Kellerman

This is not at all my experience as a scientist nor a doctor.

I'm in a major Canadian city

See, in my social environment, Christianity is nothing like that at all. It's just not part of our social structure here, so I have no sense of that being fundamentally a "Christian" thing. I conceptualize it as social political thing common to certain areas. It's the same way I spiritually identify with certain Muslims, but I don't at all relate to the particular Muslim community in my neighbourhood where the local Muslim community center just lost it's non profit status for promoting hate speech. As for paganism, well, some of it was quite open, while others were quite prescriptive and oppressive. It depended on the culture of the practitioners at the time. Paganism is more a general term for the loose concepts of spirituality that weren't dogmatically defined by an authoritative religious body. It's not so much that they were flexible for individuals, although they often were, but more that there was no authority to tell people what to believe beyond their small, insular communities. This is why there were so many gods honoured in the Kaaba in Mecca. The oldest spirituality where I live is practiced by Indigenous people, who have been here for tens of thousands of years, and whose values center around the value of all life, not just humans, which is pretty common to older spiritualities. Spirituality/religion didn't start being primarily about humans until humans started interacting more with other humans than with nature. Of course nature took center stage when people were raised with a few other humans among a vast world of plants and animals with whom they interacted and depended on for survival. And of course humans took center stage when animals and plants became things that they owned.

For sure. For many people, their version of religion or spirituality means being part of and sharing beliefs and values with their family and friends. Religion is both a spiritual and social construct. It's the social construct side where certain groups clash with other social groups, because all social groups are prone to clashing.

And I'm not trying to shut down that conversation. I'm contributing to it from my perspective as someone who has studied and participated in various religions for most of my life. It's worth comparing religions. It's also worth comparing within religions. Are a Christian and a Muslim who are the same ethnicity, from the same socioeconomic background, with the same upbringing, living in the same community, doing similar jobs, with kids who go to the same school more culturally and spiritually similar to each other or more similar to a Christian in rural China and a Muslim in Brunei respectively? I'm genuinely asking. Are the ties that bind people identifying to the broadest definition of a religion more fundamental than the cultural factors and interpretations of the meaning of those religions? Different people will think very differently, and it's interesting to understand why. Personally, as someone who is very, very abstract in my concepts of Christ, God, and divinity. I have more spiritually in common with certain Muslims than I do with a lot of Christians.

In very simple terms, progressive generally means seeking change and conservative means maintaining things as they are. Change is difficult for many, and holding back change is difficult for many. It's always hard, and it's always a conflict. I personally look forward to the day that society finally progresses past my personal values and I can maybe join the conservative side of the spectrum. What it all means in terms of Christianity is socio-historic-context specific. Today's conservatives may have been yesteryear's progressives. Today's progressives could become tomorrow's conservatives. It all depends on the social circumstances of the era.

Compassion and love for all living things. I came to Christianity through the study of the brain, the body, and human behaviour. All behaviour is understandable, which means all behaviour can be viewed through a lense of compassion. It's that sense of compassion that brought me to Christ. It was the lack of compassion that drove me away from organized "Christianity" for decades. Eventually, I realized I can be a Christian on my own terms, find my own place in the world of religion, and promote compassion and love.

I too am a meditator, not a verbal prayer. I come from the Buddhist angle of spirituality, which is to move away from conscious thought in order to connect with a higher state. That's where I find my spirituality. If I use words, I'm just talking to myself.

Depends on the Christian you ask. Different interpretations of Christianity allow for different degrees of flexibility in terms of belief. I think it's more important for you to determine for yourself what you believe, and then from there find the group that best fits your spiritual support needs. Don't worry about what others think. Basically, no matter what you believe, there's a Christian out there that thinks you're wrong. So don't worry about it.

M'eh. Yes, coming through darkness can absolutely catalyze a move to a more spiritual or enlightened state, but I don't for a second believe it's necessary. Nor do most people who experience profound darkness come out the other side in better shape. On average, most will come out with severe psychological wounds, and it's the process of healing those wounds than promotes a heightened openness to the divine, not the experience of the darkness itself. What is true is that enlightenment, divinity, spirituality, whatever you want to call it, does generally require a certain degree of discomfort with the status quo, with the norm, with what society tells us we should care about. Many people won't engage that discomfort unless pushed past their limits, but one can be pushed past limits and out of their comfort zone in so many ways. Darkness isn't the only path to light. It's just the one that is easiest to understand.

