Christian refusal to sanction the mutilation of children is "problematic"

If you loved your Yugo, then yes.

That idea is appealing to me. I don't know that anyone in apostolic Christianity has proposed such and idea, but I hope you're right.

Circumcision doesn't hinder reproductive capacity. It hinders, usually significantly, the amount of pleasure the man can feel. That is the purpose of circumcision: to reduce the sexual pleasure a man can feel as much as possible without destroying the ability to reproduce. Check out Maimonides and the fathers of Western medicalized circumcision.

Female circumcision is the same. It does not hinder the reproductive capacity. It merely reduced the amount of pleasure the woman can feel. There are varying forms of female circumcision. Some are, physically, far worse than circumcision. The most common forms do less damage than circumcision.

 

It would be a long, arduous search to find someone who loved a Yugo.

Did our Lord ever provide a guarantee that we'd have at least X amount of pleasure in this life? Sheesh, He even commanded us to not commit adultery. Talk about a killjoy! That's a major pleasure reducer!

If the equipment functions, it's a "win."

 

No, he never guaranteed it. But he designed us with the capacity for it. So if he thought pleasure was good enough to design us with the ability to experience it at a certain level, I don't think it's wrong to be upset someone else destroyed our capacity to experience it at that level.

For women who have had their clitoris removed, their equipment still functions. They can still even experience some pleasure. So, should they take the win and move on, or are they justified in considering it a loss and being upset about it?

 

There's a fallacy in the statement. I'll illustrate: God designed us with the ability to sin (at many levels!), but that doesn't mean God thinks sin is "good enough" for us; the fact that He designed us with an ability or capacity should not in any way be indicative of whether it is good.

The following statement was hyperbolic, but Jesus certainly wanted to illustrate the point:
Mar 9:43 And if thy hand offend thee, cut it off: it is better for thee to enter into life maimed, than having two hands to go into hell, into the fire that never shall be quenched:

 

I think that's bordering on blasphemy, if you really think it through. God creating us with the capacity for physical sensation is not the same as creating us with the capacity to choose between good and evil. If God created us with physical functions he never intended us to use, that is, really, God tempting us. It's the difference between God giving us a fork, saying we can choose to eat with it or stab someone with it, and giving us a fork and a plate of food and telling us not to dare eat any of it.

God could not create us with the ability to do something if there were never a way in which it could be done without sin. Sin comes in when we misuse something he has given us, not when we use something the way he designed it to be used.

 

Our bodies are our own to modify as needed for the sake of our own health and that of others. Premodern notions like “design” and “teleology” are irrelevant to the subject.

 

If you're referring to circumcision, I agree up to a point. Only the owner of the body part can rightfully make that decision. No one should be able to use the sake of others' health as an excuse to mutilate someone else's body. Parental consent doesn't morally or justly extend that far.

Now you just sound like an atheist. They're absolutely relevant.

 

Acceptance of mainstream science is widely held in both Catholicism and Anglicanism, at both the official and the popular levels.

 

Many men circumcised as adults report a drastic reduction in sensation - this usually correlates to how much of the inner foreskin has been removed. The frenulum and ridged bands are tremendously sensitive and pleasure producing compared to other parts of the penis, as this research shows:

www.scribd.com/doc/133453786/Sorrells-2007

Given the location of structures on the intact penis and where they tend to be most sensitive in adults, it is absurd to say that neonatal circumcision wouldn't have the same effect on the men they will become if the same structures are removed.

Regardless, whatever sensitivity may be reduced or any effects in sexual function, however great or minor, taking those on should only be decided by the person who has to live with it for the rest of his life. That shouldn't be a difficult concept to agree with. Your parents should have no say in how much of your penis you get to keep.

 

This is ignorant, intolerant, paternalistic bigotry. Who are you to say that you know better than all other parents what is best for their own children? You'd have us believe you were an authority equal to both a preeminent doctor and a profound moral philosopher. I've seen evidence of neither in this ridiculous thread (which frankly should have come to an end a long time ago). Your position hasn't a thing to do with any particular Anglican issues, and is nothing more than crude, rehashed Catholic antisemitism in pseudo-scientific garb. It's offensive as well as disturbing. You need a new hobby.

 

What other body parts do your parents have the right to decide you don't get to keep? Hands? Eyeballs? Clitorises? Unless you're Jewish, circumcision isn't for you. God didn't command it of you. God didn't require it of you. If God made you uncircumcised, and there is no health problem that immediately demands the amputation of your foreskin, it's not something a parent ought to have a right to decide. Children aren't designer human beings at the whim of their parents aesthetic preferences. If Anglicanism teaches they are, then praise God he led me out of your abhorrent, inhuman communion.

As has been mentioned previously, modern circumcision is NOT the same circumcision God required of the Jews. Endlessly bringing up the anti-semitism trope is deflection, nothing more.

 

This is disingenuous. Implementing your extreme ideology would have implications for the religious freedom of Jews (and Muslims), and thus would be antisemitic in its effects (a fact I shouldn't have to point out here), and is unjustifiably paternalistic with regard to the medical decision-making authority of parents. The notion that the human body is somehow 'perfect' at any particular stage of development is patently absurd. You have neither a scientific nor a moral basis for the extreme claims you are making, and it is in any event not an issue in Anglicanism, which, unlike Catholicism, teaches freedom of conscience.

 

As I've said before, I could accept a ban that would leave an exemption for Jews and Muslims. I don't like it, but if that is the cost to protect Christian and other non-Jewish, non-Muslim boys, I could accept it. Your connection to anti-semitism doesn't really make any sense. It's absurd to think people are opposed to circumcision because they are anti-semitic. The other thing it sounds like you're implying is that Jews are not safe unless everyone is free to circumcise their sons. That is also an absurd insinuation if you are indeed making it.

No one is saying the human body is perfect. But children are not blocks of marble to be chipped away at by their parents until the form they desire has been sculpted. Is it really a complicated idea for you to understand that a person should not be forced to live a certain way because of the whims of another, when that way is not necessary for their own well-being? Any boy who was circumcised as a child and grows up to resent it is stuck with a mutilation forced on them by another. They must live with the consequences of someone else's decision. The person making the decision has to live with none of them. That is patently unjust. And I'm not making any extreme claims. I'm saying the foreskin is normal, natural, healthy on its own, and that a child's right to bodily integrity supercedes his parents' aesthetic preferences. There is nothing extreme about that; rather it's common sense.

 

Rubbish.

 

Why are we still talking on this? This is a dead horse we have beat to death.

 

It really is a dead horse on this forum, because it's not a Christian issue (let alone an Anglican issue) at all. The church has no theological position that I'm aware of, nor should they. It's largely being done out of misconceptions and medical routine. The solution is education. But ultimately, it's a decision for the parents to make when the hospital asks (and they darn well need to ask IMO!). A ban just isn't going to happen, for a number of reasons, so forget about that.

Really, I think someone is a bit too preoccupied with a certain reproductive organ for his own good. A psychiatric assist might help...

 

I'm currently in therapy for it, but there is no psychosis. It's normal to grieve the loss of a body part.