Germany discriminating against Jews or protecting children ?

Shouldn't this just be left to the general consensus as the more who don't do it should not worry about those who do? The world knows that Jews and Muslims practice it, so restricting it does only affect them. There are doctors in the US who do not encourage it nor do it. Were is the need to make it a law?

The only ones who are complaining are those who had it done incorrectly. And even those who have not had it done will never know what a toddler experiences. That is called projecting an act as wrong without any proof.

It is not the practice itself that is wrong, if anything it is the inability of doctors to do it right.

What? Hit a toddler's head off a wall and it will cry. It feels pain.

Cut a grown man's foreskin off and he will cry or be in excruciating pain.

The same happens to a toddler.

Are we justifying putting babies in pain because hey, they won't remember it anyways?
 
Shouldn't this just be left to the general consensus as the more who don't do it should not worry about those who do? The world knows that Jews and Muslims practice it, so restricting it does only affect them.
It only affects children who are too young to determine whether they're Muslim or Jew since religion isn't a genetic condition.
 
It only affects children who are too young to determine whether they're Muslim or Jew since religion isn't a genetic condition.

This. No matter what your beliefs are, you cannot impose them on your child. They only believe what you tell them, and forcing them into a strict doctrine from day one is both neglect and incredibly detrimental to the big picture of society. You end up with more conflict and more hate if more children are taught to be close-minded douchebags the moment they exit the womb.
 
This. No matter what your beliefs are, you cannot impose them on your child. They only believe what you tell them, and forcing them into a strict doctrine from day one is both neglect and incredibly detrimental to the big picture of society. You end up with more conflict and more hate if more children are taught to be close-minded douchebags the moment they exit the womb.

How does one not impose their beliefs on their children. By simply being their parents, children learn to imitate their parents actions, behaviour and viewpoints anyway without actually needing pressure from them.

My parents never really had a political conversation with me in my childhood and formative years, yet I cannot deny that part of my political beliefs stem from being raised as their child.

How is a parent teaching their child 'stealing is wrong', any less forceful than them teaching to love Jesus?
 
All surgery is bodily harm.
So says German legal doctrine.
Every surgery is basically considered justified assault.
Do you think the law forbids other cosmetic surgeries on children and infants?
The justification (see above) has do to be related in some way to the childs future well-being. Which can very well be completely immaterial and does not have to be a consideration regarding physical health.
So having some facial disfigurement fixed would be fine. But in order to justify circumcision you have to wade pretty deep into murky considerations of social acceptance etc.
Which is - of course - exactly what defendants usually did in the (rare) court cases concerning circimcision in the past. Successfully up until now.

Of course you can see that this whole well-being business is a pretty relative matter.
It is very well possible that the court felt that the harm inflicted on a four year old is greater than the one on a newborn (due to psychological considerations). It's also quite possible that the court would have felt that the jewish customs regarding circumcision were more significant to the childs well-being than the muslim ones.
So effectively the thread title is misleading in that we absulotely don't know if the exact same court would have ruled the same way with regards to your typical jewish circumcision.
 
How does one not impose their beliefs on their children. By simply being their parents, children learn to imitate their parents actions, behaviour and viewpoints anyway without actually needing pressure from them.

My parents never really had a political conversation with me in my childhood and formative years, yet I cannot deny that part of my political beliefs stem from being raised as their child.

How is a parent teaching their child 'stealing is wrong', any less forceful than them teaching to love Jesus?

Because stealing is wrong and loving Jesus and thinking the Bible is a book of truth is a circumstantial belief at best?
 

As i suspected:
The actual verdict explicitly says that the court did not feel that postponing the circumcision to a (much) later date would have interfered with the parents right of religious practice since there is no generally accepted standard for at what age muslim boys are supposed to be circumcised.

It might be very well possible to wait for one (or several) of the thresholds for limited consent set by German law.
My suspicion that the court might have felt very differently in the case of circumcision as a result of jewish customs grows into a near-certainty...

So:
Thread = :rolleyes:
 
Because stealing is wrong and loving Jesus and thinking the Bible is a book of truth is a circumstantial belief at best?

And who wrote the great guidebook of morality that says stealing is wrong?

Morality, by any standard, is a human construct subjected to ever changing human conditions and context. What you deem moral might be immoral to other or immoral in a different time or even circumstance.

Take stealing for example. Is it wrong to steal from a rich and greedy person to feed the poor and starving masses, Robin Hood style?

It's impossible to not impose views on your children. Even if you could, what makes one morality not forced while another is?
 
And who wrote the great guidebook of morality that says stealing is wrong?

Morality, by any standard, is a human construct subjected to ever changing human conditions and context. What you deem moral might be immoral to other or immoral in a different time or even circumstance.

Take stealing for example. Is it wrong to steal from a rich and greedy person to feed the poor and starving masses, Robin Hood style?

It's impossible to not impose views on your children. Even if you could, what makes one morality not forced while another is?

Morality based upon what makes sense and is logical is much less of a negative impact on a child than morality based upon what a book tells you which comes with a "But you have to believe in a man in the sky for it to matter" clause.

If you cannot understand that, I feel no need to continue this discussion.
 
