It was Einstein who said "make things as simple as possible but not simpler". BoB, your comment about Abraham is quite clearly an over-simplification. It really takes an effort to read this story as being about promoting the murder of children, when it has widely been seen as an important moment in human history when people turned away from infanticide.
Kierkegaard wrote a very good book on it: Fear and Trembling.
On your other points, I can't help but get the feeling that you're more interested in arguing with your idea of me than with what I'm actually saying.
Re: "Now since our starting position is that it would hurt US a lot I'd expect anyone who claimed it hurt babies less to come up with evidence. Otherwise what basis do they have for saying it."
All very interesting. But you were the one that made a claim about evidence, rather than me.
Re: "And I will say it one more time. The important part of "hurting people for your benefit not theirs" is that it's for your benefit not theirs."
You haven't actually singled out a particular part of this statement before. I clearly demonstrated I understood that point, because I gave you examples of times when people could act morally while inflicting pain on someone else for their own benefit and not the benefit of the person on whom the pain was being inflicted. Your statement as it stands would rule any use of violence ever as being unethical, and that is untenable.
I presume that this is why you flip from discussing your general statement, which is too general, to putting a specific situation in front of me. Presumably you expect that I will have no choice but to agree with you that:
a) the situation you describe is an appropriate parallel with circumcision
b) this is the only type of situation that your moral principle is intended to capture.
I agree with (b), but not (a). And I think that (b) accurately describes your intention, but does not describe what you have actually done.
Anyhoo, I said before and will say again: there are definitely ethical problems with the brit, but it remains important to Jews for many reasons. What I haven't said yet, but will say now, is that of all the things to fulminate about, I can't see why this would rise to the top of the list. Not with FGM rates, rape rates, child marriage rates, DV rates being the way they are. And not without a much higher rate of complaint from the boys and men being circumcised. This matters because we live in a world of limited resources, so we need to set some priorities to be effective.