The OFFICIAL Unofficial Achewood Message Board
Trivial Pursuits => Wild Card => Topic started by: robot_god on March 04, 2009, 12:22:49 am
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::sits quietly::
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My son is uncircumcised, and I'm the one who decided to leave him that way. Does that count for anything?
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I am the oldest of three boys. I and the middle brother are cut, the youngest is not. When I asked my dad why, he said "We saw how much it caused you and your brother, and we decided not to put him through that."
Thanks, dad.
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My mucus membrane is well ensheathed and that's how I likes it.
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I got around without a "hat" as it was the style at the time.
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We don't really do that so much over here.
Lucky for me, I guess. It seems a bit backward to me to chop bits off your kids just because. I think I'd harbour a vague grudge if my parents had decided they had the right to do that.
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Is the trend moving towards non circumcision? That'll be cool 'cause it'll give the kids something new they can modify when they become adults.
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We don't really do that so much over here.
Lucky for me, I guess. It seems a bit backward to me to chop bits off your kids just because. I think I'd harbour a vague grudge if my parents had decided they had the right to do that.
That's kind of how I felt about it.
When Pedro told his dad we'd decided not to circumcise Little P's, uh...little P, his dad basically said, "Yeah, if I had it to do over again I wouldn't have done it to you boys, either. Sorry I cut your dick, son."
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I'm cut, my boy isn't. The hospital didn't exactly advocate circumcision, but they sure kept asking us about it. I get the occasional query from a family member, most of whom give the "what if he notices you and he are different?" take. I have no idea what that's supposed to mean. Surely the fact that I'm (currently) immensely taller, fatter, moley, and hairy is of more notice.
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They were really good about it at the hospital. They asked once, when we checked in, wrote it on the chart, and left us alone.
Family was mostly supportive, but my sister-in-law said she wouldn't change his diaper because of the foreskin issue. Creeped her out. That lasted about a week. Now she babysits on Wednesday nights and takes him to the potty, gives him his bath, etc. I think it's just a matter of what you're used to seeing.
My friend has had both cut and uncut men as lovers, and she claims there's virtually no difference in appearance or sensation (for the woman, at least) once the soldier is standing at attention.
Makes sense, when you think about it.
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I got circumcised because god does not like foreskin. He fuckin' hates it. You just try to get into heaven with that shit.
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Exactly. Why do you think it's St. Peter watches the gates?
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I think if I had one, my OCD would lead me to get rid of it. If that doesn't make sense, just think of eyelids getting flipped inside out. That is how I imagine I would feel if I had a foreskin. I'm sure it's fine for normal people, though.
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Speaking dogmatically, I think for the Jews (observant ones among us should feel free to clarify) it was a sign of the Covenant between their tribe and the Deity. For Christians, Christ is the New Covenant and the rite of communion is the sign of that covenant, therefore circumcision is unnecessary. Also, it undoubtedly makes converting heathens easier if you don't threaten their willies with mutilation as a price to join the cool crew.
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Yeah, can imagine doing that shit as an adult?
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PPensis is fujel.. ful. fdull. full.
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Pedro's grandfather got circumcised as an adult. He elected the procedure because he got tired of keeping it clean.
I once read an article that likened this line of thought to having one's teeth pulled so you don't have to brush them.
Which Pedro's grandfather also did. Got a full set of dentures when he entered the Army at the age of 21.
Not a role model for personal hygiene, methinks.
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Ah but, in most cases, my teeth are not magnets for horrible cheesy jism-urea-paste.
If my teeth were as such, I would cheerfully have them chiseled out of my head on the morrow.
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What is going on with people's foreskins? What parties are you going to that cheese or CUNT jam or something is lodging under there and needs cleaning? I give it a rinse in the shower with the rest of me.
Actually touching the tip can be kind of painful but I imagine that circumcision leads to desensitization?
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What is going on with people's foreskins? What parties are you going to that cheese or CUNT jam or something is lodging under there and needs cleaning? I give it a rinse in the shower with the rest of me.
Actually touching the tip can be kind of painful but I imagine that circumcision leads to desensitization?
Are you drunk?
Clean in the shower. Is fine.
Do you mean we are circumcised and don't know how we clean?
We clean.
Clean is fine. No pain.
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What is going on with people's foreskins? What parties are you going to that cheese or CUNT jam or something is lodging under there and needs cleaning? I give it a rinse in the shower with the rest of me.
Actually touching the tip can be kind of painful but I imagine that circumcision leads to desensitization?
I'd imagine it's no more high-maintenance than the average vulva, and nobody's telling me I need to lop anything off of *that* bit...
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Oh man I totally forgot about that filter. So appropriate and yet not at all what I meant.
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Yeah but vulva are hot.
I'm pretty fine with my wang NOT looking like a partially-unraveled sausage with the untied casing flapping around, m'self.
I mean, granted, it probably hurt when I was a baby and all but I can't remember what I ate for lunch yesterday, let alone a minor medical procedure just after birth.
Probably a minor trauma in comparison to being recently born.
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Probably a minor trauma in comparison to being recently born.
Also true.
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I'd imagine it's no more high-maintenance than the average vulva, and nobody's telling me I need to lop anything off of *that* bit...
Not in this country anyway.
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I'm pretty fine with my wang NOT looking like a partially-unraveled sausage with the untied casing flapping around, m'self.
