It’s fucking crazy bro my parents were believers but weren’t actually subscribed to any traditional religion and them mfers still trimmed my shit
Blame Kellogg
The cereal guy? Next you’re gonna tell me Nestle’s been up to some shady shit
Well the cereal was invented cause he thought bland foods would stop you masturbating but that was clearly not working so he leaned back into foreskin hoarding.
I am not kidding as much as that sentence would make it seem.
Let’s clear it up though, it’s the guy who invented the cereal who was a nut. His brother was the one who was like “I’m gonna sell the flakes, not the dick snip bit.” They got into a huge battle when the quack doctor realized his brother was making more money selling the cereal than he was selling religious pseudoscience.
And ultimately Christian sexual repression
Yeah you’ve got to wonder if that extra bit they trimmed off would be nicer to have there or not. But I guess the mutilated pecker is all I’ll ever know so I guess its fine?
1: Reduces feeling, bad for you 2: Reduces feeling, good for your partner 3: Might be useful hygienically if you ever live as a desert nomad, so that’s nice
Actually there was a huge debate among early Christians whether circumcision was still required because Jesus never spoke on the issue (or if he did, there was no verifiable record of it).
To crudely summarize:
The earliest Christians were primarily Jews, so they were already circumcized as required by Judaism so it was a non-issue. However unlike Judaism where you’re almost always born into the religion, Christianity actively encourages adult conversion, so as more non-Jews (e.g. Greeks) began to identify as Christians, the circumcision issue became a conundrum. Some felt Christianity was a branch of Judaism and as such Jewish practices like circumcision were still required, whereas others objected because they saw Christianity as a new approach to Judaism, or even as a separate religion altogether (circumcision specifically was hotly debated due to such issues as adult circumcision being more, shall we say, unappealing than infant circumcision, plus getting circumcized would “out” non-Jews in nude spaces like bath houses, which was at best awkward and at worst deadly).
The earliest followers of Jesus thought Jesus was going to return in their lifetimes, so these types of issues were not discussed (or at least not resolved) by the original founders and proselytizers (researchers have determined the Gospels weren’t even composed until well after everyone involved was dead), but as generations passed it became clear that the Second Coming actually may not happen anytime soon, so practical issues of “how to establish a new religion (is it even a new religion or just a Jewish sect???)” turned into gigantic internal debates for the community. That’s what much of the New Testament is: letters back and forth trying to interpret the words of Jesus to resolve doctrinal conflict. In other words, the New Testament is basically four different versions of the story of Jesus (Mark, Matthew and Luke which were based on Mark and a lost “Gospel X”, and John), followed by a curated back-and-forth commentary section debating issues of the day such as circumcision and women’s role in the church, and controversially capped off by the (theorized) hallucinations of a hermit tripping balls off donated moldy bread.
The history of the New Testament (how it was written and later compiled, early texts that were lost or discarded, and all the doctrinal conflicts that boiled over into variously incidents of geopolitical chaos) is fascinating and seriously worth exploring.
That’s fascinating. Can you recommend any books on the subject? The easier to read the better!
I don’t know if I’d call it “easy” reading, but this is a well-regarded college textbook that’s popular in “Christianity 101” religion classes (so at least it’s entry-level and doesn’t assume prior knowledge on the topic):
For something much lighter, Extra Credits did a video series on early Christian schisms that mentions the circumcision debate:
I’m far from a religious scholar (just someone who enjoys history from time to time), so I’d be curious if other folks have additional recommendations.
Thanks :) I found a free PDF copy on anna’s archive
Christianity actively encourages adult conversion
That’s why 99% of christians were baptized before they learned to shit and piss properly.
I can’t tell if you’re being humorous here, but historically babies were baptized shortly after birth out of fear that anyone who died without being baptized would be unable to get into heaven.
In the middle ages* in Europe, baptism was usually scheduled a few days after birth, and often the historical record includes baptism dates and death dates for individuals, so historians estimate birth dates to be a few days prior to the baptism date. Babies that died pre-baptism were thought to go to purgatory instead of heaven, and considering the high infant mortality rate pre-modern medicine, there was a bit of a rush to get your offspring baptized pronto to save their itty bitty souls. Generally this is no longer believed, at least not by most mainstream Protestant sects, and many Christians nowadays opt to wait until their children are old enough to “appreciate” the event more.
