Thoughts On Circumcision

Creation is perfect, since God is perfect, all-knowing and omnicompetent. And yet human children must be surgically augmented to please him. Did he make a mistake when he “designed” them? Obviously, Godmust be pleased at seeing the scalpel taken to the prepuce of an infant. Though what kind of mind rejoices at such an undertaking? Yet it must be some sort of a priority for God. Perhaps he relaxes safe in the knowledge that the earthly interpreters of his word are serving him well in the struggle against the foreskin and clitoris!

The moronic and dangerous conviction that religious practice, merely because it is religious, should be left outside of the field of scrutiny and criticism implies that razor-wielding child-molesters, although God-fearing ones – ought to proceed unimpeded. If you mutilate the child, that’s fine. If you don’t, that’s fine. What refined ethics!

Genital mutilation is harmful physiologically and psychologically, never mind whatever dogmatic “revelation” nonsense-merchants peddle in temples and mosques (not to mention the innumerable and utterly unsafe instances of genital mutilation that occur in Africa every day). Spare a thought for the child, bleeding, in pain, stripped of dignity and robbed of the chance later in life to fulfil her natural and human urge to enjoy her own body. All this at great risk of infection and long-lived (if not permanent) psychological trauma. It’s ok though, because as long as she bows to the God in whose name this crime is carved into her life, perhaps with so crude an instrument as a sharp stone, she will be saved.

http://www.womenatrisk.org.uk/vw3.html (US)

http://www.forwarduk.org.uk/key-issues/fgm/human-rights (UK)

I’ve little doubt the mutilation of sexual organs by the pious, without, incidentally, the consent of their victims, is fuelled by the perpetrators own repression. Religion, Christianity, Judaism and Islam, have all a grotesque record of suppressing, repressing and demonising sexual practice. That revered Jewish sage Maimonides stated explicitly what it was all about:

“With regard to circumcision, one of the reasons for it is, in my opinion, the wish to bring about a decrease in sexual intercourse and a weakening of the organ in question, so that this activity be diminished and the organ be in as quiet state as possible. It has been through that circumcision perfects what is defective congenitally… In fact this commandment has not been prescribed with a view to perfecting what is defective congenitally, but to perfecting what is defective morally. The bodily pain caused to that member is teh real purpose of circumcision… The fact that circumcision weakens the faculty of sexual excitement and sometimes perhaps diminishes the pleasure is indubitable. For if at birth this member has been made to bleed and had its covering taken away from it, it must indubitably be weakened.”

Thus we see the baby is born in a state of moral arrears that can only be paid for with mutilation. Mutilation to subtract the natural mating instinct for later on in adulthood. For mating, of course, as all of nature testifies, is abhorrent and must be avoided, and, if it is unavoidable, it must not be enjoyed! That’s not why God made the nether regions so easy to arouse! No! It is so as to test the skill of the pious quack; every orgasm surely betrays his incompetence in extirpating that unholy sexual impulse!

The fact of it is this: we are mammals. Mammals reproduce sexually. By nature. And in our case it can be a fulfilling and healthy activity. If you don’t agree with this part of God’s immaculate work, take it up with him, not with children’s genitalia.

It is circumcision, not sex that ought to be taboo.

What to show someone who believes in “Intelligent” Design.

So, the redundancy of the appendix, the fact that men get swollen prostates in old age, the existence of bacteria, viruses (including the worst and deadly kinds), earthquakes, volcanoes and the biological pathology of cancer don’t persuade the “Intelligent” Design crowd that the world was not created by anyone who knew what the hell they were doing. And even less so by anyone with humankind’s best interest at heart. So what do you tell these people?

Well, there are two alternatives. One is that the person you’re dealing with, this ID-er, is interested in evidence but temporarily misguided – perhaps the unwitting dupe of creationist propaganda. For such a one there is hope since appeals to his intelligence are not altogether ruled out. People of religious faith, including ID, who are recalcitrant to such inconveniences as reality and fact, are, I fear, most likely to be stuck permanently in the no-hope zone. The following video is unlikely to move them. In either case, I challenge any “Intelligent” Design advocate to refute this:

The evidence presented above was published in Nature in 2004. The man speaking is Professor Kenneth Miller – a determined opponent of “Intelligent” Design idiocy and the author of the highly recommended book Finding Darwin’s God. The trial he was talking about was Kitzmiller vs The Dover Area School District (2005). The lecture in its entirety is available here.