10 ms·

Of course, some reasonable people think that genital mutilation is OK, because being reasonable does not guarantee moral clarity. This is why many reasonable p

• EGreg 9y ago
  Nearly every Jewish male has underwent circumcision at 8 days old, and they have gone on to lead productive and very fulfilling sexual lives. Many Muslims do it as well. That is probably hundreds of millions of people right there. Plus we have hundreds of years over which to know if such a procedure had adverse effects and the incidence rates. I agree with you that if these people were all atheists then they should probably refrain from physically altering their children. But since they believe that this has huge ramifications for their child's life as a Jew, and if you read the Bible you can definitely see why, telling them that they must stop this practice is equivalent to an attack on their whole religion. And specifically the Jewish religion, given that it's not obligatory for Cheistians and many Muslims do not regard it as obligatory. I should also point out that Jewish men on average seem to have successful upbringings and lower incidence of drug abuse, failed marriage etc. than tons of other groups. And Jews have been around for millennia. So arguments that something is more moral or less moral are subjective. There are families of different types and traditions and beliefs. The health outcomes of this particular practice have been empirically shown not to be worse on average than the opposite. In today's world, we are constantly figuring out what leads to more or less moral outcomes long term for society. 100 years ago, women couldn't wear bikinis to the beach, now we have lots of freedoms. We now have no-fauly divorce. Today, sexuality is everywhere, the family structure has deteriorated compared to before, divorces are up, many people have sex and don't stick around to raise the child, McDonalds is on every corner, obesity and depression is up etc. Is this better? Well, who knows, but we know that some systems have been stable and successful for millennia. Calling them immoral (from an atheist point or view) also carries the burden of showing our system to be more successful and to have better outcomes. Finally, in our system, liberal progressives are totally fine with far greater mutilation as long as a child feels that they are of the opposite gender. Why doesn't the same argument apply to make them wait until they are 18 or 21? Studies show that most children who feel like the opposite gender change their mind after several years regarding transitioning physically. So why right away submit them to permanently changing into a transsexual? Yet the same progressives who argue against circumcision would argue for gender reassignment surgery.
  • Mithaldu 9y ago
    Nearly every person who works a manual job and loses a finger went on to have a productive and fulfilling career. Doesn't mean they wouldn't have preferred to keep it. > Plus we have hundreds of years over which to know if such a procedure had adverse effects and the incidence rates. Really? Please link a study, published in a respectable publication, that compares physical and subjective sex performance parameters of the two type of men.
    • EGreg 9y ago
      The real question here is how many men born to Orthodox Jewish parents, when asked in adulthood whether they would have preferred to have been curcumcized at 8 days old or not, would have regretted it. And the answer is? Obviously the same is not true of people losing a finger.
      • Mithaldu 9y ago
        You're moving the goal posts. Your claim was about productive and fulfilling lives and the implication that circumcision does not impair that. Regret doesn't factor into that and is a separate issue. Clearly you can have productive and fulfilling lives with or without regrets. Whether the lack of regrets is rational or merely a self-defense mechanism of the person's mind is another question.
        • EGreg 9y ago
          The goal posts have been set by the original issue: whether circumcision harms the person or benefits them. The main people who can answer that are adult males who were circumcized. I am confident that if you asked 1000 religious Orthodox Jewish men whether they would have preferred to NOT have been circumcized at 8 days old and instead had to choose it later, an overwhelming majority would say they were glad they were circumcized that early. And they prefer that over never having been circumcized. I would be hesitant to say the same about non-Jewish men. The reason Jewish men are happy about having been circumcized early is because (perhaps this sounds ironic) it gives them FAR GREATER CHOICE when it comes to their own community and membership in three thousand year old people, marriage and - above all for most religious people - serving God in the way spelled out in the Torah. They can choose to leave the lifestyle or increase their observance etc. much more easily since one of the biggest challenges is already out of the way. You can of course tell them they don't understand what real choice is, that this is stockholm syndrome and that religion is mass delusion. But they may not agree and they collectively are ultimately the judges of what was better for them. It is a different conception of morality and rights than the individualism that comes out of the Scottish Enlightenment These ideas that a parent "knows better" because they - and millions of others - were in the same situation and are glad this was done, are valid. It is a collective morality of a people. And again I would say that unless they believed that God commanded it, it could be possibly changed but as it is, when the vast majority of complaints are from the OUTSIDE of the community, perhaps the downsides far outweigh the upsides.