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Author Topic:   Ancient Biblical ritual saves MILLIONS of lives
Stile
Member
Posts: 4295
From: Ontario, Canada
Joined: 12-02-2004


Message 14 of 98 (720598)
02-25-2014 10:30 AM
Reply to: Message 1 by Eliyahu
02-25-2014 7:35 AM


Living in the past
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.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 1 by Eliyahu, posted 02-25-2014 7:35 AM Eliyahu has not replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 46 by caffeine, posted 02-26-2014 9:28 AM Stile has replied

  
Stile
Member
Posts: 4295
From: Ontario, Canada
Joined: 12-02-2004


Message 49 of 98 (720693)
02-26-2014 2:45 PM
Reply to: Message 46 by caffeine
02-26-2014 9:28 AM


Re: Living in the past
caffeine writes:
I think you have this completely backwards, if you think about it for a minute.
No, I meant it the way it's written. I think you and I are talking about two different ideas, though.
Circumcision today, when performed in a modern medical facility, is much safer than it has been for people throughout history. The risk of infection in the days before proper antibiotics would of course have been much higher - significantly higher than the risk of HIV, which did not yet exist.
You seem to be comparing the deaths directly related by the surgery of circumcision itself vs. the deaths from HIV alone.
With this idea, I agree with your point.
But that's not the idea I was talking about.
In the "old times" I was talking about, I'm not only worried about "deaths from HIV" for those who were uncircumcised.
I was speaking much more about the deaths just from general uncleanliness for those who were uncircumcised. Which includes a lot more deaths. Especially without modern cleaning practices.
I do agree that modern medicine has drastically reduced the risk of infection with regards to circumcision.
But it is grossly outweighed by the risk of disease (all disease, not just HIV) for the uncircumcised if you take away modern cleaning practices (washing every day...).

This message is a reply to:
 Message 46 by caffeine, posted 02-26-2014 9:28 AM caffeine has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 59 by caffeine, posted 02-28-2014 4:42 AM Stile has seen this message but not replied

  
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