you know, maybe if you people could make the decision to take the hard road - the non-steroid path - despite genetic shortcomings, it wouldn't be so impossible to reach the next level. If everyone made the decision to go it without steroids, it would add some momentum to bodybuilding's stagnant progress.
How would that add momentum, specifically? I fail to see how NOT taking steroids will make it more possible to "reach the next level".
My issue with them is that it creates an uneven playing field. Some are more genetically gifted than others. That is the way it is meant to be. The notion that plateus can't be overocme without steroidal aid is ridiculous to me. Maybe we'd have made greater advances in the science of training had steroids never come to prominence.
And what "playing field" are you speaking of? As I've mentioned before, when I go to the gym, I don't think of it as a competition between myself and other recreational lifters.
As can be said of performance enhancing drugs in other sports (take cycling for example, a very heavily drugged sport)-- take away the drugs and the same people who are at the top would still be there. Just possibly that overall times, etc. would be somewhat higher (again using the cycling example).
Who ever said that plateaus cannot be overcome without steroids? I honestly don't know of anyone who thinks that way.
About advances in training-- well, for one thing it's not like there's been any shortage of theories developed over the past 50 years saying shit to the effect of "this new fabulous 'x' training system produces 280% better muscle gains than training system 'y' ". And personally I don't think building muscle and/or losing fat is rocket surgery. As has been stated by Lyle McDonald- "Ass busting work + consistency + time = results."
Don't take steroids. No matter how you look at it, it's a shortcut.
And what is wrong with taking a shortcut? What is so terribly wrong about wanting to achieve your bodybuilding/weightlifting goals sooner rather than later? When you sit down and think about it..... who gives a flying f**k?? I just simply cannot understand the thought process behind some natural trainees who will look at a steroid using lifter and think "man, that guy's nothing but a cheater", "he just couldn't build any muscle without steroids", blah blah blah. On the contrary, why is it that you rarely (if ever) see steroid using lifters on message boards or elsewhere bitching about how "weak and pansy natural trainers are"? And it's the steroid users who are supposed to have all the rage? Please...

Hell, you'll live longer
Could you please point me to some cases of people dying in which anabolic steroids are the specific culprit? I would also like to know precisely why I will not live as long as I would if I didn't ever take steroids. *This may also be a good point to note that not everyone who uses steroids abuses them.