Christian Science is a system of religious thought and practice developed by Mary Baker Eddy based on her study of the Bible and explained in her work Science and Health With Key to the Scriptures. In it, Eddy describes the teachings of Jesus as a complete and coherent divine science. Its adherents may be, but are not required to be, members of the main church, The First Church of Christ, Scientist, a branch church, or both. Its central texts are the Bible and Science and Health.
The major teachings of Christian Science include the belief that spiritual reality is the only reality and all else is illusion or "error." In contrast to conventional Christian theology, Christian Science rejects both the common Christian views of the atonement and the concept of Hell as a place of eternal punishment.
Christian Scientists believe that sickness and disease are the result of fear, ignorance, or sin, and should be healed through prayer or introspection. Combined with a belief that the use of medicine is incompatible with Christian Science healing methods, this has led to outbreaks of preventable disease and a number of deaths. Its claim that sickness can be healed through prayer rather than medicine, its rejection of science as illusory, and its attempts to present itself as science make Christian Science a pseudoscience.
Read more about Christian Science: Theology, Medicine and Science, Social Views, Church of Christ, Scientist, Christian Science Monitor, Journal and Sentinel
Famous quotes containing the words christian and/or science:
“All great amusements are dangerous to the Christian life; but among all those which the world has invented there is none more to be feared than the theater. It is a representation of the passions so natural and so delicate that it excites them and gives birth to them in our hearts, and, above all, to that of love.”
—Blaise Pascal (1623–1662)
“The motive of science was the extension of man, on all sides, into Nature, till his hands should touch the stars, his eyes see through the earth, his ears understand the language of beast and bird, and the sense of the wind; and, through his sympathy, heaven and earth should talk with him. But that is not our science.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)