Yes, because I didn't pin down a specific one. Maybe in ten years it may be say that it is harmful, no-one knows at this point. Tradition however is the very worst possible thing to base anything on. Should we in Britian drown witches or pay tithes because of tradition? (Tites is religious in case you didn't know)

Now you're just attempting to insult my intelligence, which is foolish. Of course I know what tithes are. And "drowning witches" isn't really a tradition. Moreover, tradition is a great thing to base our decisions on. That's what culture is. Is it ok for people to run around naked in front of an elementary school? No. Why? Because it is a violation of our cultural norms and our collective sense of propriety, which comes from our shared tradition.

I am not trying to insult your intelligence - You learn American History at school, and I was not certain they existed in Anerican history. And comparing not being circumcised to not wearing clothes is absolutely absurd, do I'll assume you didn't actually mean that. I think the biggest problem with circumcision which you persistently ignore is te fact that it is permanent.

Many things in life affect us in a permanent way and which are beyond our control. Yes, it's permanent. What difference does it make? It will become a part of the child's life story, like anything else.
Let's play the hypothetical game, since that's where this'll probably go anyways. Let's say Johnny is born an his parents have him circumcised because they are very religious people. Johnny grows up and hates his parents and their religion. Is it likely that, never having had a foreskin, Johnny will now hate his parents even more for having him circumcised? Moreover, is there any reason to believe that Johnny would even think about it or care? How does being circumcised negatively affect Johnny's life?

Everything you are offering just doesn't justify it for me. It's too late to explain at the moment to explain why since it is 1:39 AM for me. I'll continue this argument tomorrow.

up until the post I'm quoting, I fully agree with sniper.
often.? how many converts do you know in real life?

and uh, about the body part - that is not a body part, that is a completely useless piece of skin which significantly reduce hygiene in the area. really, why would you keep it?
you mentioned appendix earlier - people don't do thatt because it is an actual surgery, you know. much more risky; also, the appendix does not hurt you in any way.
abotu removing nipples - why not

sniper on his next post mentioned too that he would have no probs in removing nipples, lol. did you know guys, that nipples are *so* useless, that you can actually cut them with a knife in your kitchen, and not suffer anything but pain? this was used as a Yakuza punishment, it is said.suppose you were born with a huge tumor on your head that is completely harmless. would you want your parents to have it removed when you're an infant, or would you wait till you were of age to actually decide to remove it? is that a cultural enough reason for you? when you are born you are given so many injections etc etc that are needless. so what if you get that disease? treat it later. it is called PREVENTIVE measures, and the infant is not agreeing to this.

once again, remove the 'untrained' from your sentence. people who do this are doctors and very well trained~
yes, you can take my nipples too, but not the appendix please, that's dangerous.

also, legally, you totally belong to your parents till adulthood, lol. can you also say that there should be a law preventing people from giving their children haircuts till they are like 4 or 5? cuz it's the same.

eh, let's sum up this with some good nice questions.

