Tuesday, December 29, 2015
My main problem with Christian Science
**Christian Science is a bogus system with lots of money behind it (more in previous eras than now but still substantial), and still some political support. My complaint is that it is so BELOW visibility. Starting to read "Caught in the Pulpit" by Dan Dennet and Linda LaScola: stories of clergy who have lost their faith and yet are trapped in their clerical and pastoral roles. My problem is that I am as legitimately in their field of inquiry but no one knows or cares about about Christian Science anymore. What's so embarrassing and humiliating is that I got snagged in this 19th century relic and wasted over 35 years of my life on it. If I had been a Catholic or Episcopalian priest people would be interested in me and I might even get some speaking gigs, etc. But as it is, it's like being guilty of philately. Not worth anyone's attention. And I feel like the waste of my life should be worth somebody's attention and sympathy.
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As a former Christian Scientist who used to dream of becoming a "C.S.B." and who subsequently wondered if any actual "C.S.B."s had left Christian Science, I was fascinated to discover your blog and your posts. Not sure I totally agree that no one is interested in Christian Science anymore. I for one, would love to hear your whole story, and how you got into C.S. and how you got out of it! Is there a place I can go to read it? (or watch it on youtube?) I'd even love to find out which Normal Class you were in. As far as gigs go, I think at least some people would be very interested. I myself was asked by the Fellowship of Former Christian Scientists to tell my story at a conference they had last summer, which has now been posted to youtube. Since I am a pianist I intersperse it with selections on the piano. Although our post C.S. paths took us in different directions, you might be interested in my story at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kwZ0fXFpU2w I hope you'll write me back! My e-mail is dbrunell@utk.edu
HI David, thanks for your comment. And for the info on FFCS. I'll take look at your video. As for "my story," I think it's scattered among dozens of posts in this blog that I've been maintaining since 2002. My Normal class was in 1989 or thereabouts. In sum: I got into CS in 1976, at an unstable time in my life, at the suggestion of someone who left it a few years later. I started having doubts when after three years of CS treatment I wasn't cured of cataracts. After two operations I tried to get back in good standing with the church and eventually went to work at TMC. That lasted five years, during which time too much behind the scenes observations, wider reading than the same old same ole, and the coup that took out my patron and cohort, eroded most of the pillars of my faith. Fired in 2005 I landed in California for about ten years. I'm now in the Atlanta area.Thanks again for your comment.
David, just saw your YouTube video. If I had seen it before I replied to your comment I would have added that I fully transitioned from CS to atheism. As you peruse my blog you'll see this, but in case you don't I thought I'd add to my comment: I am not "spiritual" in the least. I don't belong to any kind of church. I don't even believe there was a single human person called Jesus who is the basis of the New Testament. I don't believe the Bible is historical in any sense other than it is what people wanted others to believe at the time they were first written. Having been religious since childhood, having been educated in religious schools, having been taught about CS, having taught it, studied it, lectured about it, written about it, etc, etc, all I have to show for it is an informed disbelief in any deity or spiritual dimension.
Mario, Thanks so much for writing! Yes, I already knew that you are now an atheist, etc. That's why I said in my first post that our post-C.S. paths had taken us in different directions. My C.S. mother's brother (my uncle) was also an atheist, a very fine thinker, and I certainly respect atheists. I noted with interest how the great famous atheist Antony Flew changed his mind and left atheism after he contemplated the mathematical impossibilities of the complexities of life coming together by mere chance. I found his review of Dawkins' book "The God delusion" very interesting:
http://www.bethinking.org/atheism/professor-antony-flew-reviews-the-god-delusion
I think I myself might have been attracted to atheism, too, but it's hard for me to get around the points that Flew makes. Have you read C.S. Lewis' book Miracles? It is fascinating to me how he discusses naturalism and supernaturalism, and articulates the self-contradiction of the naturalist position. As for the historicity of Jesus, it's always interested me that Mrs. Eddy said it wouldn't matter to her if he had never existed. However, although I knew that the communists tried to claim that Jesus never existed, I was under the impression that most scholars today believe he existed even though they are not Christians. The great Christian scholar William Lane Craig in his debates about the resurrection I thought had given evidence that most scholars today don't doubt that Jesus existed. But you have inspired me to research this further. I hope you agree with me that it is possible to maintain vigorous discussion and debate while still maintaining an atmosphere of cordiality and respect! And I'm still in awe of a CSB leaving CS! I think you must have been in the 1988 Normal Class and started teaching your classes in 1989. Did you ever know Carl J. Welz? I always loved his articles in the early 1970's when he was Editor of the periodicals, but then he had health problems himself, as you probably know, and had to use a kidney dialysis machine, so I'm told he was removed as a teacher. My teacher, who joined TMC in 1904 died in 1980. I was in her 1975 class. I heard that she got too sick during her last class in 1980 and had to have a substitute teach the last day for her. It's kind of sad and poignant. I don't know how much of my testimony you saw, but in case you didnt' see this part, my own mother died of cancer at the fairly young age of 62. When my father finally convinced her to go to the doctor, he said, "If only you had come sooner." And if there had been a C-section for my brother, he probably would not have been born with cerebral palsy. CS left a very dark shadow on my family. But I am now thrilled with all the wonderful logical things I have learned from C.S. Lewis, but I certainly respect you and others with differing views! Warmly yours, David
Somehow the whole text of my comment didn't get published so I deleted it and am re-publishing it in full:
Hi again David.