*Not sure exactly when, and maybe this was mostly a Catholic thing? Again, this is not my area of expertise.
Catholics still do infant baptism, as do several Protestant groups.
I think adult baptism popped up in a few heresies/other groups - like maybe the Cathars did it and iirc a few early heresies - but really became a thing post Protestant reformation with groups like the Anabaptists. (Like, Baptists are called such because they specifically reject infant baptism.)
I got the meme but this is Jesus. He was himself circuncised since he was jewish. It was alredy a thing before him. oh, and christians don’t do that
Circumcision of children should be highly illegal. Any health practitioner doing the procedure should be criminally liable for assault and malpractice.
It’s sexual assault
I think religiously mandated circumcision is as dumb as the next guy does but c’mon now… there are legitimate reasons to do it and getting it done does not have that terrible health outcomes for the kid company to FGM. I think society as a whole should start to think of it as a bygone practice, but putting doctors on pikes over it is extreme.
They are clearly not talking about the legitimate, medically necessary cases
not really… they said any. they didn’t give any indication they might have an exception to that. sounds like they’re talking about a blanket ban.
Even with phimosis, circumcision is not needed in most cases. You can make the foreskin bigger and more flexible with stretching over time. Still, people with phimosis get circumcised without ever even hearing of an alternative option. Shit sucks
The rational behind it is flimsy to begin with. Stopping bacterial buildup? Sure. Then you have the whole “circumcision as a remedy for masturbation” … which was actually a movement.
nah my nephew had to get one because his foreskin wouldn’t grow. it literally was cutting off blood flow to his pecker, so they give him a circumcision. sucks but kinda had to happen.
I would say that any… if the people live in a group or a society that is religion-based, and that religion requires it, then I am not against infant circumcision.
Basically, if you were born to Jewish parents living in Israel or Palestine or born to Muslim parents living in a Muslim-run country, then yes, participate in the culture that you were born in.
But, like in America, where every single person decides their own faith for themselves and only the most culty stay in this same religion that their parents were in, infant bodily autonomy outside of life-saving procedures should be the rule.
It seems to happen less often in Europe, but wouldn’t hurt to add that as a rule there, too.
At least wait until the kid is 13 years old as a minimum.
How tf did this even start? Some guy was like, “you know the tip of the dick? Cut it off your children” and they just went along with it
Don’t eat pork, don’t eat shell fish, don’t work on Sundays (or Saturdays depending on who you talk to), no sex before marriage, don’t masturbate … but you can bend the rules and get close to doing those things and even get away with breaking the rule because God is an idiot that can easily be outwitted or deceived with human logic.
And this is just a small list of rules and regulations … there’s a whole list of things that are not allowed in the bible but Christian leaders have made workarounds on everything because they are smarter than God.
God is not an idiot, your leader are.
Jesus basically came in to say: just follow the commandments, love one another, love your enemy as yourself, don’t be greedy and selfish, and you guys don’t have to keep doing those self-imposed rules the Israelites made themselves do like don’t eat pork or shell fish, etc.
Israelites believed that they were supposed to be purists about everything they do to some degree and saw being a purist as being holy; such as never mixing two different kinds of fabric together or don’t raise your goats with your sheep. Jesus said you don’t need to be a purist about all this unimportant stuff, but be good people.
My favorite one is do not boil a calf in its mother’s milk, which has been interpreted to mean no cheese or butter on beef.
Which means that cooking and eating a bacon cheeseburger yourself after sundown while wearing cotton underwear and polyester pants is 4 sins, 3 of which are burger
Rabbits, beavers, and hippos are fish, you see.
I want my turtle neck back.
deleted by creator
You know, I have a personal theory that this particular law was established as a measure of genital hygiene, since without the foreskin dirt does not accumulate on the glans; but over the years it was distorted until it became a divine mandate that is just for the sake of it.
The best way to test the resolve of your fellow cultists is by making them commit to very rigorous rules that affect their life significantly.
I mean if you can get them to cut of a piece of their reproductive organs, you have insanely loyal followers. Also resisting something to eat that is very tasty, of it said ‘don’t eat shit’ it’s not a very hard rule to follow.
