No, you're right, all the Jews and Muslims walk around in pain all the time. You can see how it's so severely affected Umma's expansion.

Maybe that's why Israel and Palestine is such an issue. Deferred/transferred pain... if they were all cavaliers, life would be much more chilled...

Baby, you are not qualified to pass a judgement on my qualification!

Stop being such asses. Pain in older age and how it looks were never the issue of argument.

And if you as an economist consider such hearsay stats worthy of value, then it explains a lot.

About as reliable as an analogy of chopping off the ear lobe... heh?

Actually , they're just battling it out for title of prettiest dick.

lol, but you'd expect that because they don't have anything to compare too, I'm personally in two minds about ritual scarification, many tribes find it very important, I do not have any meaningful tribal scars tattoos or bodily adaption, to me there is no meaning. But if i was a member of a South American/African tribe, I would be happy to take part in all of their customs. Many tribal ritual modifications lead to deformity and pain, ritual circumcision is one of the least detrimental, but tribal none the less.

Dude, you're not helping.

Analogy and stats are different things. Very different. One is to enable people to see their logic. Other is quantifiable numbers.

Well it'd be less of a cultural shift to flood the Jordan with Ketamine...I think we're onto something!

Didn't realise you were in my bathroom. Quebec girls usually don't venture West.

Sorry, if I start responding to ad hominem logical fallacies I really wouldn't be much of an economist.

but to respond to it anyway, it's not hearsay if we're flooded with overwhelming empirical evidence every day....most of the USA, Jews, Muslims have been circumcised and I'm afraid if there were pervasive problems, their reportage would be similarly pervasive, unless you're suggesting a conspiracy?

Gosh, that was a pity way to try to take it back, isn't it!

Absolutely, but I'm talking about reliability or usefulness of either.

A bad stat is about as reliable or useful as a bad analogy.

Naa-na-na-naa!

I think this is less to do with frequency and reportage than what's actually considered a problem.

As has been been said upthread, you don't miss something you've never had (or haven't had since a very young age). That's not to say you're not missing something possibly pleasurable though and that's certainly not to provide a justification for any kind of snippage.

Too true GG. And yeah, maybe circumcision is a bad thing (of course other evidence suggests that maybe its a good thing, but lets assume they're wrong). But if it is a bad thing, then it's so slight as to not make as much of a difference as the destruction of communities and cascading alienation that a ban would bring.

Economisto: For some reason I read your signature as "At odds with circumcision? The day's on fire! "

(Not a dig at you, just a joke)

Funnily enough I was just reading about Marx's theory of alienation as you were writing that.

Male circumcision is probably about as valid as not eating pork as a form of cultural identification and I wouldn't stop that. People are missing out on bacon sandwiches though . . .

The bad part of the circumcision debate is that people resort to spurious medical justifications when they should just be happy with admitting it as a part of culture and/or religion. And that may look anachronistic to others.

I don't get it.


Sure, but I think the medical evidence points precisely nowhere (or points slightly, both ways). So yeah, exactly as anachronistic and pointless as praying or whatever and exactly as beneficial or harmful.

Or that people should admit in partaking in genital mutilation without the consent of the affected party for purely ritualistic reasons.

Also, engaging in reductio ad absurdum. Who said anything about a ban??

vvvvvv

Just me, why?