Kellerman

Yeah, that doesn't sound like a healthy place to participate. A lot of communities on the internet aren't. It's not unusual for Internet communities to be echo chambers of toxicity, but it seems like people expect better of a Christian forum, because, well, Christianity, but unfortunately, that's not how humans work. I find it embarrassing for these people that this is what they spend their energy on. There's absolutely nothing about Christianity that obliges anyone to be bigoted and hateful. These are just bigoted, hateful people using religion as a justification for their bigotry. There are a million sins one could try and use religion to vilify and most people let most of them slide, so unless they're out protesting every business owned by a divorced person or every politician caught lying, then they can't actually care all that much about the sins that people commit, can they? Religion has been used as a tool of oppression for as long as there have been humans worshiping higher powers. Where I live, a lot of churches hang rainbow flags, and my church lights a rainbow candle at every service, but that's because where I live homophobia isn't very accepted in general, so it's not accepted in most churches either. How religion is interpreted will so much depend on the agenda of the social group involved. It's generally just wise to avoid joining groups of people hellbent on hating who you are as a person, regardless of what they use to justify it, even if it's ostensibly your own religion. Personally, as much as I identify with Christianity, I don't identify with a lot of "Christians".

Funny you mention Catholics, because I'm from a French Catholic area, and a lot of them take it pretty seriously that Pope JP2 said that hell wasn't a place, but the consequence of sin itself, a state of separating oneself from God. There's a big difference between how a child is taught about the concept of sin for themselves vs how the church is used as a tool of oppression against those who are different. I've met ultra conservative Orthodox Greek Christian leaders with extremely regressive social values, but who taught their own congregants a very compassionate version of sin, where sin is just part of being human and God loves them no matter what. I remember in the evangelical church in my hometown, it was all about personal shame. A deep sense of fear was instilled about how people should fear judgement for their sins from God and from others. Incidentally, that church was actually quite politically progressive. I absolutely see a correlation between repressive social values and how the concept of "sin" is used to promote hate, but I don't necessarily see a correlation to how sin is taught to children with respect to themselves. Perhaps there is in the US, I know that evangelical Christianity correlates with being conservative, so if it's the norm that American evangelicals teach really shame based "sin" concepts, then the correlation makes sense. But where I live, we don't have that obvious correlation of a dominant religion with a political alignment. Our Catholics are our largest religious group, and they're often very left wing here...which incidentally doesn't necessarily correlate with progressive social values. So the mix of religious affiliation, political affiliation, and social values is very muddy here. There is no "main" pattern.

I wonder if this is a global Christian thing or particular to certain sects or regions or cultures. I participated in two churches as a kid and the atrocious evangelical church in my hometown definitely taught that we kids should feel extreme shame about sin, but the Anglican Church taught us none of that, and the United Church ministers I know don't teach that.

In the main? What does that mean?

See, for me, I wrapped my mind around "sin" as being a fundamental human capacity for destructive behaviour, of which we are all capable. I worked with children for years, they are capable of incredible cruelty. We all are. So if I conceptualize that we are "born with sin" meaning we are all born with the capacity for cruelty, destruction, etc, then I'm actually pretty okay with teaching young children about being born with sin. It's pairs with the concept that none of us are perfect. If sin is the thing that is imperfect in us, then it's something that we can know about ourselves and care about without feeling like we're not worthy of love. If it's reframed to everyone, including children, that they aren't perfect, they can never be perfect. They are capable of hurting others, and in their lifetime they *will* hurt others and themselves, but that even then, they are still wonderful and worthy of love. That love is not conditional upon being perfect. Sin does not make us unworthy of love. It can be quite in line with what most parents already teach their children. It doesn't have to be a toxic construct of "you are born with sin therefore you are bad!". Do we teach children that they don't deserve to be loved just because they did something mean to their classmate and made them cry? Of course not. We teach them to recognize that they are capable of cruelty and to try and give love and receive it themselves.

I lived on a farm as a kid, you couldn't pay me enough to go back.

