Grab, your suggestion that somehow folks aren't smart enough to figure out what is proper and what is not smacks, with all due respect, of the same arrogance that the conservative Christians and the Taliban exhibit. I don't understand how it is that you feel that you or anybody can make these determinations.

Smart I *didn't* say. What I *did* say is that in too many cases they aren't making an informed choice. If you choose your religion, then fine. If it's chosen for you (by parents or country of origin) then you're basically going to get brainwashed with that religion throughout childhood. And yes, I do use the emotive term "brainwashing" deliberately. The better ones won't, but the bad ones will. And the bad ones are almost universally the "fundamentalist" ones who hold that they're the only true path to Heaven and everyone else will burn in Hell forever, so they're the ones that really we need to be worried about.

If you want to call me righteous in making a choice for others, then fine. In case I didn't make it clear enough above, my "righteous" attitude to what I insist should be the case is: everyone must be free to make their own choice when it comes to religious observance; and no religious rules must be imposed on anyone for any reason unless they choose to accept those rules. If that's a "righteous" attitude then I can live with that. In fact, I'd *really* like to see you argue against that position, Mick.

My beliefs aren't the subject of this thread, Grab, except as I inject them into the debate... I have participated in this from the beginning.

No, you haven't yet participated in the debate on this thread, Mick. Various people (including me) have stated our base positions/opinions, and discussion's gone on from there, in the collision of these belief spaces. But with the exception of a few lines in reply to TIA at 02:55, you've yet to state any kind of position, even though you've been very free in critiquing other people's positions. That's OK - we're all big boys and girls - but to call what you're doing "participating" is incorrect, because you haven't provided enough information about your position in order for any debate with you to take place.

If you want a more formal debate between other people with yourself as the chairman, that's fine. The role of chairman is a valid way of participating in a debate - *but* it requires the chairman to take no active role in applying criticism. If you want to be one of the debaters, then you need to state your position in order that other people can apply the same kind of criticism to your beliefs that you do to theirs. Since you seem to want to be a debater, your beliefs *are* therefore essential to the topic of the thread, in the same way as mine, Kat's, Mrrr's or anyone else's.

Let's make it clearer. Without stating your beliefs, you are merely point-scoring in arguing over semantics - you are *not* in any way carrying out a debate.

Is that on topic enough...?

Graham.