Somehow this works like a drug for some people. There a reason that many rehabs are ran by religious fellows.
Religions prey on the weak, hence the rehabs and homeless shelters. It’s not charity it’s recruitment
The vast majority of the Bible was simply guidelines to keep people healthy and happy. All this “the skin of the pig is unclean” stuff? They hadn’t figured out germs yet. No sex until marriage? No contraceptives, so don’t create in cared for children. I won’t waste my time on it but, when examined in context, this is the vast majority, if not the entirety of the bible: lessons on how to be safe and happy relative the time, made digestable and relevant to the common person.
Sucks they had to get there via fear of imaginary, post-life pain, and it sucks twice as hard that they’ve neglected to rationalize that part as the rest of the belief structure has modernized.
One of my favorite examples of this: Leviticus 11:13-19
“These are the birds you are to detest and not eat because they are detestable: the eagle, the vulture, the black vulture, the red kite, any kind of black kite, any kind of raven, the horned owl, the screech owl, the gull, any kind of hawk, the little owl, the cormorant, the great owl, the white owl, the desert owl, the osprey, the stork, any kind of heron, the hoopoe, and the bat.”
Most of these are either scavengers, or eat rodents which carry diseases that are awful to humans. The societies that ate them didn’t tend to last long.
I can definitely get behind that. Like, if you read the Bible, especially some particular chapters, there’s a lot of old man yells at clouds vibes.
“I will cuteth off the member of him who pisseth against the wall”
Doesn’t really sound like a god thing. It would be very weird for the ruler and creator of the universe to get really, really fucking mad that any person who pees on a wall anywhere, regardless of the situation, should have their dick cut off.
It kind of sounds more like, you know, one of the leaders of a community is writing down laws and threatening to cut a bunch of boys’ dicks off because they keep peeing on walls and stinking the place up rather than using appropriate facilities.
I wish we had accurate historical records of the time, so I could see if this was ever actually enacted. Like, how much would it suck to be that guy?
Walking home late from the bar, you gotta take a whiz, you piss, the cops catch you, and like three hours later, your penis is lying in the trash.
And, I mean, talk about disproportionate response, like, did the concept of community service not exist? Like, what the fuck?
Then there was one phrase about, do not go and shave the sides of your beard, something something yada yada, and it reads like a protest against the kids and their fashion.
There’s lots of stuff where if you have the capacity to take the one mental step to say that every single word in the book may not have been written by God himself, but instead the texts chosen to be in the bible contain a historic medium of communicating laws, rules, and regulations that made sense at the time, inspired by God and definitely containing some legitimate things that were directly written by the Holy Spirit, but also invariably containing some information that was derived from that original mandate.
I mean, even the whole thing about the Sabbath, it was more a nicety to say, even God rested, you should rest too. You should have at least one day off a week where you’re not beholden to labor for somebody else, where you can enjoy life.
I highly doubt that God is throwing people into hell for working on the Sabbath. I get that it’s special to God because he rested for a day, which is something he had otherwise not done throughout existence. But at the same time, why torment someone forever for just working one extra day out of our comparatively very short lives?
I don’t know. I can rant forever. I’m sorry, I’ll stop here, but yeah.
Cross-amputation is still a thing under Sharia Law. I wouldn’t be surprised if people ever, or even still do, get their dicks cut off for pissing on a wall. John Wayne Bobbit had his cut off by his wife, but that was over marital rape.
Thou shall try really really really hard not to kill anyone, unless they pray to a different invisible made up man in the sky to the one you do.
Guy was just pissed off that nobody had gotten around to inventing Spaghetti-Os and figured this would be close enough.
pro tip: you can’t stutter if you never existed.
you also can’t loose yor peen tip or your protip.
If I remember my history correctly, one of the primary draws of the at the time new christianity over judaism was specifically that dudes wouldn’t need to lop off part of their dongs in a pre-anesthesia world.
Somewhere in heaven, God is sitting on top of a huge pile of foreskins like Smaug.
Tbf Jesus didn’t start this shit.
If you believe in the Trinity he did
I love this comment.
The son is just as creepy as the dad and the holy what the the mother fuck is that‽
the only trinity I believe in
Can you really though? I thought the movies were a psyop
what
Believe in Trinity. Sorry I was trying to sound like an ultra conspiracy nut.
