Ancient Biblical ritual saves MILLIONS of lives

Bs'd

About 4000 years ago God told Abraham to circumcise himself and his male descendants. This practice is still done by Jews and Arabs, all descendants of Abraham, while also some others have adopted this practice.

And it turns out that this Biblical command is literally a life saver, which has in the last decades saved many millions of lives, by preventing evil diseases, amongst them deadly ones like AIDS.

More than 40 studies have shown that circumcised males have a strongly reduced chance for AIDS infection, and in countries where AIDS is rampant, for instance Africa, and where people have to live of less than $2 a day, and AIDS medication costs between $10 and more than $30 a day, there AIDS is a death sentence.

And since male circumcision prevents the majority of AIDS infections, therefore it is a mega-life saver:

"A preliminary analysis by Halperin and Malcolm Potts, MD, PhD, Bixby Professor of Population and Family Planning at the UC Berkeley School of Public Health, estimates that the practice of male circumcision has so far prevented at least 8 million HIV infections in the 15 African and Asian countries cited in the editorial review alone."

And it not only strongly reduces the chances of AIDS, but also of penile cancer, prostate cancer, cancer of the cervix by the partner of the circumcised man, and more.

For the finer details look HERE

So we see that the divine laws from the Torah a literally life savers, like it is written:

"Take to heart all the words I have solemnly declared to you this day, so that you may command your children to obey carefully all the words of this law. 47 They are not just idle words for you—they are your life. By them you will live long in the land you are crossing the Jordan to possess.”
Deut 32

This is an interesting topic---which way do you wish to present and defend it? I can put this in Faith/Belief, Comparitive Religions, or....since there is science involved--Is It Science?

Which way do you wish to present this topic?

Bs'd

Interesting question.

Let's put it in "is it science?"

Eliyahu writes: Let's put it in "is it science?"

OK, but keep in mind that the discussion will have to be based on more than just scripture. Perhaps you can expand on it philosophically.

I was intrigued by your link, Science is a method, not a position

Lets see if you can support the idea of circumcision from an entirely scientific perspective. It should be rather easy.

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Thread copied here from the Ancient Biblical ritual saves MILLIONS of lives thread in the Proposed New Topics forum.

Care to tell us why this knowledgeable god gave us a foreskin to start with then? Seems like a bit of a hack to me......

(Or AIDS for that matter.)

Can we ask for a product recall? If so, I'd also like a bigger one please.

evidently this perfect god dude screwed up.

Seems like a bit of a hack to me

*sharp intake of breath*..*crosses legs*

Tangle writes: Care to tell us why this knowledgeable god gave us a foreskin to start with then? Seems like a bit of a hack to me......

Apparantly it was humans who did the hacking. From a scientific perspective, we could readily question the intelligence of a Creator(assuming One exists) but in order to do so all that we can do is speculate philosophically.

Theodoric writes: evidently this perfect god dude screwed up.

One could philosophize that there are some aspects of the creative process that are left for humans to work. Hypothetically, if God created everything finished, we humans would have nothing to do.

Thinking As A Science writes: If a man were to know everything he could not think. Nothing would ever puzzle him, his purposes would never be thwarted, he would never experience perplexity or doubt, he would have no problems. If we are to conceive of God as an All-Knower, we cannot conceive of Him as a Thinking Being. Thinking is reserved for beings of finite intelligence.

Hypothetically, a Creator, should one exist, would not necessarily have to create finished products. Humans are a prime example. Were it so that we were created as finished or perfect, there would be no need to think, explore, discover, and/or solve anything.

It makes more sense that circumcision, apart from being a mere religious ritual, was also symbolic of humans "cleaning up" a part of their body that could harbor disease or uncleanness. (Not that humans knew the activity of bacteria at that time)

It's ok mate - we're in the Matrix, don't forget. All we need do is believe, and we can grow a new one.

Actually, all you have to do is believe that reality isn't real, and all problems fade away. Makes you wonder why someone would worry about AIDS or foreskins at all.

Unless, or course, reality really is real, and someone would actually quite like it if real science really solved his real problems ;-)

Eliyahu writes: About 4000 years ago God told Abraham to circumcise himself and his male descendants. This practice is still done by Jews and Arabs, all descendants of Abraham, while also some others have adopted this practice.

Well, no. That's not how it happened.

You see, at some point in the past nobody did circumcisions at all. Most people wouldn't think of taking a knife to their own bits. It understandably seemed counterproductive by the common sense of the era.

Then, with no modern medicine, lots of deaths occurred. And many of those deaths were obviously caused by infection in the penis region. They could see this because of all the dead bodies with horrific looking, diseased penises (penii?).

So, then someone had the bright idea of cutting off the extra skin around the penis so that it wouldn't collect all the disease so easily. I think he did it on his little brother, first... but I could be mistaken.
Or, maybe someone had an accident that caused such a thing and it was discovered without forethought, even.

Kind of like how Svyatoslav Fyodorov discovered radial keratotomy (eventually leading to laser eye surgery)

quote:

---

In 1974, Svyatoslav Fyodorov removed glass from the eye of a boy who had been in an accident. The boy, who required eyeglasses for correction of myopia caused by astigmatism, fell off his bicycle. His glasses shattered on impact, and glass particles lodged in both eyes. To save the boy's vision, Fyodorov performed an operation which consisted of making numerous radial incisions extending from the pupil to the periphery of the cornea in a radial pattern like the spokes of a wheel. After the glass was removed by this method and the cornea healed, Fyodorov found that the boy's visual acuity had improved significantly.

---

Eventually, it became obvious that cutting off the extra skin from the penis made it easier to stay healthy and away from disease.

Then, some folks wrote it down in a book and called it circumcision.
But, because it had been so many hundreds of years since they started the practice, they forgot how it all started.
To them, it seemed difficult to imagine that someone would hurt themselves in such a way on purpose... so they just said exactly what you're saying today: "God did it."

Made sense then... not so much now.

Phat writes: One could philosophize that there are some aspects of the creative process that are left for humans to work.

God's a bloke, right? No way would he have got the design of the dick wrong. (And so small...)

Hypothetically, if God created everything finished, we humans would have nothing to do.

So he invented hacking off bits of dick as a passtime? He's worse than Satan.