I wasn't raised Christian, but I was exposed to a few wildly different sects of Christianity and the main impression I got was that there a lot of ways to interpret this whole Christianity thing. I think the biggest change I went through was a re-interpretation of sin. I always cringed at the notion that we're all "bad" and need to ask forgiveness to be accepted into the exclusive Jesus-club in the after life. I was like "eff that", I left home as a teenager, there was no way I was subscribing to a father figure who was telling me I fundamentally wasn't good enough and that only he had the power to forgive me for how crappy I was, but I wouldn't know the reward for sucking up to him until I died. Yeah right, bite me "father". If I could reject my own parents, I could definitely reject this imagined self-righteous asshat. However, that was seeing it through a very literal and human lense. Over the years, through my total and utter rejection of the church, I came around to a far more esoteric understanding of "sin", "forgiveness", "God", or the "afterlife". I don't really use those terms. I don't see "sin", instead I have a sense of humans being fundamentally vulnerable and prone to destructive behaviours. I see "forgiveness" more as understanding and acceptance of everything we are, not despite our vulnerabilities. We are all part of the whole of existence, no matter who or what we are. No one deserves a place in it less or more because we are all part of the same thing. Like cells in a body that all make up the life. While some see it as asking for forgiveness, I see it as recognizing that the whole values all of us as part of it, no matter who we are. I don't see a "father" or a dude called "God", I perceive a concept of divinity that permeates all existence. A connectedness greater than the sum of our individual selves. I don't see an "afterlife" that is a place we go after our trial time on earth, where we get to live with our grandmas until our kids die too and we get to hang out with them again while playing card games with Jesus and Paul or some nonsense like that. Instead, I see time as a human construct, a limited lense through which we perceive existence. So I don't have any concept of existence before or after or corporeal life because I don't see time as relevant beyond that. So basically, I grew up hearing very human-organization type interpretations of concepts that I now don't feel should be interpreted in such limited, and human ways.

As I said, I must have misinterpreted. I've gone back and reread and see where I made my mistake. I'm on my phone and sometimes read too quickly. I did misread your initial post to imply that you *did* believe that Christianity was responsible. My bad. Very sloppy comprehension on my part.

PaulS, your recent answers seem incongruous with your previous posts that seemed to suggest that you *did* think that Christianity was somehow uniquely necessary or qualified to enlighten people, or something to that effect. I'm now really confused by your answers to my latest comments, so obviously I misinterpreted something along the way.

Totally agree. The question about whether or not Christianity caused the conquest and colonialism doesn't really resonate with me though, as in all of the history I've read, the powers that be that colonized were rarely very pious in their Christianity, and conflicts between kings and the church were rampant. Christianity and Islam are, however, tremendous tools of social oppression, which we still see so obviously in the US. So I can absolutely see how having that tool could have catalyzed/facilitated the process. You nailed it, this concept of a superior diety instead of the universe *being* the divine allows for a construct where everyone can (and should be) judged, which allows those in power not just the capacity to control through governance and economic forces, but through a collective governing of piousness, which can be twisted to whatever purposes those in whatever position of power wish. Can Christianity and Islam be used to promote love and kindness? Of course. But they can, and often are, used to promote oppression, hatred, and violence. The role of religion in society is what people make of it. Organized religion is a VERY human thing, and humans tend to be messy a-holes.

K, but the Inuit do know God. They have a deep sense of the divine and value connectedness with it. It's not like other cultures are walking around ignorant of the divine. They just don't subscribe to the particularly Christian doctrine version of it. From my perspective, there's divinity, and there are ways to understand it. Christianity is one way to try and understand it, which can be in itself interpreted in so many different ways. There isn't even a consistent "Christianity" out there. So if there are wildly different belief systems calling themselves "Christian", then how are they more valid than any other form of spirituality? I can tell you with absolute, 100% certainty that my spirituality has more in common with some of the Muslims, Indigenous, and Jews I've known, than MOST of the Christians I've ever known.

Do you not see how other religions and world views could impart the same positive values as Christianity? Do you truly believe that only Christianity promotes love and respect for human kind?

Most cultures haven't benefitted from Christianity, because the spread of Christianity was largely through conquest and colonialism. You can't separate the religion from its cultural and anthropological history, and Christianity has a horrific track record. Also, these weren't "minor" cultures, these were the dominant cultures in these areas in the past, and European settlers murdered and oppressed them into either total non-existence or minority status. The legacy of the Christian church in the world is not a humane one, and certainly not one any of us should be proud of.

Uh...I don't think so. I've mentioned a few times that I study a lot of Indigenous culture and spirituality and that pre-exists Christianity by tens of thousands of years and preaches some of the most beautiful beliefs I've ever seen in an extant civilization: gender equality, respect for gender non binary, equal respect for nature as there is for humans because humans are just part of nature, children viewed as gifts, elders respected, restorative justice, etc, etc, etc. Of course these myriad variety of cultures aren't a monolith either, just as Christianity isn't, but none of them were dark or loveless people until the Christians came along and absolutely ruined everything for them. It's a miracle any shred of their culture still exists today after what was done to them. So no, I don't think they were worse off before Christianity came to the new world. They were much MUCH better off.