What Algeroth said. Anglo-Saxons really have serious issues with sexuality and continously generate very strange ideas: from chastity devices against masturbation to pedohysteria which rivals only witch hunting and the war on drugs in its sheer madness.

I beg your pardon?
 
Morality based upon what makes sense and is logical is much less of a negative impact on a child than morality based upon what a book tells you which comes with a "But you have to believe in a man in the sky for it to matter" clause.

If you cannot understand that, I feel no need to continue this discussion.

Look, I'm no fan of Jesus and his book. But you cannot impose your morality on others especially when no one can make such a definition.
'Sense' and 'logic' are such vague and empty terms given that you have the minutiae of detail battled to bitter camps in every topic of the academic tier.
Add in the even vaguer word of 'morality' to that and you just have a jumbled mess no one can agree upon.

What makes 'sense' is often up to each individual to decide and we all arrive at different conclusions. Much less about morality. If teaching your kids a religion is 'forcing them', then so is teaching them an ethnic, cultural or political identity. So is telling them about whether or not it is wrong to steal or wrong to lie. Because in the end, you are impressing on them an idea that is not theirs.

I don't agree with circumcision until the child is old enough to make a consenting decision but your view that parents can't teach their children their religion is not only a violation of a parent's right to religion and to govern their child, it's also hypocritical.
 
I beg your pardon?

I'm still not sure what he means by that either. I'm guessing that the implication is that we've raised the age that applies to "pedophilia", but since I'd still be very uncomfortable with a legal adult sexually attracted to someone under 16, I don't really have a problem with that either. So I dunno.
 
This thread is pretty damn disgusting.

Never understood why people considered Europe so "liberal", it always seemed much more reactionary if anything else.
 
The thread title is kind of misleading about the whole issue. Whatever opinion one might have about it, one can surely not say the Germany discriminates against Jews when the whole debate was caused by one judge making a decision. Many politicians want to make it legal again as soon as possible.
But now the cat is out of the sack (German proverb) and people have made an opinion. It is possible that the Bundesgerichtshof or the European court for human rights decides that religious circumcision of babys is unconstitutional and that any law which allows it is nullified.
 
So says German legal doctrine.
Every surgery is basically considered justified assault.

The justification (see above) has do to be related in some way to the childs future well-being. Which can very well be completely immaterial and does not have to be a consideration regarding physical health.
So having some facial disfigurement fixed would be fine. But in order to justify circumcision you have to wade pretty deep into murky considerations of social acceptance etc.
Which is - of course - exactly what defendants usually did in the (rare) court cases concerning circimcision in the past. Successfully up until now.

Of course you can see that this whole well-being business is a pretty relative matter.
It is very well possible that the court felt that the harm inflicted on a four year old is greater than the one on a newborn (due to psychological considerations). It's also quite possible that the court would have felt that the jewish customs regarding circumcision were more significant to the childs well-being than the muslim ones.
So effectively the thread title is misleading in that we absulotely don't know if the exact same court would have ruled the same way with regards to your typical jewish circumcision.
We're basically of the same position here then. Reduction of circumcision to assault and assault is always wrong is an unreasonable argument. Cosmetic surgery for children basically involves a whole lot of social norms, and these social norms need to be considered when judging if a surgery is more harmful then beneficial, and that's a murky area with room for reasonable disagreement.
 
Morality based upon what makes sense and is logical is much less of a negative impact on a child than morality based upon what a book tells you which comes with a "But you have to believe in a man in the sky for it to matter" clause.

If you cannot understand that, I feel no need to continue this discussion.
What Aronmax said. If you're going to run an argument based on what makes sense and what is logical, you're probably going to end up in a radical monist position that tells us there is no child, there is no foreskin, and any change in anything is an impossibility.
 
This thread is pretty damn disgusting.

Never understood why people considered Europe so "liberal", it always seemed much more reactionary if anything else.

Depends on the intent I suppose. If you think the intent is to discriminate against Jews and Muslims then you would view this action as reactionary. If the intent is to put the rights of the infant above the rights of the parents, then it's liberal.
 
What? Hit a toddler's head off a wall and it will cry. It feels pain.

Cut a grown man's foreskin off and he will cry or be in excruciating pain.

The same happens to a toddler.

Are we justifying putting babies in pain because hey, they won't remember it anyways?

I am not justifying pain. I am questionsing the need to make a practice illegal, based on peoples' projection.

Either it is a religious practice or it is a beneficial surgery. Does it matter any way? It seems that at the moment of birth, there is this magical line crossed that the parent no longer has any say in their child's well being. A moment sooner and the mom could have legally aborted it. Now after birth it is illegal to abort and also illegal to decide anything about how that child is raised?

Do men look at themselves at age 18 and say, well I guess I am a Jew, or Muslim due to my personal physique?

Even if it is just a religious practice that enlightened man is trying to eradicate, education would evolve it away. Creating a law is just going to cause more botched attempts as fewer doctors will be around to do it properly. If it is beneficial, I am sure that people will eventially learn to do without the benefits.

However, it still just boils down to allowing parents to choose what they think best. It seems that modern humans are afraid of their ability to be parents. :sad: :confused:
 
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