workinonit said:
The disciples trembled with fear at these words of Jesus, for with vehemence of spirit he spoke. Then said Jesus: Leave fear to him that hath not circumcised his foreskin, for he is deprived of paradise.
As an agnostic, I do not pretend to be a bible scholar, but it seems like Jesus' message regarding the keeping of Jewish law kind of changes over time, especially after the resurrection. And when Paul took Christianity to the Gentiles, circumcision was abandoned along with Jewish dietary laws and other traditions. I don't think that any Christian has a leg to stand on when they claim to circumcise for "religious reasons." I'd be willing to bet that there has never been a circumcised pope, for example.
The reasons I cited for circumcision were for why the practice gained popularity in the mid-late 1800s. The reasons why it persists today are quite different. Mostly it's just force of habit -- that's what Americans expect a penis to look like. "I want Sonny to look just like his daddy." I see the other reasons cited as rationalizations. Never mind that the whole rest of the world (except for Israel and the Muslims) gets along just fine without cutting up little boys.
I'd like someone to show me some statistics that indicate that in the USA, where most cocks are cut, we have fewer instances per capita of yeast infections, STDs, penile cancer, or any of the other maladies that circumcision supposedly prevents, compared to a country like England where the men are mostly uncut. I don't think you can.
BTW, most "penile cancer" is really skin cancer that happens to be on the skin of the penis. If you remove half of the skin from the penis, then ipso facto you've halved the odds of getting skin cancer there!

Twice as many men get BREAST CANCER as those who get "penile cancer," so low are the odds.
--dave, with apologies to Supergirl for further continuing the hijacking of her thread...