Suppose a kid is born with a non-dangerous tumor on his head. now he looks quite like a mushroom. can the parents remove this? it's permanent, it has NO medical benefits at all. overall, it is perfectly the same as circumcision, with 2 differences:
1. it has no medical benefits, which is worse;
2. the reason for doing this - is completely esthetical.

~~~

Since supposedly parents are not too do permanent changes to the kid's body for religious/cultural reasons, does that mean they cannot cut his hair till he is able to talk, understand, and actually say that he wants or doesn't want that?
same goes with nails clippiing?
how bout giving the child meat to eat before he can choose if he's vegetarian?

This is exactly true.  

Indeed, there is a very good reason why people started doing it without religious reasons:



No clear benefits have been found for males in First World countries, while about 1% of circumcisions leads to complications. All it does in introduce needless pain and trauma for the children. Furthermore, it harms the freedom of religion. The children have no choice in the circumcision, yet are forced to bear the result for their entire life. They are forced by their parents to bear a mark of Judaism, even ithey later decide to convert to a different religion or Atheism.
The comparison with injections have been brought up. There is such a significant difference here that I am honestly baffled it was even brought up. Injections have no permanent visible effects. The only long term effect of injections is immunity to a disease. You wouldn't even know exactly which injections you have had unless you looked at your medical history. Yet with circumcision, you are forced to live with a mutilated body part for life.



If the tumor was left the kid would become a social outcast. He would be so visibly different from the other kids that it is certain he will have a miserable childhood. Unlike with circumcision, it is very clear in this case that the negatives far outweigh the benefits.

Even if you cut them, hair and nails grow back. The effects of cutting them are less permanent. And again, there will probably be social consequences in the kids early life if you don't cut the hair and nails.
Same with vegetarianism. A person can decide to stop eating meat. However, a person can't decide to stop being circumcised. A circumcision is a permanent mutilation and therefor is very, very different from every other example mentioned in this topic (with the exception of the nipples and such).

And now, I would like to ask one final question to the pro-circumcision camp. If foreskins are so harmful to health and removing them has absolutely no benefits at all, then why do we even have them? If they really are as useless or even harmful as some of you claim, then why did we evolve to have one?

The same reason we have tonsils and appendixes. There are a lot of Body parts that are useless, the foreskin is one of them. I may be biased, as I am Jewish, but my oPinion still stands.

This exactly @jell.
I believe this is called a vestigial evolution, and humans are not the only animals that have them. I don't know for sure, but I'd even think that plants and other types of organisms have the same thing. Why do chickens have wings when they can't fly? *So that we can eat them* lolz

The appendix and chicken wings are a remainder of earlier functional organs. Early humans needed the appendix to properly digest plants and chickens could at some point fly. Every body part you have is or at some point was funtional. Otherwise we would never have evolved to have them.

What about tonsils? Also, if you can get me proof that the foreskin was used for something important, I'll admit that you're right.

The palatine tonsils and the nasopharyngeal tonsil are lymphoepithelial tissues located near the oropharynx and nasopharynx. These immunocompetent tissues are the immune system's first line of defense against ingested or inhaled foreign pathogens. However, the fundamental immunological roles of tonsils have yet to be understood.[1][2]

The tonsils are used in your body's immune system.

One purpose of the foreskin is protection of the more important parts. If you remove the foreskin, the head becomes much more susceptible to filth and diseases. This might lead to infections and other nasty stuff.

If the foreskin were completely useless, we would never have evolved to have them. That means that either somewhere in the history of mankind, a human must have spontaneously evolved an entire foreskin out of nowhere and every other male competition must have randomly died out without producing offspring for no reason at all, or the various stages of the foreskin must have evolved spontaneously and during each and every single one of these stages all male competition must have died out without producing offspring for no reason at all.

If tonsils are your body's first pine of defense against inhaled pathogens, then why did I get mine removed, if they are "useful"?

Mostly because of tradition. Never have tonsillectomies been shown to be more effective than medical therapies. As such, the number of tonsillectomies has plummeted the last few decades.
Also note that useful doesn't mean necessary for life. You can survive without an arm, but having one is definitely useful. As a result of the tonsillectomy you may have become somewhat more susceptible to disease, but with modern medicine that isn't such a major problem.

I will just say this here Jorster - Actually have an opinion of your own. That first post was useless and contributed nothing to the discussion. This appears to be prevelant in a lot of opinion related posts. I'm not going to post here anymore since apparrently my opinion is 'juvenile' and as a result we won't get anywhere fom this.

I said attitude, not opinion. And this makes me more certain of that statement.

@jell
I'm not sure what your point is. Maybe it was useful at one time. That doesn't mean it's useful now, just like how people born with vestigial tails clearly don't really need the tail. Here, I mean need as in "for any practical purpose."

srry for double post, but I think this conversation is more interesting:

I'm not sure the O'neill business is entirely fair, given he suggested:
The study estimated that closing the budget gap would require the equivalent of an immediate and permanent 66 percent across-the-board income tax increase.
Come on. Who in their right mind would do that? I ruled this out as an option because it's clearly suicide, both politically and for the country. I can't find any other suggestions of his, but they might just be hiding in the depths of wikipedia.

And I agree that they are related, btw. They just aren't the same thing. Having a high deficit is bad because it causes investors to lose faith in the government, but having high taxes is bad because it causes companies to go to different countries. To some extent, you have to pick your poison and hope for the best. It's not clear if raising taxes would solve the deficit problem because of the law of diminishing returns. It'd help a lot at first, but when the economy abruptly crashes, not so much. On the other hand, lowering taxes might have a hope because it'll hurt in the short term (increase deficit) but might cause the economy to boom, thereby bringing in more taxes in the long run.
The reason that the lower tax rates havn't had the fully desired effect is because of the new healthcare system. It increased taxes, thereby offsetting any effect that lowering taxes might have had, since the markets have short memories and will take the most recent state of affairs the most seriously. Whether or not this side effect is significant enough to weigh in on the validity of the healthcare system is a different issue altogether.
And so everything in politics is pretty much the same thing.
EDIT:
Also, I wanted to add a bit about your first link. The invasion of Iraq might have been as cheap as Bush estimated, but several things happened that no one anticipated. We weren't supposed to occupy Iraq, not originally. Basically, the plan was to go in, get the nukes, take out Sadam, and get out. We were going to leave the military and police force in charge of the country. Prior to the invasion, we dropped leaflets all over the country telling the military to put their tanks/ other vehicles in a certain orientation so that we wouldn't kill them. Most of the military complied, so we didn't kill them. However, after we got in, I forget who it was (Cheney of Rumsfeld), someone in our civilian chain of command had our troops disarm and disband the Iraq military and police force. Begin ****strom. Clearly, we can't leave the civilians of Iraq without a way of rebuilding or defending themselves, which is what their army was supposed to do. So what was supposed to be a few months turned into ten years.

that fact is wrong and in fact is the opposite; people with foreskin are much more prone for diseases and filth than others without it. I haven't read anything past this, no time.

Source

*Sigh* she knowingly knelt in the way of the dozer? how stupid can a person be? -_-

If there's no way to get your hands on the investigation, there really is nothing to be said. If the investigation of the court found that he did not see her, and the activists say contrary, you can never know who is correct without seeing the investigation..

a week ago this happened again, except this time it was a soldier and he was run over by a tank and not a D9. He survived somehow to be evacuated to a hospital, and since then he's there, nobody knows if he will survive :\

But Shos, the bulldozer ran her over twice.

Hm.

forward and backward. obviously? it was a dozer, it hit a building you know, it doesn't just walk through it~ The tank case, for example, ran over him once, because he was just driving forward.

..?
I'll rephrase: if the investigation is not public and you do not know the evidence, you cannot say anything about the investigation's result.