Circumcision

[Der/die AtheistIn]

I was wondering, how did circumcision become a religious practice?

[brewer]

Perceived hygiene or helmet appeal cuteness?

[vorlon13]

some priest decided he didn't like the taste of head cheese . . .

[The Grand Nudger]

If you mean the modern practice as engaged by the US of A, it never was, and didn't.  A Loon™ who peddled cereal and yogurt enemas thought that maybe it would stop youngins from pulling their meat.
(spoiler alert: didn't work, all it did was leave us with a country full of mutilated peen incapable of fully feeling the joy of coitus...lulz)

[Whateverist]

For more of how people feel about circumcision please see the many pre-existing threads on the subject, most stretching to hundreds of pages.

[vorlon13]

IANMTU,

uncircumcised US men drafted into WWII and serving in tropical areas developed considerable enthusiasm for the procedure . . .

[Shell B]

Ask the Jews, I think.

[Edwardo Piet]

You really wanna know why circumsition became a religious practice?

Well, okay, since you insist (everyone else heard (well, read) him insist right?) I'll tell you.

When you live in the desert of Israel, getting sand under your foreskin becomes kinda a little bit thunderously annoying. One dude gets so sick of sand under there he cuts it off. Everyone thinks he's crazy and stays away from him until his penis stops bleeding. After recovering from an infection after an incredibly unnatural practice of penis mutilation he starts bragging saying "neener neener I got no sand under my penis." After he gets murdered to death by a lot of jealous angry goatherders wtih a lot of especially long flappy foreskins full of sand they get bored and on April 1st they decide to write a book to con everyone as an April Fools day joke. So, they write the Bible and they initially make the foreskin practice thing a joke but then they get so sick of the sand underneath their (especially) floppy long foreskins that they decide to make their book into a serious religion. Everyone was even more idiotically gullible back then than nowadays (plus even the tallest people were like four foot tall, anyways, keep reading this is exactly what happened).... then they actually cut their own foreskins off and die of infection. Everyone else keeps chopping theirs off anyway because the Bible says so. All evidence that the Bible was initally written as an April Fools day joke becomes lost. People think it's actually from God. (Everyone was an especially massive fucktard back then, remember).... and then a few hundred years later, or whatever, several dudes get high on shrooms and all claim to be the son of God and only one of them gets written about by some compulsive liar called Paul who later gets made into a saint and gets his ass metaphorically licked because people are stupid. Anyways, so that's what happened. I'm glad everyone knows the truth now.

ETA: The 'some compulsive liar called Paul' is Paul from the scriptures by the way, and NOT the Paul in my AF signature.... who is super awesome.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

IANMTU,

uncircumcised US men drafted into WWII and serving in tropical areas developed considerable enthusiasm for the procedure . . .

Why? I've spent the odd day bumping into the Equator, and didn't have more problems that I would in an over-heated house in the US in winter, that being damn near zero.

[Losty]

Oh gee a circumcision thread. This should be fun