[mores]

I am wary of any "cult", "sect", "society" or "fraternity" that imposes rules and regulations on me. I can accept people who believe in them, but for me, anything that forces me to do something, I try to avoid.
While I was born and raised a roman catholic, I decided to "drop out" because I no longer agree with the way of "my" church. This does not necessarily mean that I am an atheist, I just do not like the way religion rules our world.
I see most of the world's problems are based on religion or religious differences (Israel, Afghanistan, 911, Iraq, Bosnia, Vietman, etc.) so I try to extract the "etiquette" that religion preaches to it's followers (no killing, no stealing, do unto others etc), be a good human being and do whatever else I want.

So I generally have a problem with "extremists", even if they are jolly people who just grow crop and ride on their horses. I find I have nothing in common with them, except for the "be good" part. I find it not "natural" to resist the "natural" progression in technology and science, so being forced to stay away from TVs or Radios or Kindles or eBooks is an unnatural ... blockade. Just like forcinge women to wear burkas, forcing babies to have their foreskin cut off, forcing people to not eat pork, and so on.

Then again, I never was one to be in a sports club, a fraternity or other gathering of like-minded people, I usually ignored IRC gettogethers and would never go to a forum-user-meeting. Call me an hermit (heremit?), but I believe that if you depend on other people or fantasy beings, you are not independant and easily manipulated.

Now this has nothing to do with the original post. I just felt the urge to share this, since this thread started to focus on the Amish.
Let me just say again, that I respect the beliefs of anyone, and anyone can do whatever they want as long as they do not hurt me doing it. I just can't understand it all.