I thought I'd briefly describe the Christian Science church and my history in it, as it's a somewhat unusual and controversial organisation (often confused with Scientology, but it's completely distinct from that). I'm sure I did this somewhere on RDF, but for completeness, it's maybe worth a mention here.

Christian science is regarded by many christian denominations as "non christian" since:

1 It doesn't teach original sin
2 It doesn't teach the divinity of Jesus
3 It doesn't have the traditional picture of hell

It was founded in the USA by Mary Baker Eddy in 1866 or thereabouts.

The basic priniciple of CS is that God is good, and he's omnipotent, omniscient etc. The consequence of this, which the church teaches, is that evil/disease/death is unreal. Yes you heard me correctly. Nasty stuff doesn't exist. You may well ask, "well how do you reconcile that with the evil in the world ?" The answer is that the evil in the world - all of it - is entirely illusory, and if you can just acknowledge this (through prayer, and focussing on God), then bit by bit, you will see the evil begin to disappear from your life. This is commonly applied to the treatment of disease - Christian Scientists are encouraged to treat disease through prayer rather than medicine. Of course the teaching is entirely false, and there have been tragic consequences of following it.

How does such a dangerous and blatantly false idea perpetuate itself ? Well CS people pray about all disease, the biggest proportion of which is, of course, self limiting disease. They declare triumph when disease is healed, and there are weekly meetings in the church to give testimony about such successes. The vast majority of these successes are cases of colds/flu and suchlike which are quite effectively handled by our highly evolved immune system ! CS people attribute all the healings to the result of prayer, and the delusion is perpetuated. Stories spread in the church, and you get the impression that serious stuff is cured too - cancer, broken bones etc.

My family's involvement in the church began in the late 30s (I would estimate), when my grandfather had really bad stomach pains. There was pretty poor healthcare then, and it was never diagnosed the way it would be today. He thought it was cancer. Someone at his workplace suggested he try a Christian Science practitioner (these are people to do the prayer/healing work for you for a small fee). He did and the problem went away. Thus started Christian Science in my family.

(Interestingly when I was in my 40s I started to have some nasty stomach pains. After tests for h.pylori and an endoscopy, the doctor said it was unexplained gastritis - quite common - just treat the symptoms with drugs to reduce the acid. I did and it went away after 6 months or so. I wonder if there's some genetic susceptibility to this condition that I share with my grandfather.)

The CS church is dwindling in membership now - less than 100000 worldwide (yeah yeah, Darwin awards...), so many churches are closing down.

Oh yes, forgot to mention, - I realised it was all bollocks and left !

I'm glad to hear you got out before some tragedy befell you. (Yes yes, I know, tragedies befall everyone, but those to which Christian Scientists are peculiarly susceptible are avoidable.)

A graduate student of mine (now 40 years ago) and his wife were devout Christian Scientists. When their son was born, they wrote to everyone explaining how Christian Science had enabled them to bring him into the world successfully without the medical treatments the doctors had told them they would need. Eleven months later, he died of curable menningitis. Near the end, they were desperate and took him to a hospital, at which point the Christian Science practitioner who had been "treating" him, cut them off and told them they would be responsible for his death. That's the kind of cruelty the CS Church is capable of.

After this tragedy, they left the Christian Science Church and founded Children's Health Care Is a Legal Duty, an organization I support financially. They are constantly lobbying to get "religious exemptions" out of state laws requiring parents to provide health care for their children. (With only occasional success, I must say. It's a very discouraging project in the god-soaked United States.) They are now, like me, old and weary, but they continue to fight. Their courage is an inspiration to me.

Sounds interesting. Thanks. I've never really read much about what they believe.

Sounds a little like Gnosticism. They believed that the physical world was either illusory or just an inferior creation (depending on the sect), which existed to distract us from the true, spiritual world of the good god. In their religion, the physical world was created by the evil god Yaldabaoth (identified with Yahweh), an inferior deity. Do Christian Scientists adopt a similar approach, and explain the origin of the "illusion" of disease and suffering on Satan? Or do they leave it unexplained?

Arcanyn wrote:Sounds a little like Gnosticism. They believed that the physical world was either illusory or just an inferior creation (depending on the sect), which existed to distract us from the true, spiritual world of the good god. In their religion, the physical world was created by the evil god Yaldabaoth (identified with Yahweh), an inferior deity. Do Christian Scientists adopt a similar approach, and explain the origin of the "illusion" of disease and suffering on Satan? Or do they leave it unexplained?

Yes, I've heard CS compared to gnosticism. They do indeed believe that the physical world is an illusion. They don't, however, blame it on Satan. A personal devil isn't part of the teaching, they blame disease on "Mortal Mind", which I suppose you could translate as "materialistic thinking".

It's an idealistic philosophy, talking very much about absolutes. The problem with dismissing suffering as "illusion" is that there is no explanation of where the illusion comes from. If god is good and omnipotent, how could such an illusion come into being ?

Roger Cooke wrote:I'm glad to hear you got out before some tragedy befell you. (Yes yes, I know, tragedies befall everyone, but those to which Christian Scientists are peculiarly susceptible are avoidable.)

A graduate student of mine (now 40 years ago) and his wife were devout Christian Scientists. When their son was born, they wrote to everyone explaining how Christian Science had enabled them to bring him into the world successfully without the medical treatments the doctors had told them they would need. Eleven months later, he died of curable menningitis. Near the end, they were desperate and took him to a hospital, at which point the Christian Science practitioner who had been "treating" him, cut them off and told them they would be responsible for his death. That's the kind of cruelty the CS Church is capable of.

After this tragedy, they left the Christian Science Church and founded Children's Health Care Is a Legal Duty, an organization I support financially. They are constantly lobbying to get "religious exemptions" out of state laws requiring parents to provide health care for their children. (With only occasional success, I must say. It's a very discouraging project in the god-soaked United States.) They are now, like me, old and weary, but they continue to fight. Their courage is an inspiration to me.

That's a terrible story Roger, I guess you're talking about the tragic case of the Swanns. The case is well known, mainly through their CHILD organisation, not though the church, which tried to sweep it under the carpet.

I know that my parents, though they were Christian Scientists, had so much love for me that they would never have allowed something like that to happen. There was just enough spark of rationality in their thinking to override their inclination to rely on prayer if things were getting nasty. I wasn't ill often but on the occasion I was, they used to make up some excuse like, "oh it's the law that children under 16 have to go to the doctor". As far as I know, they were making it up to justify their trip to the doctor with me.

CS is a bizarre set of beliefs including a healthcare component, that grew up at about the same time as homeopathy. This book by Martin Garnder of Scientific American fame is a nice account.

Christian Science! I had forgotten all about them. Takes me back to my dim and distant past. I never got involved and I always thought that somehow 'Christian' and 'science' just didn't go together.