t have a God, I’m an atheist. I think evolution produces waste. Foreskins and appendices are waste.
If it continues I’ll start a new thread in GD.
Really? What did ya like about it? Let’s have coffee and discuss it.
It was an unfocused “you”. I was asking believers generally why their God would have put a foreskin there if he did not want it there. So Diogenes is an atheist. Sorry. Big fucking difference.
Is the nit sufficiently picked to suit you, M’Lord??? :dubious:
Sure it was. Right/
It evolved there. Besides, if it wasn’t there how could we cut it off as a sign of the Covenant.
It is a big difference. You know neither the subject nor your opponents in this debate.
I know of no religion that takes out the appendices of 8-day old kids as a symbol of their covenant with some invisible god. BTW, there is an article going around that shows that the appendix DOES play a role after all. Can’t find it right now.
Doc, you remind me of the ridiculous, dogmatic teacher in Voltaire’s Candide.
“Glasses fit perfectly on the human nose. So we were given noses to hold our glasses”.
Absurdity and religion have gone hand in hand for ages.
Way to twist my words. I never said the foreskin evolved so it could be cut off. I asked how we could cut it off if it was not there.
BTW In keeping with Wring’s wishes we should open a thread in GD if you wish to continue debating circumcision. I know my arguments will stand up to the scrutiny of GD. Will yours?
I just find it funny when dumbasses with an axe to grind against religion start with the “Where’s your God NOW?” gimmick. You are so convinced of your own view that anyone who disagrees with you is seen as an ignorant religious person. Diogenes disagreed with you, so he must be an ignorant religious person. Trying to back out of it and claim it was a general “you” is so transparent as to be ridiculous.
You (specific “you”, not general) are among the most ignorant, thick-headed, anti-religious morons whose words I’ve ever had the displeasure of reading. You read books with titles like “Murderous Religions” and honestly believe you have an unbiased viewpoint. You want everyone else to think just like you, yet you decry the televangelists of the world for being too pushy. You compare clitorectomies to routine circumcisions and can’t understand why everyone’s telling you they are not analagous.
To paraphrase a wise man, get the plank out of your eye before you start trying to remove the speck from anyone else’s.
Besides “It takes one to (allegedly) know one”?
Speaking of fools, your post is really the height of the old religious apologist canard that no matter how often religion is involved in bloodshed day after day, year after year, age after age, it is NEVER somehow the fault of religion. It is alway somehow the fault of something else. Greed, land, power, resources, yaddah, yaddah, yaddah. It is never religion! Religion is always blameless.
Sorry for the typo, I did mean “pogroms.” But it would come as a real surprise to a few Jews of centuries past to know that they were not practised in Russia until the atheist commies took power!
Does that rule apply to Miller calling me a “bigot”?
Way to avoid rebutting any of my points!
I guess that goes the same for you, Lord Ashtar. The “wise man” you quote regarding planks and specks in the eye is obviously Jesus. So I guess you have your biases too.
Have you actually read the book “Muderous Religions” or are you LITERALLY judging a book by its cover? If so, you are, in your own wods “among the most ignorant, thick-headed, …morons whose words I’ve ever had the displeasure of reading.”
I have read the book you are quoting, the Bible. Quite thoroughly in fact. But you judge the book I cite based on nothing but its title. Who is the biased moron here?
Me either. So what? My own reasoning has nothingto do with religion but marginal health and hygene. Removing a foreskin is easy. Removing an appendix, not so much, especially for the non-technological cultures which originated circumcision. That doesn’t mean appendices aren’t still useless, infection-prone vestigal bags of tissue left over from our primate ancestors and that we aren’t slightly better off without them.
I’ve seen several hypotheses, none of them proven, about how our vestigal verniform appendices may have evolved some minor secondary function in digestion or immunity but its ancestral function seems to be gone, nobody ever seems any worse for the wear without one and from all appearances, they are much more likely to kill you than to save you. I don’t know why an atheist would have a problem with idea that evolution produces superfluous or obsolete genetic material. You’re not an IDist, are you? How do you explain tits on a boar hog? 