Photography has evolved, unfortunately some photographers have not, it seems.
Currently the best photographers in the world use digital and process thier images as they see fit. Nobody is talking about removing lamposts from people's heads etc, people refer to digital processing as lighting adjustments and sharpening tools or HDR etc.
Ultimately it is not really your place to suggest that someone who uses different, more current methods to yourself is not of the same standing in the photography community.
BBW you are completely misreading what I'm saying here and spoiling for a fight that doesn't exist. So, lets look at some of your points and see if I can explain better. If not, we're just going to have to sort this over a pint or two sometime.
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Photography has evolved, unfortunately some photographers have not, it seems.
At the risk of being pedantic, photography has not really evolved at all because of digital capture. It's only the tools that have changed. Beyond our wildest dreams of as little as 10 years ago even but they are still just tools to used by artists and craftsmen.
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Ultimately it is not really your place to suggest that someone who uses different, more current methods to yourself is not of the same standing in the photography community.
You seem to think I'm some kind of judgemental dinosaur, stuck in a rose tinted world of chemical stench and twin lensed boxes. There is no-one using more current methods than me. I've been running a 100% digital workflow as far as my business in concerned for years now and I love it.
My whole point was that the tools you use and how you use them has no bearing on "your standing" as a creative artist at all. But if someone does most of the creative process outside of the camera, it's not photography. End of. Regardless of how fabulous they are and how amazing the end result is.
Photography does not happen in computers and it does not happen under enlargers. Let me use an example here, from time to time I build the sets for shoots myself rather than have a chippy do it. It can be helpful with bringing together my ideas for how the final images are going to look. It's instumental in the process of creating the photographs. It is not photography though.
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Currently the best photographers in the world use digital
Actually, lets just gloss over that rather sweeping generalisation.
My main point I supose is that photography is the art of creating images with a camera. It doesn't matter whether the light falls on to silver or pixels, it's not important. What is important is the principle of turning a vision into something viewable via the medium of the lens. If you want to do other things to the image to enhance, change, correct or adapt it (which I do all the time) then that's great and huge amounts of skill and talent exist in these areas of course.
BUT... it's not photography. Any more than mount cutting and framing are.
It's discussions like this that suck the fun out of photography , at the end of the thread I'm allways left feeling like a P&S noob because I dared to install PS on my PC
I find that really sad and it was certianly never my intention to cause any bad feeling. I think we should all be able to discuss these things frankly and openly safe in the knowledge that whatever our opinions, we all agree that the one most important fact, head and shoulders above all others is that the passion for making images is the most important thing of all.
It still all depends on what you're doing. Photography is just too big a subject to really apply rules to everything. Not every sports tog can do a good landscape. Not every landscaper can do portraits. I think you just have to find the areas you're interested in and then see how others do it and take what you can from it. For example if you shoot landscapes you have no control the light so sometimes you need to tweak things in PS. For studio you have control over everything so I guess its easier to get a better shot from the camera. Then of course you can brand anything under "Art" and go PS mad 
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