Religious Special Pleading

That's for them to decide.

I didn't say they were. I said that parents feel the harm that is done to their children. Then leave it up to the medical profession to solve their own "problem".

You can not argue from "circumcision is harmful in a small minority of cases" to "circumcision is harmful, period." A minority of cases. And the necessity also needs to be decided by the parents.

But millions of successful circumcisions are not. So no, you can not argue from the specific to the general. Millions of Jews and Muslims are using a different definition. Apparently yes. Non-Jewish and non-Muslim doctors started doing it for non-religious reasons.

By that logic, all cars are harmful because some people are killed by cars. And doctors are doing the same thing for rational medical reasons. Same answer: if doctors were doing it for medical reasons, we couldn't stop people from doing it for religious reasons.

Run! Run like the wind!

In Message 133 you said,"... so those parents that beat their children, rape them, murder them, neglect them, etc etc etc are only harming themselves - so it should be permissible?" I pointed out that I didn't say "only" - i.e. I didn't say that beating, rape, murder, neglect, etc. "only" harms the parent.Harming a child is equivalent to harming the parent. Parents feel the harm that is done to their children. You're harming your position by not understanding that. So why not be consistent and consult every stakeholder on the subject of abortion - instead of leaving it up to the woman and her doctor?

Nope. Your "points" fly in the face of medical practice and religious freedom. Double fail.

But you were the one who called it "nonsense".

You misrepresented what I said. You equivocated child molestation with circumcision. I'm not sure whether or not you're being deliberately dishonest. Otherwise, I'm fairly lucid.

It isn't about winning or losing. If somebody comes into the middle of the thread and reads your foolishness, they might be misled if it isn't challenged.

You're wrong about a lot of things.

And that still doesn't make any sense. You're making the same mistake as Tangle, trying to argue from the specific to the general. If you give an example of a brown dog, it doesn't follow that all dogs are brown.Are there some parents who molest their children? Yes. Are there some parents who don't like their children at all? Yes. But that doesn't change the fact that for most parents, if you harm their child you're also harming the parents. it's a pretty obvious point.

I don't think anything I said implied universality. I simply said that when you harm a child you harm the parent. It's still a point that you should address if you want to discuss the topic honestly. And I haven't. The problem we have here is that you're trying to dictate what is harmful, even if the child, the parent and the doctor all agree that it is not. And the doctor sees no need to seek your consent.

Your argument takes the form, Some people are harmed by circumcision, therefore everybody should be denied the right to make their own decision. That's where I'm saying you're wrong. And I didn't say it was universally true. You're rebutting a strawman. No doubt. All the more reason to tread carefully when intruding on individual rights.