Do you know the medical ramifications of not being circumcised as an older man? Many parents get their boy circumcised for non-religious reasons.

None. Unless you have problems like phimosis there is absolutely no medical reason to mutilate a baby

Learn to wash your d**k properly and be good to your body, and you won't have those problems.

Science should be questioned with scientific arguments. Not with mythology

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What about ethical arguments, Burs?

Truth Monster, there are medical ethicists and a whole array of scientists weighing in on ethics. leave it to them, and those with knowledge of the subjects.

@Jessica Bertram, (1)knowledge doesn't translate into good ethics. The butchers performing horrific experiments on their Jewish subjects in WW2 undoubtedly knew more than their "patients" about medicine and science. Should the Jewish prisoners have "left it" to their captors because their captors knew more? Were the butchers actually ethical? No. The answer is no. (2)Ethics is a morality judgment, something science is not capable of handling, because morality is what you BELIEVE is right or wrong. Science is a discipline, which can be used to for good, like vaccines, or to harm, like bio-warfare. It is not inherently good or bad.

If you wish us to believe that yours is the only morality the first thing you should do, individually and as a group, is to hold yourselves accountable to the same morality as you hold others to. Your group will pick certain "moral truths" from the text to use on others and will absolutely ignore "moral truths" on either side of it that would condemn you, if you actually held to any standard of morality that is.

Many people are religious and don't actually follow their god. That makes everyone look like hypocrites.

What about questioning religion with ethical arguments first

How about simultaneously, @Ozacoter? Why should it be an either/or?

Because this post was about religion

As far as ethics and morality are concerned, the only thing religion wholly owns of either of them is the lie that neither could exist without religion.

I hate having to agree with the repugnant, the disgusting, the disgraceful, the depraved, the lunatic, the racist, the fascist, the normally idiotic truth monster, but this time he is correct. We need to question everything, even science. Scientists have ethics panels and review boards specifically because some scientists have fu-cked up and have committed great atrocities. We always need to take ethics into consideration when doing science. And science has been wrong in the past. Never stop questioning. During this pandemic, though, it is about how you question. You have distrust, you have doubts, but what does the data say? What type of research are you doing? What are your sources? Only getting your sources from FB and youtube videos is generally a very bad way to go. Talk to scientists and analyze the peer-reviewed data. That's the way to truth. It's ok to be doubtful, but when mountains of data point to the vaccines generally being safe & effective, it's time to take the vaccine.

The one thing truth monster can't do though is actually speak the truth about religion. His argument is that morality is wholly owned by religion and that it can't spring forth without religion. He won't have the integrity to have an honest conversation about all the various denominations whose actions are morally repulsive without starting his argument that those in that denomination aren't "true" christians. Where is the morality in sequestering a child in such an environment that they never learn anything other than the bible? How do they consider it to be moral to set a child up for failure in their adult life? Where is the morality in tearing a family apart because one of them doesn't choose to believe a certain way? Where is the morality in a parent turning their back on their own children simply because that child exists in a way that they had no choice in?

How many Christians know what Christianity means? The repulsive acts aren't from God. Do the 'Christians' read the Bible? Discuss it with people who think differently than them? Really try to understand who God is? Or do they care about the "religion" as a group they connect with?

@V, (1) never said morality was owned by religion. Only that science is not inherently moral. Like a butcher knife, it can be used for good or ill. (2) there are some terrible Christians (I assume that's whom you are talking about). There are terrible people everywhere. Even in whatever ideological group(s) you belong to. My religion teaches that we are all doomed unless we choose to trust Christ to pick up our , quite frankly, staggering bill. (3)Christ never taught isolation, in fact, the opposite. No one is served by teaching kids "only the Bible". Not sure what you're referencing here. (4) Again, Christ never taught to shun the unbeliever. In fact, the reverse. (5) We could have a long conversation about this, and what I think you're referencing, but I'll try to keep this short: Families are complicated. People make the wrong decisions and end up hurting others and themselves. Its a tragic and traumatizing situation when a family breaks down.

@Terd Fergison, I accept all of your terms of me with amusement , except racist and fascist, which I categorically deny. I'm glad we agree that science is only as good as its data.

Science is asking questions.

@Earringnut, not if you're not allowed to question the data, nor the findings. Or the motives of the scientist. If a scientist wants to electrocute an elephant, perhaps we should be asking some questions, no?

Um actually all those things get questioned. If multiple independent scientists can't duplicate the results or even if the results are mixed than then it's essentially disproven. Do you remember the infamous study linking autism to vaccines? It could not be duplicated by hundreds of different scientists. In the end all of those things ended up being questioned.

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@Earringnut, some things questioned is not all things able to be questioned, which is my point. There are several "sacred cows" in science right now where we are being told to simply bow our heads and accept what the people in the white robes say. That's not science at that point. That's a religion.

That's like saying that you shouldn't trust software that gets frequent updates because it's clearly unstable and should instead use software that hasn't been updated since the dawn of computing...