I will never disagree with that. As I said, I'm quite fond of my people on many fronts.

Ehhh...Nordic people in Nordic countries might be on average happy, but they're also pretty well known for their racism and insular sense of culture. So I'm not convinced by this argument. Also, there are Christian societies all over the world. I mean, there's a reason so many clergy in North America are starting to come from South America. It's the fastest growing religion in China. There are tons of Christians in Africa, and do you know where the fastest rate of growth of Christians is in the entire world?? Iran. So I'm not convinced that Christianity around the world has become more racist over the past few generations. If anything, Christianity has become a lot less white. My family is from a Scandinavian country, and I have a lot of pride for what they do right, but I also know a number of middle Eastern folks who grew up in North America, who have moved to Norway, Denmark, and Sweden and quickly wanted to come back home because they felt unwelcome there compared to North America. Which is saying a lot. So I can't subscribe to a concept that atheism makes Norwegians less bigoted than the rest of the world. They're really, really great at taking care of their *own* people. My own Scandinavian extended relatives sometimes say things about Muslim immigrants that make my ears ring.

To me, the question that always needs to be looked at is whether this is cultural homophobia hiding behind Christianity. Where I live is quite LGBTQ open, and there are tons of LGBTQ friendly Christian churches. So progressives can choose one of these churches, and homophobes can find themselves a homophobic church, because as open as we are, it still very much exists here. So from my perspective, I don't really see homophobia as a Christian thing, I see it as a cultural thing that wraps itself in what they think is the protective coating of bible verses. This particular example also doesn't strike me as a Christian lying and being horrible to people. It sounds like the baker is a hateful, petty, lying person who is trying to justify her behaviour as religious instead of just being an awful person. What I wonder is if religion was magically removed from these communities, would they suddenly become less homophobic? I mean, the Bible teaches a ton of crap that they don't adhere to, and they don't seem to get overly butt hurt about it. So it seems to me far more of a social construct than a religious one. Like, how does this baker feel about making cakes for second marriages??? Or for non Christian weddings??? It always kind of fascinates me when homophobic people cherry pick their religious "rules" to be strict about, and how conveniently they fit with cultural xenophobia. Convenient, no? Besides, a boat load of these same "good Christian" folk, are just as bigoted against dark skinned people, even if they are also Christian. I guess I just see awful bigoted people, and see their religion as a secondary thing that they use as a justification for their fear-based hatred when it's convenient, but not at all a necessary prerequisite for their hatred, since they don't even have biblical justification for a lot of it.

Perhaps because I grew up in an extremely multicultural environment, I refuse to see "God" and "religion" in such simplistic, monolithic terms. God and religion mean such wildly different things to different people. How one relates to God and religion will depend heavily on what the norms of their upbringing were. If one is raised in a community where the norm is to be involved in a highly regressive, repressive, anti science Christian Church, then absolutely, it will take superior critical, independent thinking to reject that. And ABSOLUTELY there will be a huge correlation between analytical scientific thinking and a rejection of religion. However, if one is raised in an upper class Muslim community where it's expected that you excel in a STEM career, then pursuing science and maintaining faith is just normal. As for empathy, it's the same concept. If it's the norm to participate in religion in your community, then there should be no correlation between being religious and being empathetic, because it's just what normal people do. However, where I'm from, it's normal for folks of my cultural background to be atheist or agnostic, so it's also normal for the deeply empathetic to not be religious. Just as it's normal for them not to be particularly analytical. You can't examine religion on a large scale and draw social conclusions while ignoring social constructs. Religion is as much a social construct as it is a spiritual constructs and many of us would argue that it's far, far moreso a social construct. Hence why patterns of religion follow geographic patterns more than anything else. Why does someone "believe in God"? Probably because the people they grew up with told them to. Why does someone believe in a particular God? Probably because they were born somewhere in particular. It's rare that people switch religions, or become religious after being atheist/agnostic. It's not rare to reject a religion though, if their society permits it. Why does someone *not* believe in God? Well, that depends. Are they rejecting God or were they taught from the beginning not to believe? Because those will have two wildly different underlying motivators. I can absolutely believe that in one particular study that that finding makes sense. But I think it means very little in terms of making generalizations about the human experience of believing in God.

I don't know about the laws where you live, but where I live it's illegal for a business to discriminate against their clients, and I take huge issue with a business refusing to service a black person because the owners are racist. That violates our human rights laws. Then again, I live in a country that has hate speech laws, so the business owner isn't even legally allowed to express overtly hateful racist thoughts, much less put them into practice in a public facing business.

