It's an interesting thing to see progress butting heads against tradition.
In the realm of science, since Giordano Bruno was burnt at the stake, we have seen the resistance of received wisdom to hypothesis. Christians could not tolerate the idea that the earth moves around the sun or that life evolves. Conservatives cannot abide the notion that free enterprise can do damage to the environment. Dogmas don't flex. But these kinds of obstructions can be removed by means of observation, which has tended to show that what has been received is not always so wise after all. We can see that the earth revolves. We know that life evolves. The earth warms as carbon emissions increase.
In the realm of morality, we see something similar. For instance, ideas of life stand in the path of individual female choices and ideas of sin stand between homosexuals and legitimate forms of marriage. But in these instances, there is no means of resolution. One person's morality is not necessarily worse than another's. A traditional Christian view of life or homosexuality is justifiable by simple appeal to a text, which itself is backed by a proposition which cannot be disproved - that a disciplinarian God has made rules to which we are obliged to adhere.
Now one can point out inconsistencies in the Biblical text. It can be read many ways. But those who choose to pay particular attention to certain lines will find justification in them. The leaders of the South saw support for slavery in the Bible. Who can deny it is there? And it took a war to overcome that belief.
The Islamic world now faces similar choices. Does it want democracy and the truths of science? Or does it want to develop as the Koran demands?
The choices we make between adopting new ideas and conserving old ones define not only our conversation; they mark the difference between peace and conflict. Can we change peaceably? Or are we doomed to war?
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