I believe that truth and true religion are one and the same. The founder of my church said:
"The first and fundamental principle of our holy religion is, that we believe that we have a right to embrace all, and every item of truth, without limitation or without being circumscribed or prohibited by the creeds or superstitious notions of men, or by the dominations of one another, when that truth is clearly demonstrated to our minds, and we have the highest degree of evidence of the same.”
I would like this to be my last response. I don't want to endlessly debate or make you feel like you need to endlessly respond. If you would like to respond with some links to the evidence that supports a complex model of gender as being more in line with reality, I'd be happy to take a look (without responding, of course, with my opinion on that evidence).
I'm glad you place a high value on the truth. I do as well, though I come at it from a proudly irreligious standpoint.
There is a vast amount of evidence about things like medical transition improving mental and physical health in trans people [1], as well as cisgender people experiencing gender dysphoria when they are misgendered (many cis men react quite badly if you call them a girl or a woman!) It all aligns far closer to the modern scientific view of gender than a traditional religious view.
But I would just like you to consider two things:
One, that I personally have gotten objectively measurable benefits from transitioning. You are welcome to check out my body of professional work and writing. Is there any point at which any of it suggests I am deluded about anything? I am generally quite a rigorous person, and my work is valued for its careful attention to detail. It would be quite strange if this is the one thing I was deluded about—that's not how such illnesses manifest.
So I am an honest conveyor of my experiences. But I'm not special! It would be quite strange if I were the only one.
Two, that the people who came up with the traditional view of gender were functionally illiterate. They didn't even have germ theory back then, let alone statistical modeling and Bayes' theorem! Basically everything we know from before the advent of modern science is subject to rigorous questioning, and is often plain wrong. Of course the modern scientific view of gender is a much better fit to reality—it is informed by studying actual lives through sophisticated means! Modern ways of knowing are better than pre-modern ones. That should be your prior.
"The first and fundamental principle of our holy religion is, that we believe that we have a right to embrace all, and every item of truth, without limitation or without being circumscribed or prohibited by the creeds or superstitious notions of men, or by the dominations of one another, when that truth is clearly demonstrated to our minds, and we have the highest degree of evidence of the same.”
I would like this to be my last response. I don't want to endlessly debate or make you feel like you need to endlessly respond. If you would like to respond with some links to the evidence that supports a complex model of gender as being more in line with reality, I'd be happy to take a look (without responding, of course, with my opinion on that evidence).