Why religious circumcision?

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Not sure, but it reminds me of the very first episode of Family Guy where Meg got the lip injections

You forgot the missing socks the dryer takes.Those are the fabric for the second universe.

Exactly. Canibalism is such an egregious crime that stopping it over rides the state's respect for freedom of religion- and justifies the state making an exception for the purpose of curtailing freedom of religion. LIMITING "freedom of religion". Not expanding freedom of religion.

Same with body deforming rituals like circumcision. Imposing an age limit on when children can be circumcised (even if its to the age of consent) is a constraint upon freedom of religion. Not an expansion of freedom of religion. May well be the right thing for the govt to do- intrude - and enforce that rule against the will of the religious community in question. But even if its right it is what it is... a contraction of, and not an expansion of, "freedom of religion".

That too. I dont loose socks like most folks. But my handkerchiefs vanish.

But thats what the space continuum is made of:the vanished socks and handkerchiefs from the previous cosmos.

Back when Meg was Lacey Chabert.

It has my best Godzilla t-shirt.
https://www.teepublic.com/t-shirt/36494 ... f-kanagawa
It’s went missing.I have looked everywhere. I haven’t been anywhere to lose it and no one has been here to steal it.

I think if the child isn't allowed to opt out, then it's force of some kind. There's also the question of whether or not the church is brainwashing the kids. It's a rare church service that doesn't talk as if their deity existed for sure. Repeat that to a young enough child and you'll very likely end up with a believer. Ideally I'd like it if parents didn't talk about their religion to their kids, and if they must, to at lease precede their assertions by "I think....." and to openly admit to them that nobody really knows. But it's not going to happen. A lot of religious people are convinced that they're doing their kids a favour by raising them in their religious persuasion, and it's hard to know how they could be stopped.

I don't know how parents could actively discourage the kids trying to follow in their footsteps if they were religious. Kids will copy their parents. I never mentioned religion to my son till he asked, and then I didn't say much, just a brief explanation that I didn't believe it. He grew up to be secular, and I still don't know how much of that was my doing, even though I never tried to persuade him one way or the other. I was quite relieved at his choice.

He never even dabbled in religion as far as I know. I'd always hoped he'd be a vegetarian like I am, but again I left it to him and he certainly ate his share of sausages, fish fingers and beefburgers for several years. To my surprise he eventually became vegan, and now when he visits me I feel guilty that I'm not quite that ethical. And ironically he's influencing me in that direction these days, in a mild way, and without any attempt to persuade me, simply by his personal eating habits.

You are trying to think, and that is an activity universally outlawed by religions everywhere.

Even assuming that those governing bodies care one way or the other, they wouldn't want to risk a religious backlash.

That.

But also infant male circumcision is thousands of years old, and has not ended the world yet. So the powers at be dont see an urgent reason to outlaw it.

But there is another thing. In the 20 the century the medical establishment in the western world had a fad theory it was unhealthy NOT to circumcise male babies. So it became the norm to do it automatically- not just for the tiny minority of Jews and (and the tiny number of Muslim kids then in Western countries)- but for every newborn baby in the whole majority Gentile population of the US and other western countries. Whole generations of Gentiles got the treatment.

Its only recently stopped being mandatory for EVERYONE (even Gentiles). So it would be too radical a thing to jerk society around that much: go from "everybody automatically gets it" to "NO body- even the communities who have done for thousands of years, can have it now".

Even in the UK where public schools teach religion and the head of state is also the leader of the state church?No it's not. People are free to join a religion that their parents weren't involved in. Ever read Epistles? There's a whole lot of converting people whose parents didn't have that religion.

What about those modern cults? How do they get members if the parents weren't involved? If parent to child was the only way religion propagated then no new religions would ever have been able to get started. We wouldn't have religion because even the first religion wouldn't have been able to get started.

If you believe those evangelistic types new people are joining their churches all the time from their own free will. Not because their parents made them go.

If you don't believe those evangelistic types, well, no church has a right to keep going if people don't choose to join at a rate fast enough to make up for old members leaving or dying off.

I think you're overestimating how common circumcision is in Western countries other than the US.

US: 71%
New Zealand: 33%
Canada: 32%
Australia: 26.5%
Belgium: 22.5%
UK: 21%
France: 14%
Germany: 10%

In most of Europe, and Central and South America, circumcision rates aren't significantly different from the portion of the population who are Jewish or Muslim. And it's only the US which circumcised most people for generations in recent memory.

Source: https://pophealthmetrics.biomedcentral. ... 5/tables/1

I was talking about the US, and just mentioned other western countries as an afterthought-just to cover my bases. Thats interesting that most other western countries never bought into it. But my point still stands. Certain religious groups have done in for millenia, and for a couple generations a big population of nonbelieving people had it done (namely the whole male half of the USA). So its kinda normalized so its not high priority to ban the practice. The way that say female circumcision would be (rare in the industrialized west and stands out and has more obvious bad health consequences), or that canibalism would be, etc.

Tell Retro that. Not ME! You messed up the quote mechanism, and made it look like I said that. But he said it to counter what I said. If anything...I agree with you. There is some state pressure about religion even in the advanced countries of the west.

Calamari.

Are you sure that the UK is 21% Jewish? I think some gentiles might be getting circumcised to get the numbers that high. Same for France, Germany and Belgium.