If you think you can make a cock not look ridiculous just by lopping bits off it I fear you are mistaken.
Probably a minor trauma in comparison to being recently born.
I don't think this really justifies arbitrarily removing parts of someone's body before they're even capable of consenting to it.
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Doctor Manhattan isn't. The world finally knows.
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Let me ask a follow-up question:
How many circumcised guys wish they weren't?
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me. i do.
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See, I figure...
And this is totally IMHO...
...if I guy is really bothered by being uncut, and decides as a teen or adult that he wants to be circumcised, he can do that. It's not pleasant, but it's his choice. If my son decides at 8 or 10 or 16 that he wants a circumcision, I'll support him and I'll pay for it.
But if a guy gets cut as an infant and decides in later life that he'd rather have been left intact...
...there's no getting off the circumcision train, at that point.
I'm totally fine with people who circumcise their infants, I should point out, even if they do not have religious reasons to do so. And having only ever had circumcised lovers, I do have an aesthetic preference for cut cock. But I figure, I don't care what my kid's wang looks like as long as it works right. And the American Medical Association has agreed that there's no functional benefit to the procedure. So why bother?
For the record, I feel similarly about infant baptism -- I think Christians should be baptized when they feel ready and can understand the significance of the ritual. My kids are unbaptized because I feel odd making a promise on their behalf. So the circumcision thing is part of a larger value set surrounding which choices we have a right to make on behalf of our children, and which ones are best postponed until they can choose for themselves.
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For the record, I feel similarly about infant baptism -- I think Christians should be baptized when they feel ready and can understand the significance of the ritual. My kids are unbaptized because I feel odd making a promise on their behalf. So the circumcision thing is part of a larger value set surrounding which choices we have a right to make on behalf of our children, and which ones are best postponed until they can choose for themselves.
Isn't this why there's Confirmation? Or is that just a catholic thing?
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Catholics confirm at 16; Lutherans confirm at 14. I don't know about other denominations.
Yes, that's the rationale behind it. But then you have this thing where you baptize people who can't agree to the promises you're supposed to make, so you add a different ritual to let them say later, "yeah, I meant that stuff my parents said when I was a baby." Doesn't that seem a little...contrived?
Plus, Jesus was baptized at 30. That's enough of an endorsement for me, but my (Catholic) in-laws are a little horrified about my heathen babies.
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Circumcision has been recommended to help fight AIDS in Africa. This was recent, but I don't know the current state of the debate.
And I'm OK with my cut cock even though sex is supposed to be better as an uncut male, but probably because I really can't imagine it otherwise. It's like when my friend was trying to convince me how awesome it was to be a woman with a pu$$y that provides multiple orgasms. I was all "no thanks, excuse me while I go beat off and take a nap."
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Circumcision has been recommended to help fight AIDS in Africa. This was recent, but I don't know the current state of the debate.
I have heard this too. My understanding (based on a cursory reading of the latest news in a brief google search) is that science hasn't figured out *why* there seems to be a correlation between lowered transmission rates and circumcision, nor whether there is any causation. I understand there's also a fear that touting circumcision as a preventative measure could actually decrease condom use rates, so they have to be very careful about how they promote it.
Still, you don't want to take a chance, and if I were an African mama I'd be more inclined to take that precaution.
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Speaking dogmatically, I think for the Jews (observant ones among us should feel free to clarify) it was a sign of the Covenant between their tribe and the Deity. For Christians, Christ is the New Covenant and the rite of communion is the sign of that covenant, therefore circumcision is unnecessary. Also, it undoubtedly makes converting heathens easier if you don't threaten their willies with mutilation as a price to join the cool crew.
Although Paul is circumcized, he is just so furious at Christians who think that they need to be circumcized. He says that he wishes the knife would slip. Then there was Peter's deal: http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=acts%2010:9-48&version=31;
My wife asked why circumcision was the sign of the convenant. The best that I could come up with was that the convenant was partially a promise about generations (stars in the sky, grains of sand on the shore, etc.) and thus the sign was chose for a generative organ.
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science hasn't figured out *why* there seems to be a correlation between lowered transmission rates and circumcision
I think that it probably has something to do with increased surface area (more places to have a open wound, etc.). On the other hand, there are sometimes Accidents when performing the procedure.
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I dunno, though.
I reckon that the reason for the religious basis for circumcision is the same as MOST of the prohibitions in the Scary Volcano God Monotheisms... health concerns. Scrambling around in the desert without a whole lot of clean water to spare, trim that shit back a little and you'll get less dick infections. Less dick infections means a stronger healthier tribe. Difficult to explain this to an ignorant wanderer? Tell him that Scary Volcano God demands it and, also, threaten him about it.
Pig and shellgiraffe were pretty high risk foods with the tech of the day. Homosexuality and contraception slow population growth and with less population growth comes less power growth for the priests and kings. Alcohol was an easy thing to blame social unrest on. Enter: Scary Volcano God and threats of torture. Call me cynical but I have to believe that, at best, any kind of symbolism was retconned on hundreds of years down the road.
Social controls, sometimes benign or originally benign-minded, to be communicated out to people living short brutish lives in a structure they can understand.