Let's see how best I can illustrate this... Time is just a perceived dimension, so I don't bother with any construct that involves any before or after life. I don't think it's relevant. What I do notice is that humans have for millenia perceived a concept of light and dark, good and evil, whatever you want to call it. It's affected me on a gut level the duality of humankind, the capacity for loving compassion and cruel detachment. My understanding of heaven and hell, as best as I can possibly articulate them are connectedness and division. We experience more grace the more connected we are and we experience more hell the more divided and disconnected. What this means beyond our corporeal existence, who knows, and it's not my place to say, but I really can't imagine that time as a construct exists beyond our extremely limited human perception. So no, I have no concept of a post-life hell that naughty people end up in for eternity because they didn't suck up to Jesus. That seems like a profoundly human interpretation of things, to which I give little credence.

I'm so grateful this isn't the reality where I live. These stories always blow my mind.

I gave an example of entire cultures who perceive spirituality as going beyond their individual experiences and even beyond human or living being experiences. For you, that's just more examples of individuals having their own perceptions, for me, it's an example of humans who are tapped into something larger than themselves. That's why I say I cannot and don't endeavour to prove it. I can't answer your question to any degree of satisfaction, because if it's totally reasonable and rational for someone to write off the experience and just neural perception. I know because I'm a former atheist, and no one would have been able to answer the question you asked me to any degree that would satisfy me. There's no way for me or anyone else of faith to provide any evidence that our experience of connection to something more than ourselves isn't just a delusion or trick of the brain.

K, I wanted to come back to this because I don't want to just not answer. However, I'm a bit on the back foot as I was quoted completely out of context and would have framed the quoted statement completely differently had I initiated my own contributions to this thread. So here goes. I study quite extensively traditional indigenous ways of knowing. There are a lot of I initiatives in the north to coordinate the traditional knowledge of indigenous people with scientific research in terms of managing resources because different forms of knowledge can work synergistically. Anyway, when I think of spirituality, I don't really come from a Judeo-Christian tradition, I come more from an Indigenous tradition because it's the first manifestation of spirituality that ever resonated with me. A huge difference in many north american indigenous ways of knowing is that all of nature participates in spirituality. In many indigenous languages most words are verbs, not nouns, because "things" are not devoid of identity. So a beach is not a noun, beach is what water does when it meets sand. So a human experience of this spiritual connectedness might be experienced through cognitive perceptions, but that of a tree is not. The tree's spiritual experience being no less critical than that of the human's. It can be posited that the human cognitive experience actually obfuscates the greater spiritual experience and is what makes it so difficult for us to connect with it, while an insect might do so with ease. That's just one perspective though, and only for the sake of illustration. My overall point is that *some* people have this way of knowing. Others don't, and that's fine. But I feel absolutely no need or capability to objectively prove or convince anyone of this way of knowing. "Way of knowing" is an indigenous way of describing their connection to nature and spirit, that's why I use that phrase, although like most translations of indigenous phrases, it's an imperfect translation. Only since connecting with indigenous ways of knowing have I found spiritual interconnections in certain interpretations of Christianity and Islam. So to put it simply, I see spirituality as a connection to something beyond myself and my own neural reactions to it, which I cannot and feel no inclination to try and prove.

It's a function of any toxic group though, not just religious ones. Religion just happens to be a very effectively rallying point around which toxicity can rally. Economics and politics are other effective rallying point that effectively stirs hateful and oppressive rhetoric. Anger and righteous indignation can be harnessed to fuel many toxic identities. Blaming religion is short-sighted. You could entirely eliminate religion and the problem would still persist in myriad other forms. Convincing, charismatic leaders who rile people up and stoke the flames of outrage will always exist, and they'll use whatever tools they have at their disposal to direct the anger and rage of their followers. People are pretty naturally inclined towards righteous indignation. It's an uphill battle to foster that into something good for the world, and it's very, very easy to harness it in a negative way. To be clear, I have plenty of disdain for a lot of organized religious groups, but that's because I have a lot of disdain for a lot of organized groups in general. I don't discriminate in terms of wariness of organized ideology. But one can be wary of something and value it at the same time.

I can't and don't try to prove anything of the sort. My argument is not that spirituality legitimately exists, and definitely not that I can prove it, my argument is that spirituality/religion can co-exist in a complementary fashion with science. I cannot be clearer about this. I do not see untestable things as incompatible with science.