One way to understand the thrust and effect of various religions is to take them as attempts by cultures to enshrine their practices and attitudes as eternal, and to provide for their ongoing imposition and preservation, in saecula seculorum. Judaism around 800 BC, Catholicism around 400 AD, Islam about 650 AD, Hinduism around 6000 BC, Buddhism around 1,000,000,000,000 BC/AD. Et cetera.
The Reformation and Enlightenment set Protestant Christianity’s clock to around 1700 AD, a major “improvement”, but resists much change after that.
But no era has the “right” to lock in all succeeding generations into its world view, even though this is perhaps the fundamental wish of every culture at any moment of time. In any case, one can certainly pick and choose between eras that one currently wants to emulate, if any. Ali, e.g., prefers the Enlightenment period over medieval Bedou Desert Arabism–not necessarily as an absolute, just as a huge improvement. But at heart the problem is the “lock-down” impulse.
Cultural relativism claims to be free of all that, but misses the mark totally. The point is not that all world views and cultures are equal and equally deluded; it is that they are powerful, and use many tools including religion to perpetuate themselves. Choose carefully and don’t give a blank cheque against your moral and mental bank account to any of them.
