"I'm glad I was circumcised."
Bullshit. You were minutes old when you were circumcised, you never experienced being uncircumcised, therefore you cannot possibly say you prefer one state over the other because you've never experienced the other state.
This isn't like saying "I'm glad I wasn't shot." You don't need to be shot to know that not being shot is preferable to being shot. You don't need to have plague to know that not having plague is better than having plague.
That's a huge problem I have with spiritualists, who think we come to Earth to experience suffering, because you don't know anything until you experience it. Bullshit. I don't need to experience getting shot to know I don't want to get shot. I can see from the experiences of others that I don't want to get shot, I don't need to personally experience it. The spiritualist world view turns the universe into a cosmic form of Jackass, where we incarnate to do dumb shit and get killed because omnipotent spirits are bored masochists. Apparently, according to the spiritualists, the most enjoyable thing anyone can possibly do is get sick and die before the age of five, because that's the life of half of all the humans have ever lived. HALF OF EVERYONE WHO EVER LIVED, 50 BILLION PEOPLE, DIED BEFORE AGE FIVE. I refuse to believe in a world view where omnipotent spirits find that to be the most useful way to spend their time.
Circumcision is just the opposite of this. We can learn from the experiences of others, from the men with sexual dysfunction as a result of circumcision, and from the experiences of intact men, that not being circumcised is not equivalent to getting shot or getting the plague, that there is the possibility (and I believe definite reality) that not being circumcised is preferable to being circumcised. And it pisses me off that I'll never get to experience that. It pisses me off, supremely, that I had an important organ removed without my consent shortly after birth. That strikes me as an unforgivable form of child abuse.
C. S. Lewis said something like this in his book on the non-problem of evil. Some people say "It would be better for me if I had never existed." To which he replied, "In what sense 'for me'? How would I, if I did not exist, profit from not existing?" The statement is meaningless, since if you don't exist then there's no you to benefit from not existing. The statement is nothing but a string of words put together that does not refer to a real subject, like a square circle or a rock so heavy God cannot lift it. These strings of words do not constitute valid statements since the words nullify each other.