A series of strategies for maintaining and expanding the power of the existing elite, turned into stories that can be communicated to people whose education is exactly at the level required to toil all day to make the elite comfortable... later turned "meaningful" and "romantic" and "mystical" by people down the road of history with the time to creatively rationalize combined with a spark of the fear of their own morality, urging them to find a greater meaning in a series of antiquated social controls.
Anyway.
Just wanted to add that I don't buy the strategy of setting up circumcision and female genital mutilation as equivalent... there are structures that seem to match across the genders but don't serve the same purposes, y'know. Consider the nipples. Useless on a dude but because the programming is easier if both genders have them, I have nipples. Even if there's a surface structural equiv between the vulva and... the weird stuff flappin' around the end of a dude's wang... that doesn't mean that they serve the same purposes, functions or uses.
Female genital mutilation is a social control basically specifically to negate most if not all of the pleasure portion of a woman's sex drive as that helps maintain the order in a sexist male-dominated culture.
I dunno, I'm circumsized and if I was going to have an even higher sex drive WITH a tiny bit of flapping skin that traps gross crap close to my body, holy God, I'm glad for it... I would've had a stroke and gone vegetative in my teens had my sex drive been any higher and any more frustrated.
I don't buy the idea that just because the two structures seem to be superficially originated out of the same genetic design, these things are somehow the same.
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Later, when I have time, I will refute your argument with facts.
I have lots of them.
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Isn't the idea that those things are fundamentally connected because they involve outright, unjustified theft of another person's bodily autonomy, albeit to wildly differing degrees of severity? (Obviously this only applies where it is actually an idea and not the whinings of a blinkered prick.)
I mean, obviously they're not even close to being equivalent, but as this was a discussion about circumcision and not FGM it seems like the only reason to bring the latter up in that way is to imply that because forced circumcision isn't as bad it must be OK, which would be nonsense, or that by attacking forced circumcision people like me are equating the two, which is both nonsense and offensive.
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what he said.
come on, why do we think it is OK to cut off part of a guy's dick. why do we have to be OK with that.
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Ruta Bagas, you had me at blinkered prick.
To answer JL's question, I'm cut, but I don't feel any remorse. If it's had a negative effect on me it's one that I haven't noticed. I might like to be uncut, but only because it's less common. I don't like to be in the mainstream.
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To answer JL's question, I'm cut, but I don't feel any remorse. If it's had a negative effect on me it's one that I haven't noticed. I might like to be uncut, but only because it's less common. I don't like to be in the mainstream.
Rebel without a hood?
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Here it comes. Please wait while I bring it. With Science.
I reckon that the reason for the religious basis for circumcision is the same as MOST of the prohibitions in the Scary Volcano God Monotheisms...Social controls, sometimes benign or originally benign-minded, to be communicated out to people living short brutish lives in a structure they can understand.
Yes yes fine fine we've done this and we're done with it. Point is, some people continue to do some of these things (like circumcision) because they are a sign of faith. Arguing that the practice began because of health concerns that have since been addressed in other ways does not mitigate the fact that believers will continue to believe. Nobody's asking you to believe in Scary Volcano God Monotheism...but just because you don't believe in it doesn't make its practices invalid.
Just wanted to add that I don't buy the strategy of setting up circumcision and female genital mutilation as equivalent... there are structures that seem to match across the genders but don't serve the same purposes, y'know. ...Even if there's a surface structural equiv between the vulva and... the weird stuff flappin' around the end of a dude's wang... that doesn't mean that they serve the same purposes, functions or uses.
Funny this should come up. I happen to be writing an article on the clitoris at the moment, and as such have been reading a lot of anatomy lessons. Here's how it works:
The sex organs develop in the womb before the twelfth week of gestation. The clitoris and the p
Rarely, some women have a clitoral hood that is excessively large and obscures the clitoris, interfering with sexual pleasure. It is possible to trim the clitoral hood to allow exposure of the clitoral glans. This procedure is known as circumcision, and it is distinct from female genital mutilation, which generally involves removal of the clitoris -- more comparable to cutting off the tip of the glans just below the head.
In fact, as you correctly stated,
Female genital mutilation is a social control basically specifically to negate most if not all of the pleasure portion of a woman's sex drive as that helps maintain the order in a sexist male-dominated culture.
Which is why, even though there are direct biological equivalences between the clitoris and the pe
I dunno, I'm circumsized and if I was going to have an even higher sex drive WITH a tiny bit of flapping skin that traps gross crap close to my body, holy God, I'm glad for it... I would've had a stroke and gone vegetative in my teens had my sex drive been any higher and any more frustrated.
This is a hilarious observation.
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female genital mutilation, which generally involves removal of the clitoris -- more comparable to cutting off the tip of the glans just below the head.
yikes
Calling people barbarians and savages is something I'd totally be okay about bringing back, in the proper context, of course.
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Circumcised, doesn't really bug me. I figure if a dude doesn't love his junk, there's a bigger issue going on than whether or not there's a little bit of flippy skin up front or not.
Smets, I'm pretty sure we've had this conversation before but your chain of causation is pretty messed up regarding how religious law comes into being. You seem to think that the process was "Although I live in a pre-scientific Bronze Age community, I am intelligent and therefore believe in invisible microorganisms for which I have no evidence and in which there is no reason to believe rather than the much more intuitively-plausible magical explanations for which I have no evidence and belief in which has been drummed into me. This is because intelligent people are inherently atheistic regardless of circumstance or society. However, because everyone else is stupider than me and therefore not as intelligently atheistic as I am, I will make up a story that will make them believe."
