> we'd expect poorer life outcomes for the victims of it. Instead we see the opposite.
People keep saying this, but fail to link to sources substantiating their non-obvious claims. Link to a study please?
People keep saying this, but fail to link to sources substantiating their non-obvious claims. Link to a study please?
Ask 1000 men born to Orthodox Jewish parents whether they regret being circumcized.
And ask 1000 Orthodox Jewish men who were not circumcized whether they wish they had been.
In the West, we have values of individualism. So being part of a millennia old people or a tradition or serving God are not seen as primary values by many atheists. I bet the people downvoting and commenting here negatively about circumcision are not of an Abrahamic faith - Judaism Christianity or Islam.
Fine but the individualism has also led to more depression, tiny families, often broken homes (also permanent effects on the child). So when you talk about tradeoffs tou have to consider the complex set of interconnected benefits. And different people perceive different benefits depending on their cultural upbringing. I can tell you that the vast majority of Orthodox Jewish men are glad they were circumcized at 8 days old and not had to choose it later.
Rights generally begin as a very individual thing... the right to vote, the right to free speech, etc. So the right not to have one's body mutilated without consent is pretty individual the way I look at it. It's hard (for me) to separate granting the right to mutilate a body that is not yours from the notion of the person being mutilated somehow being "chattle" of the person doing the mutilation.
But I'm not arguing that the same set of laws should apply to all groups and all cultures, but for an area where rights and protections are very minimal (such as infants) there is a lot of room for improvement.
My guess is that if circumcision were banned religious communities would not be harmed because the symbolism of circumcision would adapt to be more figurative in the same way that many other traditions are now done in a "lite" way that lacks strict historical accuracy but still holds great ceremonial significance.
But don't take my remarks as disrespectful of religion or of Judaism. I think that trying to figure out how to accomplish (broadly speaking) moral progress is very difficult, and I'd much rather improve the rights of prisoners than see circumcision ended, even though in principle I hold the view that circumcision should only occur when the person whose penis is being circumcised can consent. In the US there are much lower hanging fruit for humanitarian improvement. Not sure about Norway.
Is your standard for acceptable mutilation really "it isn't noticeably harmful"?
What if my religion calls for the removal of a single testicle instead of the foreskin - is that ok? Afterall, men with one testicle can still father children and lead productive lives.
According to the Torah you should be stoned to death for merely breaking the Sabbath, and a murder victim's family members should be permitted to kill the murderer - and yet Judaism has modernised, recognising these acts as barbaric. Maybe Judaism needs to modernise a bit more, and allow children to grow up and make their own choices regarding the mutilation of their bodies.
Should people with religious beliefs really be able to mutilate their children in the name of their beliefs, however 'benign' that mutiliation is seen to be?
I don't see the problem with allowing children to grow into adulthood, decide for themselves what, if any, religion they want to follow - and make their own choice about how, if at all, to mutilate their bodies?
I understand that there are hundreds of years of tradition involved, but you could say the same about plenty of practices that are frowned upon or outlawed, so I don't think that argument stands up on its own.
This is not meaningful unless you control for social circumstances.
Also, for now, all i'm asking you to do is only state things you can substantiate, and state them exactly and clearly.
This thing can operate in various fashions. Unmodified it works like this, modified it works in another way. Leave it as is and there's the option for both at any point. Make the decision now and one of the options is forever gone.