Yes, and I agree that female circumcision is awful, but how is your judgment in any way academic? And why is academia somehow better than religion in making moral and ethical judgments? And isn't what you're calling academic really just another form of religious judgment? The purpose of my questions is to see how far people are willing to reason out their comments. I've just heard SOOO many affirmations with SOOO little support. Jim <<Well ... put it this way. There are marriage counsellors out there who've never been married. Then again in the Russian Orthodox church a marriage counsellor *must* be married ... I guess what I'm trying to say is what I said before - there are two ways to view religion, and in this case I think we should view it academically. For example, I would never agree with something like female circumcision which has bases in religion, and that judgement would have nothing whatsoever to do with whether or not I was that religion. In some ways, it's actually easier to view a religion objectively from outside of it. As I always say, I never met a goldfish who could draw a goldfish bowl. Camille>> ___________________________________________________________________ You don't need to buy Internet access to use free Internet e-mail. Get completely free e-mail from Juno at http://www.juno.com/getjuno.html or call Juno at (800) 654-JUNO [654-5866]