The actual process, as far as anyone can tell, is more likely to have been "I am an intelligent person and therefore look for causes to go with effects. The cause appears to be uncircumcised penes and the effect appears to be people's junk turning bad in the desert. Since my society believes fundamentally in the existence of an omnipotent God and we have no reason to believe in any other medium for this cause to propagate to this effect, we can determine that God doesn't like people to wander in the desert with uncut man-business."
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God doesn't like people to wander in the desert with uncut man-business."
Mysterious ways, indeed.
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Maybe only tangentially related (http://www.slate.com/id/2212616/pagenum/all) to the original topic (circumcision is mentioned in an embedded video) but David Plotz over at Slate read the entire Bible (OT only it seems) and wrote a book about it. The article is a brief overview of what he learned and why he thinks everyone, and non-believers especially, should read it. Basically, the Bible has informed just about every corner of our culture, and non-believers will be even angrier at God after reading it. Apparently he blogged about the experience as well, which I missed. I've never read the Old Testament cover to cover, but have certainly read and studied most, if not all of it, and while it's true that much of it is interesting, by Jesus it's long and boring. God, like Bill Clinton, needed a better editor. What a windbag.
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I read his blog as he went along. It was really interesting because like him there were various phrases and whatnot that I didn't realize were biblical. Plus being catholic I was basically encouraged to only read certain parts anyway.
I remember when he first finished he had ruled out reading the NT being with him being jewish it wasn't really his top priority.
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I began the Bible as a hopeful, but indifferent, agnostic. I wished for a God, but I didn't really care. I leave the Bible as a hopeless and angry agnostic. I'm brokenhearted about God.
That pretty much exactly describes my experience reading the Bible.
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Not trying to proselytize too much here, but if all you read is the Old Testament, that is surely the view of God you will arrive at. It is Christ's teachings about God that evoke the image of the loving creator. The OT was written for the Jews, by the Jews, and describes their place in the world and their status as the chosen people of a terrible and wrathful all-powerful Deity. The NT was written as a vehicle for bringing the life and teaching of Christ to the world, revealing to the world that the One God seeks to be known to all of his creation, and that we should all want to be known to him and to one another.
/putting down the bullhorn, now...
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Not trying to proselytize too much here, but if all you read is the Old Testament, that is surely the view of God you will arrive at. It is Christ's teachings about God that evoke the image of the loving creator. The OT was written for the Jews, by the Jews, and describes their place in the world and their status as the chosen people of a terrible and wrathful all-powerful Deity...
The guy does mention that in the article as well. Apparently, the traditional interpretation is that it only seems cruel and vengeful to us because we as humans can't understand the mind of God. But the author of the book rejects that, even as a Jew.
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Not trying to proselytize too much here
I'm not either, but Plotz did respond to this specifically:
When I complain to religious friends about how much He dismays me, I usually get one of two responses. Christians say: Well, yes, but this is all setup for the New Testament. Reading only the Old Testament is like leaving halfway through the movie. I'm missing all the redemption. If I want to find the grace and forgiveness and wonder, I have to read and believe in the story of Jesus Christ, which explains and redeems all. But that doesn't work for me. I'm a Jew. I don't, and can't, believe that Christ died for my sins. And even if he did, I still don't think that would wash away God's crimes in the Old Testament.
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I think you're right, but I suppose that today when people are encouraged to have a personal relationship with God, they can't helped but be shocked when you read about things that seem to be condoned and even encouraged by God in the OT, chief among them rape and genocide.
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Yeah the idea of rejecting a version of God because he is a wrathful vengemeister would be pretty ridiculous to old time people. The wrath is why you did all the worshipping, so he didn't turn it on you. You couldn't have a personal relationship with that God anymore than you can have a personal relationship with a cyclone.
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Yeah the idea of rejecting a version of God because he is a wrathful vengemeister would be pretty ridiculous to old time people. The wrath is why you did all the worshipping, so he didn't turn it on you. You couldn't have a personal relationship with that God anymore than you can have a personal relationship with a cyclone.
I'll just note that the deal offered to the people of Israel isn't "worship me or I'll step on you" - if you don't worship God but don't actively piss Him off, He just ignores you. The benefit of actively worshipping God in this context is not so much keeping the vengemeister off your back as actually having Him in your corner, and when you get kicked out of your homeland the third or fourth time in a row the idea of having a wrathful vengemeister backing you is a pretty darn tempting one. That said, God doesn't get off on the vengeance; most famously He commanded the angels to silence after He smote the Egyptians, saying in effect "yeah, I had to do it, it's miraculous, but I'm not happy about it, remember I made those guys too."
It's very true that you don't have a personal relationship with the oldschool God in the modern sense. You have a contract. Hold up your end of the contract, God holds up His. Personal emotional comfort in old-school Jewish stories tends to come from merciful angels or the prophet Elijah.
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Education. There was a fair bit of assumption in my post.
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Counterargument:
YoHoWoH allowing everyone Job held precious to be brutally wiped out, even though Job was about as loyal as possible, to win a gentleman's bet with the Devil.
Oh, he gave him a NEW family at the end but... everybody horribly killed stayed cold in the earth.