Yes, our paths have certainly diverged: you are now a born again Christian and I am a born again atheist. So be it.
I am not very familiar with Flew but a cursory check reveals that there is some controversy about his reputed reconversion to things deific. Even his late-found deity is far off and disconnected from human experience, which would make it irrelevant.
Regardless, my studies from a number of angles over a number of years yielded no convincing evidence for a “spiritual” dimension and all that it would imply about religion. A partial list of the authors I have read in the past few years includes Victor Stenger, Max Tegmark, Daniel Dennett, Stuart Kauffman, Sam Harris, Lawrence Krauss and of course Dawkins and Hitchens. On the existence of Jesus I most recently read Reza Aslan’s “Zealot” and concluded there’s probably more historical evidence for Santa Claus than for Jesus.
I did not come to my conclusions naively, nor quickly through some kind of magical insight. As I've stated often, for most of my life I've been steeped in religion. Prior to conversion to CS, I grew up in the Catholic church, was educated in Catholic schools and graduated from a Jesuit college. (Protestantism isn’t much different doctrinally.) And of course I’m intimately familiar with the corpus of CS literature, including the Bible, having devoted over thirty-five years of study, practice, writing, lecturing and teaching.
As I’ve said often in these pages I’m convinced that the drugging effect of religious belief on the human brain, its ability to create powerful hallucinations and delusions, explains much of the personal testimony that believers offer as evidence. These private experiences place religious experience outside of serious scientific inquiry since they cannot be tested without substantial bias. Also well known is humanity’s ability to construct complex predatory systems based on these neural perturbations, hence churches and their orthodoxies.
Just as I would not try to prevent a drug user from using, unless he/she is doing harm to others, or asks for help quitting, I would not try to dissuade someone from indulging in the drug of religious belief. But I always stand ready to assist those who are having difficulty breaking the spell.
As to your other questions:
Yes, Carl Welz was my first primary teacher. After he was kicked out I was retaught by a local lady, who was the grandmother of the child who died under my CS “care.”
My Normal class teacher was Michael Thorneloe, who I heard had mental problems and died a few years later.
I have a personal question for you: are you related to a Phillip Brunell, a pianist/conductor from Minnesota?
Dear Mario, I'm sorry to be so late in replying to your question as to whether I am related to Phillip Brunelle in Minnesota. As far as I know I am not unless we happen to be distant 10th cousins or something like that. I was fascinated to learn that Carl J. Welz was your primary teacher. I met him once when I was a senior in high school at Principia and we were on a musical tour, passing through Boston. When I told him about my brother being handicapped with cerebral palsy, he said "That is just a thing of mortal mind." I replied, "I've never been able to figure out exactly what 'mortal mind' means." To which he replied, "Get a concordance and read it in context many times and you'll figure out what it means." I was so interested in how he didn't just tell me but told me to read it in context and I would figure it out! So I did that, and I figured out that 'mortal mind' means the consciousness that experiences the illusion. But of course, Mrs. Eddy said that 'mortal mind' couldn't really exist, since God, the Divine Mind, was the only mind. -- A truly bizarre puzzle with no solution -- how mortal mind could seem to exist but not really exist. And it could only seem to exist to itself. Did you ever have students when you were a CSB who puzzled over such things? And I was also fascinated to hear you had Michael Thorneloe for Normal Class. I always liked Michael Thorneloe when he was on the radio program. I always thought he was very eloquent. I wasn't sure what you meant about a coup that kicked out your patron and cohort. Did you possibly mean Harvey Wood, when he had to resign after all those problems with the Monitor Channel and the money getting used up? I knew his daughter Melanie Wood when she was a classmate at Principia. A gifted student and a gifted violinist. I was so sad to hear later she got sick and died. I always liked Harvey Wood. He was very jolly. I remember talking to him one time and he said "nothing is external to consciousness" and I told him that's what I had been figuring out that CS teaches. And then I said so if you're teaching someone, don't you have to know that in reality they already know this truth since they're God's perfect child, already reflecting all knowledge. And I was so excited that he approved that and said "Yes, exactly!" But I did want to mention one more thing -- about the historicity of Jesus. I know some people think that the Bible is the only source for thinking that Jesus existed but I was fascinated to learn in my research how there are so many other secular sources from the time. I like this summary in Edwin Yaomuchi's article or chapter "Jesus Outside the New Testament: What is the Evidence?" in the book Jesus Under Fire: Modern Scholarship Reinvents the Historical Jesus, by Michael J. Wilkins and J. P. Moreland. He states, "Even if we did not have the New Testament of Christian writings, we would be able to conclude from such non-Christian writings as Josephus, the Talmud, Tacitus, and Pliny the Younger that: (1) Jesus was a Jewish teacher; (2) many people believed that he performed healing and exorcisms; (3) he was rejected by the Jewish leaders; (4) he was crucified under Pontius Pilate in the reign of Tiberius; (5) despite this shameful death, his followers, who believed that he was still alive, spread beyond Palestine so that there were multitudes of them in Rome by A.D. 64; (6) all kinds of people from the cities and countryside--men and women, slave and free--worshipped him as God by the beginning of the second century."
Ha! Almost two years later, "so late in replying" is an understatement.
Perhaps you didn't notice but I'm no longer adding to this blog site. I've continued it on Tumblr under the name of mondomoppo. Look for me there if you wish to leave further comments.
Thanks for your reminiscences about Carl Welz. He was as crazy as the rest of them but more glib. That was a very long time ago and I've moved well past any interest in him or the other characters in that creaky belief system.
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