(December 19, 2025 at 8:35 am)Leonardo17 Wrote: So I think everybody needs to rethink some of the more “traditional” approaches, try to see what purpose they served some 50, 100 or 2000 years ago and decide whether it is worth to sow social divisions and gender discrimination in a way that is based on these approaches.
By the way: I don’t believe that anybody who is unable to do this type of self-reflection can still claim to be part of any religious or spiritual system in our age. I think that this type of narrow mindedness does not belong to this century (not even in a religious setting of any kind).
I think what you're talking about here, basically, is the ongoing negotiation we have between nature and culture. This is something that we can never settle once and for all.
So we don't want to commit the "naturalistic fallacy," (as G.E. Moore defined it in his Principia Ethica) and say that because something is natural therefore it's good.
There are lots of natural things that we agree should be controlled or channelled. And like it or not religion has been one of the main methods that people have used to do this. But even if we reject the idea that a religion's traditions come from God, there are (or were) cultural reasons why people held to those rules.
You're right that all these things need to be rethought, pretty much continuously. And this happens whether we like it or not, since there will always be people who challenge the status quo, or wish to redefine what "natural" behavior consists of, and whether or not it is desirable. Within religions these things change continuously, as we see different people apply their religious directives differently. There are real Muslims who have more modern ideas about clothes, for example. And plenty of Christians who think that divorce is OK, despite this being about the only thing that Jesus specifically speaks against in the New Testament.
I agree that narrow-mindedness is, by definition, a bad thing. But some people have their reasons for rejecting cultural change, and if they're thinking people they can articulate why that is. As I say, it's an on-going negotiation, now and forever.
We all have boundaries of what we consider to be acceptable behavior, and it's normal for us to want some kind of enforcement -- either from government or just social disapproval -- that works against transgressions.