So that, effectively, Satan could owe YoHoYoHoapirate'slifeforme a Coke.
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Is this a counterargument to anything in particular or just a chance to make fun of Hebrew for writing without vowels?
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Both?
(There is much evidence that God was a pirate. YHWH becoming basically YoHowHo is only the most obvious.)
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Counterargument:
YoHoWoH allowing everyone Job held precious to be brutally wiped out, even though Job was about as loyal as possible, to win a gentleman's bet with the Devil.
Oh, he gave him a NEW family at the end but... everybody horribly killed stayed cold in the earth.
So that, effectively, Satan could owe YoHoYoHoapirate'slifeforme a Coke.
Now you're just being rude.
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Mysterious ways, indeed.
I think it's a parable. God's all, "Get out! See the sights! Don't hide away! Don't pull your turtleneck up over your head!"
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You know there's no quicker way to undermine the respectability of your arguments than HURR HURR OTHER LANGUAGES SURE SOUND FUNNY, right? Well, I guess there is, but it involves replacing letters with numbers.
Anyway, the shai'tan in the Book of Job is not the later Christian devil. Shai'tan means "an accuser", an angel tasked by God with the job of keeping Him honest by questioning His judgment. There are a lot of possible interpretations of the Book of Job, but "God and the Devil made a bet" is an extremely shallow and inaccurate one.
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Okay, but nailing me on having a little fun with the name of God and interpreting the identity of the creature God was bargaining with through the modern religious zeitgeist doesn't change the jist of that story. If the God of the Old Testament wants to prove a point or has a wild hair up the ass, loyalty and contract and covenant don't mean a thing. The great mass of humanity means nothing in the face of that deity's whim and vanity, no matter what those people do, no matter how they fulfill their end of the bargain.
That's the point, not my playing around a little because we're on an internet message board for a comedy strip and so interjecting some playfulness is half the impetus of the place.
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Well, my point is that your "playing around" presupposes that everyone finds Hebrew's writing system as apparently hilarious as you do. At least, I don't recall you referring to Jesus Christ-CrossGonnaMakeYouJumpJump or whatnot.
Anyway, the contract isn't "cut a deal with me and things won't ever suck for you". Never was, anyone who says otherwise is lying. It rains on the righteous and the unrighteous alike. The deal is that after it all ends, the ones with a contract get picked back up for the afterparty.
Would the hurricanes and storms and financial disaster and boils have gone away if Job had said "God, go fuck yourself"? General experience suggests that they would not have. What Job's wife didn't understand is that Job's faith wasn't that things would never suck for him, and God wasn't reneging on the contract by making things suck - Job's faith is that he would be rewarded at the coming of the messiah.
If you don't like the odds on that deal, that's fine. Nobody's twisting your arm (at least, the Jews aren't). If you do like the odds on that deal, then go for it.
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If I haven't made jokes about the disciples not letting Jesus prepare chicken because of a fear of cross-contamination around here, it's not being I'm particular pro-Christianity and anti-something else, I'm pretty equally sceptical of all the cosmic Ponzi scheme that people call faith and... it just didn't come up.
My personal journal's full of equal-opportunity mockery of all systems where some douchebag asks you to put money in a plate (and offer your children up for sex and/or battle) because he has an in with some invisible jealous unprovable monster and if you pay enough, you can get an afterlife that no one's ever come back from to prove.
Yes, yes, yes, Job's faith isn't about the now, I get that. But that God would treat the dude like a tinkertoy and his family like a mentally-disturbed child with a magnifying glass treats ants... that's still just being a dick. Worse, that's being a dick EXTRA just to prove that you can be a dick and get away with it, which is even worse than being a dick just because you're ornery or unhinged.
This wasn't "oh things are gonna suck for you, Job, you're gonna stub your toe and get a cold" this was "your family that has nothing directly to do with you or my sidebet? Yeah, they're dead forever and that's fine because I'm winning a bet!"
In all the interpretations of the Middle Eastern monotheism, the big cheese is a jealous petty prideful moody schmuck, not just the Hebrew tradition.
I certainly didn't mean to focus on just mainstream Judiasm, though, and if that's how you perceived it, I apologize, that was not my intent.
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Is nobody gonna call me on the fact that I'm OK with circumcision on religious grounds but when the same argument is applied to female genital mutilation I'm totally opposed?
I mean...it's a popular position, but that doesn't mean it's not still a bit hypocritical.
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It's not hypocritical because it's apples and oranges. The male version doesn't interfere with function in the same way. Presumably you would not be OK with a religious argument for ritually cutting off a hand or a leg, right?
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Is nobody gonna call me on the fact that I'm OK with circumcision on religious grounds but when the same argument is applied to female genital mutilation I'm totally opposed?
I mean...it's a popular position, but that doesn't mean it's not still a bit hypocritical.
By calling you on it I'd basically be admitting that I was mutilated. I have enough body image issues as it is.
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I'll throw in that I'm un, for those keeping score.
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I just canned Smells for a post she made over a year ago.
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I read the newspaper every day, Ash, and everyday the human race gets closer to wiping itself out in an argument over whether the Easter Bunny shits green eggs striped red or red eggs striped green... nevermind the fact that no one can show an egg of either type, let alone the great lupine beast itself and... yeah, it drives me nuts. Makes me irrationally mad, makes me ramble-mad, yeah. Sometimes the lack of a mouth and the need to scream gets the better of me, yeah, and I apologize for the annoyance.
