What Is Christian Science

got some more fan art here thank you guys so much this is some of my favorite sometimes people feel outclassed by really good artists I know because I feel outclassed by really good artists but the fact that you guys are drawing it for me at all means a lot to me so thanks again also subscribe to my second channel telltale science I'm about to do a video on the Big Bang Theory and how we know it happened the way it did so check that out on Tuesday so today I'm going to talk about a group I haven't mentioned before Christian science it probably isn't what you think it is it's a full-blown religion and it gets crazy let's get into it [Music] Christian science was founded by a woman named Mary Baker Eddy in the late 1800s just like Jehovah's Witnesses and seventh-day adventists and the millerite movement from which they sprung in the mid 1840s not to mention Mormons who were kind of founded in the 1830s apparently the 1800s were a popular time for up-and-coming cults it was the fastest growing religion in the u.s. in 1936 with about two hundred and seventy thousand members but by 1990 that number had dropped to around a hundred thousand we'll see the reasons for that in a minute for context jehovah's witnesses have about 8 million active members and Mormons have 14 million so that's really small considering anyways Mary Baker Eddy lived from 1821 to 1910 she believed that sickness is an illusion that can be corrected by prayer alone if you pray for health and you aren't cured then your faith wasn't strong enough she proposed that in a book she wrote in 1875 called science and health I'm sure you all can see where this is going this is kind of their main thing never taking medical treatment under any circumstances but I've been saying this about them for years they're gonna be the last ones standing evolution is significantly slowed on the rest of us natural selection and sexual selection don't have as much of a chance to operate on us as it once did the internet makes it much easier for anybody alive nowadays to find a mate no matter what problems they have so there goes sexual selection and with modern medicine natural selection doesn't apply as heavily as it used to nature's bad designs aren't dying off quicker than nature's good designs they're living about the same amount of time in many cases there is a slight decrease so natural selection does still apply but not like it did 500 years ago or even 100 years ago but Christian Scientists over here aren't accepting medical treatment at all natural selection is acting on that community in full force they'll be the first to develop a natural immunity to some major disease I'm sure of it in our case the artificial selection of medical treatment is acting on us more heavily than natural selection in the end though if we were threatened with a serious disease natural selection would apply anyways so they're just killing themselves off needlessly right now so let's take a look at their tenants straight from their web site there are six of them one as adherents of truth we take the inspired Word of the Bible as sufficient guide to eternal life okay nothing excessively strange about this one pretty standard Christian stuff too we acknowledge and adore one supreme and infinite God we acknowledge his son one Christ the Holy Ghost or divine comforter and man in God's image and likeness this one is kind of interesting because I thought it was talking about the Trinity at first but it turns out that they think that God is the only thing that actually exists everything else is an illusion which is why they think they can pray sickness away if their faith is strong enough three we acknowledge God's forgiveness of sin in the destruction of sin and the spiritual understanding that casts out evil as unreal but the belief in sin is punished so long as the belief lasts what does that mean the destruction of sin and the spiritual understanding that casts out evil is unreal what for we acknowledge Jesus atonement as the evidence of divine efficacious love unfolding man's unity with God through Christ Jesus the way shower and we acknowledge that man is saved through Christ through truth life and love as demonstrated by the Galilean profit in healing the sick and overcoming sin and death okay what is this garbage this is just meaningless nonsense does it actually mean anything at all let's break it down word by word so they're saying they accept Jesus death as evidence that God loves them then it says unfolding man's unity with God through Christ Jesus the way show er is that word salad that feels like word salad then it says they accept Jesus death saved us then there's more word salad through truth life and love as demonstrated by the Galilean profit in healing the sick and overcoming sin and death I guess I can take that to mean Jesus saved us and that was demonstrated by Jesus healing the sick and coming back to life it really just sounds like a bunch of garbage to me five we acknowledge that the crucifixion of Jesus and His resurrection served to uplift faith to understand eternal life even the illness of soul spirit and the nothingness of matter so it's saying they accept that Jesus death and resurrection built faith in people to understand eternal life and then more word salad you know this is another marker of a cult that wasn't on my checklist specific language that means something to the adherence of the Jehovah's Witnesses have things like disfellowshipped or worldly people or Jehovah or they'll have specific beliefs that are unique to them to separate themselves from everybody else like believing that Jesus died on a stake instead of a cross there's no telling if that's true or not they just pulled it right out of their ass and ran with it because it makes them different and they want their members to feel different from everybody else that's part of the cult mentality six and we solemnly promise to watch and pray for that mind to be in US which was also in Christ Jesus to do unto others as we would have them do unto us and to be merciful just in pure okay this one isn't as word salary they promise to pray for that mind to be in them which is also in Jesus they say that because they believe that God is everything and all matter is an illusion and then they say we should treat others how we want to be treated wow that was a bunch of both it was really hard to get reliable information on these guys they basically have a website and a YouTube channel and that's about all the information I could find about them because they're so small there don't appear to be many activist groups led by ex members or anything but there are some activists one of which I'm gonna shout out X Christian Science com seems to be a really good website dedicated to shining a light on it I'm glad it's around I only wish they got more exposure I mean they only had a hundred thousand members thirty years ago that number has to be smaller by now I can't even find an accurate figure for current members that's saying something that being said I want to mention some court cases involving Christian Scientists 1984 Sacramento California a Christian Scientist named Lori Walker's four year old daughter was sick with flu-like symptoms and instead of bringing her to a doctor they had a healing practitioner come pray over the kid the daughter Shantay died on March 9th 1984 17 days after symptoms started appearing it was meningitis easily treated if diagnosed early but there was a 1976 law that protects parents from misdemeanor child neglect charges for praying instead of bringing them to a hospital in this case though it was a manslaughter charge because the kid died which is a felony an article about the case says the practitioner meaning the person who prays for sick people refused to give a statement claiming some sort of a privileged