Where I live is generally quite progressive, so the Christians are typically quite progressive. I don't really see such thing a "progressive Christianity", I just see groups of Christians who are progressive and groups of Christians who are conservative, and some are even fully regressive. A progressive social group will focus on the aspects of their religion that support their progressive beliefs, and a regressive group will find content to support their beliefs. Personally, I think any group that promotes judgement of others is a psychologically unhealthy group that is also likely putting barriers up against spirituality. That's just my personal opinion, and I try not to have opinions about the spirituality of others. Note, that doesn't mean I don't have opinions about the religions of others. Religion is a human behaviour, spirituality is a divine experience. What does Christianity in general mean to me? Well, I came here through a lifelong journey of finding compassion and connection to all living people and all living things. Is that progressive? Maybe, maybe not. Are my values progressive? Yeah, but I was progressive when I was an atheist. Granted, I don't come from a place of having had an identity as any type of "Christian" that I'm now trying to redefine according to progressive values. I have always had progressive values, and have recently been inspired by Christ's teachings, on my own terms.

I don't live in the US, so where I am, Christianity doesn't really correlate with those types of ideologies. So yeah, I was pretty horrified to see it in the forums I checked out, when I just wanted to chat about cool spiritual stuff with cool spiritual people. Instead I found pages and pages of hate. I think those people need a little less religion and a little more divinity in their lives.

It's also my ending point. I'll intellectualize religion to the ends of the earth because religion is a human behaviour and that's my wheelhouse, but I don't intellectualize divinity. I don't intellectually understand it because I can't. I suppose that's my "faith". It's not a belief in anything, it's an absence of belief, because I cannot and don't conceptualize it as a thought.

Yes, and if you take it further, those life experiences come from somewhere. People in certain regions, periods of time, from certain cultures, etc are more likely to have certain experiences. Certain beliefs didn't exist until certain groups decided to promote them. Certain concerns didn't exist until certain problems arose. There's a lot more behind individual beliefs than the individuals believing them.

I don't have words for it, and really try to avoid defining God. I *feel* it, but don't examine it too closely.

Well, religions aren't monolithic entities. Rating a religion is like rating an ingredient, which can be utilized so differently depending on the recipe and skill of the chef. Is Islam a violent religion that oppresses women, Christians, and Jews or is it a peaceful religion based on profoundly feminist values that is protective of Christians and Jews? ...depends who you ask, what translations they use, what context they apply to scripture, how things are interpreted and through what lense. Holy texts say a lot of things, and who won what war and when changed the structure of a lot of languages, which changed a lot of what those texts mean over time. Words evolve, interpretations evolve, cultures evolve, everything evolves. Religions are neither monolithic nor stagnant. I can't possibly assess them in comparison to each other since there's barely a capacity to compare within them in quantifiable ways.

I don't think it's about finding a hook to lure people. Identity politics are a tough nut to crack. I think what's critical is to try and understand from where those identity politics arise. What are the forces generating such identities, and why? These beliefs come from somewhere, and it's not from "being a Christian".

This isn't a science-religion divide though. This is a political identity divide, and that's a huge difference. Membership to certain identities do tend to correlate, such as some particular Christian identities with some particular anti-science identities. That's not something fundamental to religion though, nor even to Christianity. The scientific and medical community tend to be on the side of certain issues, which are polarizing in terms of identity politics. But there's nothing inherent about being Christian that commits anyone to any particular identity. I can be a Christian and want nothing to do with many groups that identify as Christian. Certain groups with certain ideologies are opposed. Science and Religion can get along just fine, and often have in history.

The separation of science and religion is a historical, political one, but has never been legitimate. Science isn't a system of beliefs, it is a method of gathering and examining information. Religion is basically the same thing, but a different method and sometimes different information, although sometimes very similar. Any good scientist who is honest with themselves knows that they deal in interpretations. I have found that people who believe science and religion to be oppositional have only a rudimentary knowledge of science or history or religion, or all three. Just as one cannot take any given science out of its context, neither can one take any given religious history out of its context either. Just because at times certain dominant religious organizations have been conservative, while scientists have been generally progressive doesn't mean that that is their natural and fundamental positions. In their origins, Christianity and Islam were profoundly progressive. Downright "hippy nonsense" at the time. Christianity and Islam have also been the religion of highly oppressive and conservative groups. Scientists have at times been at the forefront of modern knowledge and progress, but powerful bodies of scientists have also been deeply repressive of knowledge and progress as well. Science and religion, as I said before, are simply methods for understanding, how they are weilded within society depends on the social structures within context. Does one rule out the other? Absolutely not, that's like asking if non fiction negates the need for poetry, if documentaries negate the need for animation, if nutritious meal replacement shakes negate the need for culinary skills. I myself am a trained scientist, retired doctor, and considering training for ministry. I've needed to study science, medicine, history/anthropology, literature, art, linguistics, psychology and counselling AND religion to even begin to understand the things that really matter to me. And I'm nowhere near done. As you see, science and religion are only puzzle pieces. It's not one or the other, it's both, combined with a rich tapestry of the rest of what matters in life.