All I can tell you is that it's a far crazier and far more grating thing when its trapped in your own head. If there's any solace in that... solace away.
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If I haven't made jokes about the disciples not letting Jesus prepare chicken because of a fear of cross-contamination around here, it's not being I'm particular pro-Christianity and anti-something else, I'm pretty equally sceptical of all the cosmic Ponzi scheme that people call faith [...] all systems where some douchebag asks you to put money in a plate (and offer your children up for sex and/or battle) because he has an in with some invisible jealous unprovable monster and if you pay enough, you can get an afterlife that no one's ever come back from to prove [...]
I certainly didn't mean to focus on just mainstream Judiasm, though, and if that's how you perceived it, I apologize, that was not my intent.
Hell of an apology there, chief.
So I think you missed my point.
If you ever find a supreme being who will make things stop being bad for you, will make your back stop hurting and your junk stop sagging and your house stop rotting and the weather clear up and the locusts go home and the tornados stop spinning and the volcanos stop belching because of any goddamn thing you did for him.. awesome. Sign a deal with that dude if you like.
I mean, you seem to think you have a much better bargaining position in the humans-God transaction than you do. You can take the contract you're offered, or you can leave it; God has atoms to spin and galaxies to explode rather than dick around bargaining with you. The contract offers a resurrection if you follow the rules set forth. Now, the interpretation of how closely and literally you have to follow them is what rabbinic study is about, but if you don't like your odds of getting paid off, don't sign the fuck*ng dotted line. When Job's wife asks "Why don't you curse God? God is the one who visits all this on you?", the correct answer is "What would be the frigging point?"
Does this sound pessimistic? Yeah, it does a little. But it's also an acknowledgement that none of us down here are omniscient omnipotent beings with unknowable goals and that trying to understand the motivations of one is pretty pointless for us.
Did you ever read that issue of Booster Gold where Rex Hunter goes back in time and kills Lex Luthor as a baby, and then decades later the Sun-Eater destroys humanity because Lex Luthor wasn't around to clone Superboy, and he gets told "Yeah, this is why you don't fuck with the timestream, because history is bigger than you can possibly imagine?" That's what's going on here. God allows Lex Luthor because He wants Superboy.
Have I brought my discussion to a sufficiently lay level here? There's also my analogy a while ago about pet dogs that someone can probably find.
..oh, and also, it wasn't "to settle a bet", but I already addressed that and you don't give a shit, so whatever.
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Job isn't the best example. There are examples in the Books of Moses that not only make a better case for LFM's point (or what I take it to be), but maybe contradict:
I mean, you seem to think you have a much better bargaining position in the humans-God transaction than you do. You can take the contract you're offered, or you can leave it; God has atoms to spin and galaxies to explode rather than dick around bargaining with you.
Maybe, because I think your main point is that God isn't going to waste his time bargaining, because he's God. But it's also clear that God has a stake in human affairs beyond creation. I mean, he's constantly telling Moses and his clan what and what not to do. And not only that, he has them do some FUCKED UP shit. Like, on a few occasions, he directs Moses to have his people go destroy an entire nation, adults and children, oh, except for the young female virgins. And it's not like they kept them for housework. So, a contemporary reader, unversed in rabbinic thought, sure, is thinking "Really, God? Rape? Genocide? Sex slavery? This is kind of fucked up. Possibly bullshit." Maybe this is just taking it prima facie when it requires more careful consideration, but it can't really be just set aside with a "If God does it, it's not illegal" or a "God works in mysterious ways, unknown to feeble humans." And certainly not by arguing that he's too busy doing his God thing. I also think that these examples support what LFM (and Hitchens, Dawkins, et al.) are getting at. God seems to provide an awfully convenient excuse to do whatever the fuck you want (not that that excuse is always needed or used).
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Nations make war with other nations. Nations eliminate other nations, and, until quite recently, they take slaves in the process. Can't really blame religion for that one. At most you can say it lets people sleep better at night after committing atrocities, but so does "we did it to protect freedom" or "we did it for the children" or any other excuse you choose, theistic or atheistic.
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The flip-side, however, is that when certain people want to make war for more Earthly reasons (pre-emptive defense, profit, revenge, profit, madness, profit) there's nothing quite as effective in making people feel like it is okay to die and okay to suspend their respect for human life and kill than arguing that the Absent Divine wants it. Because religious argument is the ultimate easy out from any responsibility to temporal concerns "this isn't about this life, it's about the next life and so this life's rules don't apply... Thou Shalt Kill Heathens!" or "die in battle, get-into-heaven-free card!" or so on.
There are few ways to more effectively grease the wheels of war than telling people that God wants war and what God wants God gets, God help us all.
You are, of course, skirting all the times when it is claimed in various scriptures directly and specifically that divinity wants/demands/encourages war and war atrocities, as miles pointed out much more succinctly than my overworked mind could.
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Yeah, JL, I totally have that same feeling (re: circumcision), and think about it a lot.
Thoughts along the lines of "wait, why is it OK when we do it, but not them? Because... their gods seem really silly and obviously aren't real?"
