Religious Special Pleading

I find myself getting less and less tolerant of the special pleading of those holding religious beliefs. I'm a secularist that believes that our society is weakened by concessions made to superstion.We allow Jews and Muslims to mutilate boys, which for any other reason would be an imprisonable offence.
(I'm watching the Icelandic attempt to ban circumcision with interest. Iceland law to outlaw male circumcision sparks row over religious freedom | Circumcision | The Guardian).We ban female genital mutilation but don't enforce the ban.We allow a part of our country - Northern Ireland - to deny women rights that the rest of our country hold (abortion).We shy away from interfering with religious practices such as Shariah which are plainly against the values of our society as a whole.Today I hear that a London coroner is being challenged in the High Court for refusing to prioritise Jewish burials over any other burial.

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A Jewish burial service has called for a senior London coroner to be removed after accusing her of causing anguish and trauma by bureaucratic delays in a dispute over religious rules for the dead.

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The service has made an official complaint against Mary Hassell, senior coroner for inner north London, saying many of her imposed rules, bureaucracy, inflexibility and unnecessary delays offend traditional and/or religious practices.

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The move came after Hassell said no death will be prioritised in any way over any other because of the religion of the deceased or family. She has also suggested members of her staff have been bullied or intimidated by Jewish community representatives.

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Jewish society calls for removal of London coroner over burial delay | Religion | The GuardianReligions exist within an overall rule of law which seeks to be fair to all. Religions that prefer their own rules to society's and indeed believe them to be above the secular law are damaging to society as a whole. We've seen this in Christian belief systems around the world where the institutions valued their own 'law' to secular law by covering up child abuse almost universally.I think we're making progress - recent law changes allowing gay marriage are an example - but it seems painfully slow.Edited by Tangle, : No reason given.Edited by Tangle, : No reason given.

Thread copied here from the Religious Special Pleading thread in the Proposed New Topics forum.

Circumcision is not limited to religious practice. Most males in the United States were circumcised by the hospital after birth.

Circumcision is almost exclusively related to religious practice in the 21st century. The reasons for supposedly non-religious circumcision are werd, wild and wacky. The major one being masturbation, which itself originates in religious ideas.

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At the same time circumcisions were advocated on men, clitoridectomies (removal of the clitoris) were also performed for the same reason (to treat female masturbators). The US "Orificial Surgery Society" for female "circumcision" operated until 1925, and clitoridectomies and infibulations would continue to be advocated by some through the 1930s. As late as 1936, L. E. Holt, an author of pediatric textbooks, advocated male and female circumcision as a treatment for masturbation.[58]

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One of the leading advocates of circumcision was John Harvey Kellogg. He advocated the consumption of Kellogg's corn flakes to prevent masturbation, and he believed that circumcision would be an effective way to eliminate masturbation in males.

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History of circumcision - WikipediaEdited by Tangle, : No reason given.

You call it "special pleading."Yes, there is some special pleading involved. But this is mostly about pragmatics, as in:

• Don't change things in ways that will alienate a large block of the public, because that will only lead to serious social disruption.

This isn't about changing laws. It is about changing the culture. And changing the culture is always painfully slow.

I think you have it backwards. As often as not, religion takes it's practices from the culture. See Christmas as an example.When you start banning religious practices, you open the door to banning cultural practices in general. Note how "Christmas" trees are frowned on by the political correctness fanatics even though they have nothing to do with Christianity.

You quoted me but I didn't say that. It was Phat. However, I agree with him.

Apologies...

Slippery slope arguments are always wrong in Western democracies. Banning harmful practices does not 'open the door' to banning harmless ones. With the exception of totalitariast regimes nobody is ever going to ban Christmas trees are they? Once a year a few nutters with make a slow news day, that's all.

Who decides what's "harmful" and what's "harmless"? I suspect that you would if you thought they were "harmful".But you're missing the point. The point is that the "harmful" practices are not necessarily religious in nature.

Our secular institutions. That's their job. I would only think they were harmul if they actually caused harm That's rather obvious. I'm not fond of any harmful practice, but here we're talking about harmful religious practices.

What do your secular institutions say about circumcision? I remember looking into this a couple of years ago for an argument here, and I was unable to uncover much pro/con on the practice healthwise with there being some disputable minor advantages to being circumcised for some folk. I don't see much of a reason for the state to be involved. We would not want the state involved in gender changing surgery decisions. Is this simply a case of personal animus?With regard to the religious implications, the New Testament is pretty clear that it is not a required religious practice for non-Jews, but at least at the time I was a kid, it was very widely practiced.

It totally bans female circumcision and it very belatedly bans people traveling to countries that practice it to get it done. It has been very lax in enforcing the latter.Male circumcision is ignored (except in Iceland). But why? If the practice had not existed and was attempted to be brought in today, it would not be possible.We allow a harmful practice purely for supersticious religious reasons. The only reason for this practice is religious. All the rationalisation therafter can be ignored. The issue then becomes whether it's a necessary medical procedure, no, and whether it's harmful - yes. Yes, I personally dislike most silly religious beliefs, but putting that aside, is the practice harmful to individuals and society? I think so, we allow a primitive, divisive and personally harmful practice to continue. Why? And now only continues in religious communities. Why, if it had benefits apart from reducing the 'harmful' effects of masturbation by making the penis less sensitive, has it been discontinued?

My question is directed at whether or not the practice of male circumcision is harmful. You say it is. But is that any kind of official position. I haven't been able to find any such thing, and I did try. Can you do any better than that?

For starters, lets call it by its proper name: male genital mutilation.