Browns,
I think you're reading way too much into this. Lightroom is nothing more than Adobe's subset of Photoshop, designed for photographers, with a user interface designed to make make it more efficient to process images. As was discussed in another thread, digital photography requires that any image be processed in some way.
If you are shooting in the jpg format, your camera is taking the data captured by the camera's sensor and processing it to generate the final jpg image. If you look at most camera operator manuals, you will likely find that there are several ways to customize the final image to suit your tastes.
If you are shooting in the RAW format, that means your camera is simply keeping all of the data that the sensor captures. A RAW file is nothing more than a collection of data and must be converted to generate a usable jpg or tif image. This is where the RAW converter software comes into play, either the converter that comes with the camera software, with Photoshop, or a separate conversion software package.
Once the RAW file is converted, Photoshop, Elements, or Lightroom is used to adjust contrast, lightness/darkness, color density, etc.
This is no different from what was done with film. Different brands/types of film produce different types of images, i.e., some are more saturated, some more contrasty, etc. In a darkroom, either with the film-processing chemicals, printing paper, and/or printing techniques, the captured image is further manipulated to produce what the photographer saw/captured in the camera.
In true digital photography, software replaces the film, chemicals, printing paper (yes there are several printing papers, each designed to produce a different type of image quality) and is used to do nothing more than bring out the best of what the camera captured. Again, this is no different than we used to do in the darkroom. Anything beyond that gets away from actual photography and more into photographic art.
We all agree that too many people abuse the software's capabilities to generate images that do not represent the appearance of the actual coral. Those of us who practice photography only use the software to produce a final image that represents what we saw/captured in the camera.
Note that digital photography, particularly of corals, cannot be done without software, just as film photography cannot be done without chemicals in a darkroom. Do not condemn the software or those who use it for photography. Your only beef should be with those who use digital photography tools to produce images that don't represent reality.
gary