I am lately going through a phase where I am struggling a lot with my feelings about religion. in terms of... kind of going back to arguably less-mature attitudes in re: "wait, people actually believe that an all-powerful being dictated this big book of rules and stories to us?"
I am totally into the idea that religion is this amazing force in human culture, which leads to both good and bad in society, brings people together, makes people happy, etc. I can accept this and respect this. There are a lot of things which have really moved me both in my life and in literature/media/whatever which have their roots in some really amazing ideas which come out of religion.
but sometimes I remember that it is all based on all-powerful creator of the universe. I have a hard time with that part.
And I really don't like the feeling that when I try to respect the beliefs of others, I am really just humoring them. Condescending.
And when I talk to some hardcore atheists i know, I come away feeling like this is what I am doing.
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Is nobody gonna call me on the fact that I'm OK with circumcision on religious grounds but when the same argument is applied to female genital mutilation I'm totally opposed?
I mean...it's a popular position, but that doesn't mean it's not still a bit hypocritical.
Hypocrisy is dependent on justification, surely? I'd call you on it if you outright said that your opposition was based on a belief in bodily autonomy or similar, but I'm assuming it's more pragmatic than that, in which case it's like Wombat said. I still think you're wrong, but not hypocritical.
Also:
It rains on the righteous and the unrighteous alike.
The rain it raineth on the just,
And on the unjust fella,
But mainly on the just because
The unjust hath the just's umbrella.
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JL: I'm not going to call you on it because there IS a funcitonal difference. My view is that you shouldn't apply an intervention unless you're treating a condition or trying to prevent one. Since there's basically no evidence that male circumcision leads to better health outcomes (as far as I've read anyway, haven't read that deeply on the subject) then I'd say it's a dumb thing to do. But it's fairly benign so who cares? Female circumcision isn't benign, at least so I am led to believe.
Inev: I'm in a similar place right now, going into med from science I'm surrounded by a totally different group of people and a lot of them spiritual. As far as I ran into people of faith in science they generally kept it to themselves or were of the 'yeah I go on sunday and am active in my church group that's about it' variety with a couple of exceptions, the general rule was atheist, agnostic or just plain uninterested. In the first month or so of med I've had someone proselytise to me about how buddhism explains how babies can die in pain and dictators live wonderful lives, had to reschedule a study thing due to a mid week prayer meeting and discussed whether the belief in a reality defying supernatural force affects how one would apply evidence based medicine.
I don't at all think that any of these people are going to be less able as doctors because of their beliefs (in fact the prayer meeting girl is going to be way better than me) but it is a change in that something that was previously a non issue for most of my time is now taken into account while talking to people day to day.
RutaBagas: You are justly cann'd.
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I keep thinking someone should tell Ben that it is a waste of his time and intellect to defend God against messageboard posts by an imaginary person on the internet. But if you skip over LFM's posts and just read Ben's, it's so interesting, I can't bring myself to do it. If Ben had taught Sunday School maybe I'd still be going even if I didn't believe a word of it.
Nothing personal Mets. It's just that you are making points that other people have made a million times and you're not making them in a new or interesting way. But you are serving a useful function.
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Yeah, but the points are valid and not applied everywhere so should be repeated right? It seems LFMs main point is that religion is going to kill us all (something pretty easy to see, at least the possibility), so shouldn't he be arguing this every chance he gets? though yeah, probably a better way then converting the 20-30 of us that read this board.
Also, don't think ben san would be teaching sunday school.
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This thread is why Smells has left us.
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It seems LFMs main point is that religion is going to kill us all (something pretty easy to see, at least the possibility), so shouldn't he be arguing this every chance he gets?
Religion isn't what's going to kill us all. Stupid people are what's going to kill us all. There are a lot of stupid religious people and a lot of stupid atheists.
edit: Wait, this was a circumcision thread, wasn't it. Anyhow, I've seen a bunch of case studies of dudes who don't like their junk who are circumcised, and dudes who don't like their junk who aren't circumcised, and the guys who say "I would like my junk if only it was uncircumcised" are, for the most part, exactly the same as the uncut dudes who say "I would like my junk if I had junk-embiggenment surgery". (This is the technical term for the process.) Junk-embiggenment resolves a dude's personal issues with his body image and feelings of inadequacy in a fairly small percentage of cases, so I'd have to suspect that using time travel to perform a chrono-retro-decircumcision (also the technical term) would have similarly low rates of success in raising manjunk-esteem, or in other words that the original circumcision is rarely the root cause of low manjunk-esteem to begin with. (Manjunk-esteem is also a highly technical term. And ha ha, "root cause".)
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Yeah, stupid people are more easily controlled by the church and more dangerous when controlled by the church and a stupid atheist is not going to have a whole room of stupid people to be with on sat/sun/wed whenever.
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OK, we all know I have led a sheltered life but... seriously? there is such a thing as junk-embiggenment surgery? Should I ask where they get the parts?
Also, I think it is correct that stupid people are what's most dangerous. That's depressing because if religion were the whole problem it probably would be easier to cure than stupidity.
There is one way that a stupid atheist is less dangerous though, and that is that he could never be elected president.
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There is one way that a stupid atheist is less dangerous though, and that is that he could never be elected president.
Aww jeez, you have to rub it in?
I'll just go sit at the back of the bus where I belong.
