Would anybody like some toast?

Mine was traumatic, they put all the pretty young Student nurses on shift after my op! The thread they use is very tough!

Seriously though, the pain before the op was nearly unbearable. Since the op, everything has been fine and everything works normally. I'd have preferred to not have had any problems to start with, but as the op was necessary, I am glad I had the choice.

I was thinking more maybe deep fried calimari.

If you go to a restaurant for it, don't forget to give the waitress a huge tip.

Well I'm sorry, I didn't realise you wanted to be taken seriously with that snippy little comment. I apologise if I have caused you offence.

There are lots of things that always happen when you and I aren't on the same side of a matter. You always assume your vision is total, encompasses all matters that matter, and that the full case can be presented and proven with a maximum of 3 sentences. In short, you like extreme certainty and even more extreme simplicity.

I don't like this simplification, it involves excluding from consideration anything which does not support the desired conclusion. I believe the certainties achieved by your methodology are phantasmal. So I do always argue the negative against your assertions. That's not a failing on my part, nor even on yours, it's just the way things have to be given our respective temperaments.

Another thing that always happens is that I make use of one thing that really is very simple - the rules of logic. You seem to have decided that logic is all trickery - an odd claim for a man who claims to adore science - and so when I disarm your point you assume I have defrauded you. You even wanted poetic licence to count for more than the law of non-contradiction in the last thread.

So over the course of a few pages I ruin your fun by holding your arguments to unfair standards like whether you can show that they are right and silly things like that. And you stop arguing positively for your belief, and start arguing against the man. You've regressed at unusual speed in this thread, but I guess you realised things weren't going your way so you went with plan B which is petulance. As. You. Always. Do.

You don't respect the fact that people can have different opinions to you without being wrong.

Please have the courtesy to acknowledge that your opinions are just that, your opinions, and are not intellectually superior just because of your bland and pontificating writing style, dripping with pseudo philosophical insight but suffering from all of the inadequacies in reasoning that you love to highlight in the words of others. I don't present my opinions as masters thesis essays exploring every facet of a subject - but I know that I find this practice to be an horrific anachronism that is open to criticism - you support it - great, but that doesn't mean I'm wrong.

The world doesn't have one political ideology called the grey party where everything is a mild soup of understanding - such a party, in an attempt to represent everyone, would end up representing nobody. Freedom of speech gives me the right to hold views that others find offensive.

Well, some people deserve to be offended, and some ideas deserve to be ridiculed - and the defences of culture and religion are self-adopted and I don't automatically respect them, in many situations they represent no defence at all.

Well I obviously do respect people's right to differ in their opinions from me. I don't see what that has to do with questioning your logic though. If your logic is correct then the questions can be answered, matters of logic and opinion are simply not the same thing. If you present your argument as rational or logical - you are claiming that it is more than mere opinion.

I doubted your claims relating to harm - others have demonstrated already in this thread that there is room for doubt.
I doubted that you had considered the ethics of state intervention in child nurturing very fully - you hadn't.
And I doubted that your argument could be considered either sufficient or necessary without a fuller consideration of those factors. Which it can't.

I haven't even said that I'm in favour of dick cutting, my only point so far is that the case against it has not been elegantly constructed.

Perhaps I missed the bit where you were implying that all of your claims had a giant IMHO attached. If so I guess we have been secretly agreeing all along, you had an opinion but you didn't think it qualified as a considered one, and I thought it didn't either. In which case I must have taken your suggestion that it is not rational to cut willies out of context, for which I apologise.

But then again, I was addressing LU in perfectly respectful terms on page one of this thread, and I was speaing in support of L3v1ck. You started on me, and accused me of talking out of my arse, along with many other disrespectful slights. So why am I the bad man for not showing you sufficient respect here?

Stop being a pissy little hypocrite at me.

Is anything irrational on Planet Earth Shockwaffle? I realise I'm not asking you a question about your home planet, so it may be unfair.

Oh and please do feel confident about backing up your reasoning with an opinion or two, it would be a massive, refreshing relief to hear your views on anything apart from my deficiencies in logic.

Why did you open up on me with such abuse when I wasn't even addressing you, only to accuse me of rudeness and abuse on the very next page?

Is it self awareness or self control that you lack?

Because you tend to get on my tits. Why do you reply if you don't also enjoy it? It's what being on a forum is all about, rest assured I'd buy you a pint should we ever meet in public, so don't worry about anything like that

Oh I've had plenty of explicit death threats from the internet, you think I'm annoying to an atheist whose general opinions I largely share? You should see what a cnut I am when I get my teeth into white supremacist Catholics.

My opinion on this topic is still liable to change. But my starting point is that in all cases we should prefer for the parents to make a choice that affects their children, unless we can seriously claim that they aren't capable of making it. The fact that many generations of Jews have circumcised their children doesn't prove that it's the right thing to do, but does indicate that it can't be that terrible either. So while I am not terribly in favour of the whole act, I don't think it meets the criteria I would want to employ for interference in that sort of thing.

I think the case of those nutters who would rather let their children die than have a blood transfusion would be the sort of thing where I would require state intervention.

A couple of obvious areas where I would have difficulty maintaining a consistent position would be slapping for naughty children. There I would be at risk of having to define which levels of beating a parent was entitled to inflict under given circumstances - almost certainly ending up with me endorsing something terrible if you really catch me out.

And maybe smoking in the presence of children. I'm not sure what the current state of the empirical evidence is, but it might be difficult for me to establish what position I hold on that matter if I put too much thought into it.

You see, we think in more different ways than I think you have appreciated. I'm not [LIFTED] when I say that I embrace doubt, I really am quite convinced that I must be a world champion of not quite believing anything.

People can be wrong about things for a long time. I don't accept this not-terrible position unless someone can show that the circumcisions are done safely and that no children die from their parents' religious choice (within the group where there is no medical requirement). Beacuse even if a few do, then it becomes morally wrong, in my opinion (I don't know the facts myself).

No procedure is 100% proof. Even ear piercings carry a risk of mortality (usually from secondary causes eg infection). Should we therefore ban all piercings, tattoos etc until the age of 18?

The major difference being that people volunteer for those, if people were tattooing 7 day old babies then I'm sure there but be an outcry against it.

I actually thought they were. I'm really not keen on the idea of a 15 year old getting a tattoo