"How should we judge a religion that requires its followers to harm themselves and/or to make payments to the infrastructure or members of the infrastructure of the religion for things that those followers have not done or for which those followers have no guilt?"

The simple answer is - your judgement really doesn't matter. My judgement doesn't matter. As EBarnacle eloquently pointed out, the following of faith is a matter of personal conviction.

Unless you are being affected by this religion, is it our place to question?

I am sure that if Rabbi Sol or anyone else came on Mudcat and started to preach to us that his path was the one that all of us should follow - there would be an uproar. Most of us won't answer the door when Jehovah's Witness members ring the bell, we turn our heads when a street preacher tries to hand us a pamphlet, and we switch the station when an evangalist is peddling their wares on TV. Those of us who chose our own paths feel somehow violated when we see that.

Yet, there are those of us who feel it necessary to tell others how to live their lives - when there was no call for such input.   Isn't that a bit hypocritical? To strike out at a doctrine that we feel is restrictive and infer that people should be following a different set of rules is one and the same.

What do they say about people living in glass houses?