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Yeah, stupid people are more easily controlled by the church and more dangerous when controlled by the church and a stupid atheist is not going to have a whole room of stupid people to be with on sat/sun/wed whenever.
Nnno, stupid people generally find ways to congregate in stupidity. There are more and more atheistic or agnostic gatherings of dumbfucks as religious faith becomes less and less the norm. Historically most dumbfucks have believed in supernatural forces, but that's because historically damn near everyone has believed in supernatural forces.
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I can buy that.
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Aww jeez, you have to rub it in?
I'll just go sit at the back of the bus where I belong.
If I understand correctly you have a more fundamental handicap to your presidential candidacy, which is that you were not born in the US. So don't bother thinking of converting or anything.
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If I promise to adhere strictly to the doctrine of separation of church and state, can I be the candidate of choice for non-religious types in '16? Or do my personal religious beliefs disqualify me by exposing my inherent mental inferiority?
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If I promise to adhere strictly to the doctrine of separation of church and state, can I be the candidate of choice for non-religious types in '16? Or do my personal religious beliefs disqualify me by exposing my inherent mental inferiority?
Point taken. Would be a lot funnier if presidents didn't have to act Christian for the last x years. Certainly since Reagan. Probably longer.
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I'm pretty sure that the last guy who didn't really act overtly christian in office was probably Nixon? Aside from the Watergate thing, there are a lot of things that he did that people now respect.
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Yeah, I knew Nixon, but I am guessing he is an aberration and not the end of an era.
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Aww jeez, you have to rub it in?
I'll just go sit at the back of the bus where I belong.
Yeah, I'll be over here cackling and rubbing my hands together with all the Jewish US presidents. OH WAIT
At least we don't get accused of barbaric and cruel practices regarding children anymore. OH WAIT
Well, at least our most minor goddamn holiday gets public recognition because it happens to coincide with one of the biggest Christian holidays, and even though people call it Jewish Christmas at least this most minor of fuck*ng public recognition doesn't get called a conspiracy to crush Christianity. OH WAIT
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Don't act like your people don't control the government via Hollywood!
(On that note, my dad was SUPER pissed at the liberal digs against G.W. Bush in The Dark Knight.)
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meanwhile batman exercises rendition and torture like some sort of Dubya Knight (Bushman? ...no)
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Yeah, stupid people are more easily controlled by the church and more dangerous when controlled by the church and a stupid atheist is not going to have a whole room of stupid people to be with on sat/sun/wed whenever.
Well, Neo-nazis (despite some pseudo-Christian veneer), communists, gangbangers, and Family Guy aficionados certainly get together and foment their respective brands of madness.
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Communists and "gang bangers" aren't stupider then heads of corporate boards. Just come from different place is all. They (at least the "gang bangers") probably run their show more profitably and honestly, at least with themselves.
And
Family Guy aficionados
Ha.
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If I understand correctly you have a more fundamental handicap to your presidential candidacy, which is that you were not born in the US. So don't bother thinking of converting or anything.
Nah, once they change the laws so that Arnold can run in 2016 I'll be golden.
If I promise to adhere strictly to the doctrine of separation of church and state, can I be the candidate of choice for non-religious types in '16? Or do my personal religious beliefs disqualify me by exposing my inherent mental inferiority?
No more than an atheist candidate would be torn down for moral inferiority.
OH WAIT
Hey, the bus of the non-lord is long and has many seats. All at the back though. It's cool, we can sing crude school yard songs.
Family Guy aficionados
Ding!
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Do you really blame the world's problems on stupid people? Hmm?
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Might as well. Its not like they can muster a good counter argument.
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I blame all of the world's problems on velociraptors.
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Do you really blame the world's problems on stupid people? Hmm?
Yes. You see, I've been around the world and found that only stupid people are breeding; the cretins cloning and feeding, and I don't even own a TV.
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Yes. You see, I've been around the world and found that only stupid people are breeding; the cretins cloning and feeding, and I don't even own a TV.
It sounds like you're not sick, but you're not well.
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I think this belongs here.
http://www.drinkingskeptically.org/ (http://www.drinkingskeptically.org/)
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I've never loved the idea of hanging out with people whose only association is that they identify as 'skeptics'. I imagine there'd be a lot of holier than thou condescension as they discuss how misguided crystal healers or whatever are. Don't get me wrong, cranks annoy me, but I've got more interesting things to do than talk about it. I hope I 'm totally wrong and it's really just a bunch of people hanging out and having a slightly higher brow of discussion than most pubs.
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The world would be a lot less interesting without the cranks. And I really don't mind the harmless ones, usually they're pretty awesome people who just have some funny ideas.
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Oh sure, they're fun to have around. But then someone who was selling you a root extract for stress turns around and tells you that AIDs is a made up disease and you shouldn't take AZT when you're pregnant. It's a thing where people gain a certain level of trust and are assumed to have a level of understanding and training which they do not possess and then things can go badly wrong.
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I thought AIDs was Gods punishment for smoking poles.
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No, it's God's punishment for living in africa. I think Rent was the pole smoking thing.
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man that can't be right i don't even smoke pole and i gotta pay rent
aids is a cia conspiracy because crack wasn't workin fast enough
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Yeah, now that I think about it I know a guy who smokes pole so he doesn't gotta pay rent...
I might have to go check Jerry Falwell's website or something.