but she said she gave spiritual guidance to the child the police officer handling the investigation sergeant Bob Burns said the church people aren't being very cooperative there are hundreds of cases like this dare I say thousands the Church spokesman Nathan Talbot said there were more than 50,000 documented success cases of spiritual healing I'm calling bowls let's see the documentation if there's so much of it that documentation never did turn up when another kid died in Massachusetts in 1986 Talbott said more than 700 Massachusetts children died while under medical care but no one would dream of suing those parents or doctors this just shows a shocking lack of self awareness and a very clear streak of extremism now I want to compare them to the cult checklist let's take a look one do they have language that has special meaning to the members I changed the order a little bit to put this one at the top of the list because they are really bad about this one just look at their tenants it's ridiculous I've been trying to read through their website and having genuine trouble getting through it I have to keep going back and reading the same bits over and over because they're just using word salad all the way through it it's the kind of thing only members can understand to do they proselytize they do but not as heavily as other churches they have a really elaborate nice expensive website with all their stuff on there I was actually surprised by how big and robust it was considering you don't meet many Christian Scientists at least not where I live so I'm actually gonna give them a pass on this one because there are worse ones three do they perform uncommon or unique rituals when I wrote this one my intent was to see if they had any kind of mind-numbing rituals that would put people into a mesmerised state like saying Hail Mary prayers over and over again or studying magazines repetitive rituals as far as I can tell they do at the very least study the Christian Science Bible and Mary Baker Eddy's and the Church of Christian sciences literature every day I'd say that would qualify for are they heavily guilted they are very heavily guilted into certain things like not taking medical treatment for example if they don't heal through prayer they're told they don't have enough faith even stage 4 cancer the most intense illness must be cured with prayer and of medical treatment I volunteered to help train people to run marathons at the local high school and one particular morning I arrived early and was doing my warm-up when I found a tennis ball on the track and I decided to dribble with the tennis ball I lost my focus and I stepped on top of the tennis ball and rolled over on my ankle I was able to hop back to my car and drive home praying all the time trying to realize that I would have everything that I needed and that I'd have the proper spiritual ideas to support me in this challenge when I arrived home I was able to get into my house and I immediately called the Christian Science practitioner and I look down at my foot and it was not in alignment where it should have been normally and there was a protruding bump on the side of my foot and in talking to the practitioner during that 3 minute call I actually witnessed the bump and my foot aligned back where it should have been originally these people are like faith healers it's complete delusion at this point when Richard Dawkins wrote his book The God Delusion he received letters from psychologists saying he received letters from psychologists telling him he should come up with a different term other than delusion because that's a real medical term a lot of them suggested a new word religion here's the definition of delusion an idiosyncratic belief or impression that is firmly maintained despite being contradicted by what is generally accepted as reality or rational argument typically a symptom of mental disorder it's that bit at the end about it typically being a symptom of a mental disorder but I'd still call it a delusion in this case here's a woman talking about how her identity theft was fixed with prayer I got a phone call from a collection agent who said I had a phone bill from New York City of 2,300 dollars which was ridiculous I had never lived in New York City I visited three or four days at a time never even had time to make a phone call but here this man was insisting and he had so much information on me my name my social security number of my address is my last address he just had so much information that it seemed to be that he could define me by all that in four and therefore conclude that I owed this bill well that night I had a very extreme pain more than I've ever felt in my life and actually let's call it a discomfort very uncomfortable and it came to me so clear that I'm not a matter body I'm an idea of spirit God and the pain instantly left the next suggestion that came into my thought was a charley horse in the back of my leg and I stood up and I said I am entirely the spiritual idea of God and in that moment that was gone so the whole thing those three temptations occurred in very short time and it was such a proof that every time an idea or suggestion comes of pain discomfort its identity theft it's not our true identity the only place we find our true identity is in an understanding of God which the Bible teaches us in which the Christian science textbook teaches us science and health with key to the scriptures that's where our identity is and in proportion as we know our true identity by knowing who God is in that proportion were freed from all limitations whether it's physical financial emotional companionship all of it all of it is is redeemed through an understanding of God that definitely feels like delusion to me okay moving on five do they shun yes they do shun if a member decides to take medical treatment or something they're pushed out of the community and the sickest part is that they force it on their kids they won't get their children medical treatment at all they'll just pray for them and if they die they'll just know their faith wasn't strong enough six do they bend the truth in the church's favor they definitely do just looking at some of these clips on YouTube these people are talking about how prayer healed their foot or their knee or solve their identity theft they're cured their skin problem it's all outrageous and disgusting to me and in this case I'm lumping these stories in with number seven which is do they practice the aquatic warfare I'm gonna say yes they lie and manipulate and service of the cause as we heard about earlier with their lack of cooperation with any in a criminal case that isn't even close to the only case either eight do they control information flow to members it's hard to tell because there's so little reliable information on them but they've already been proven to be extremists this usually comes with the territory so I'm assuming they do I can't call it based on the list but I'm calling it a cult based on their outlandish and extremist practices and beliefs there are cults like I said earlier I just hope they get more exposure they're basically doing whatever they want because they have so few members right now nobody's paying attention it isn't worth the mainstream broadcast to talk about it so I'll talk about it here good luck guys I hope we can bring it down together that's all I've got for you for now follow my new channel telltale science and follow me on Twitter patreon and discord thanks for watching guys [Music]

Channel: Telltale

Views: 151,017

Rating: 4.8061275 out of 5

Keywords: telltale, telltail, taletail, what is a christian scientist, christian, science, christian science, scientist, health, medical, youtube, video, cult

Id: dkpPJnEVqC8

Length: 15min 6sec (906 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 12 2018