Category: reblogged

Church of Christ, Scientist (aka Christian Science)

1 Comment

I love when non-CS go to a CS service and share their views, it is always refreshing to get a new perspective and to hear what stands out as “odd” to them.

mhn125's avatarSteeple Stretch

photo 3-2 First Church of Christ, Scientist

Sunday #14 – Church of Christ, Scientist, 501 N. Alamo, San Antonio, TX

After last week’s “toe dip” into Scientology, I thought I’d check out one of the other religions often mistaken for Scientology – Christian Science. The church is one of several on the decline in America’s religious landscape. However, you might be surprised to learn that some pretty well known people were raised in the Christian Science faith: Doris Day, Robin Williams, Marilyn Monroe, Henry Fonda, Andy Rooney, Bette Davis, Gene Autrey, Carol Channing, Ginger Rogers, Val Kilmer, Joan Crawford, Elizabeth Taylor, Marlon Brando, and on and on.

Though the church doesn’t publish its membership numbers, I’ve read estimates of membership in the 100,00 to 500,000-range worldwide. However, many feel the number is closer to the lower level. Why is this? I can only guess its due to its unwillingness of the…

View original post 1,302 more words

• View from the Pew: Dispatches of a Church-going Atheist–Christian Science

3 Comments

An atheist live-tweets the Sunday Service based on the Weekly Bible Lesson “Reality.” He lucked out and got a congregation that could sing and had a good accompanist, I speak from experience when I say not everyone is so lucky.

gschwanke's avatarDIYThinking

Third in an ongoing series of dispatches from the pew (Week 1–Mormon Church, Week 2–Jehovah’s Witnesses).

Part 1 is a catalog of my live tweets from a Christian Science sermon titled “Reality”.

Part 2 details my impressions of a brief conversation with two Scientists (!) about the church’s finances and evidence for its claims.

Part 1

View original post 1,122 more words

A Loving Summation of Atheism to a Worried Christian Mother

What an amazing answer. I’m going to have to keep it around for when I (finally) tell my mother I’m an atheist.

Nate Pratt's avatarunpacked thoughts

Yesterday, an old friend sent me a message on facebook to a pretty extraordinary page on reddit. The page, which can be found here, is a Christian mother asking for help on how to react to and treat her son which just announced his atheism to her.

I applaud such a parent that reaches out for help in the way she did. She may also have sought out or is currently seeking help from a pastor or other church leaders, but she deliberately went to the atheism thread on reddit and asked for help. Wow. Way to go, mom! What better people to ask about how to deal with this than other atheists that have more than likely gone through very similar situations themselves?

There was one response which blew me away. So far, it’s one of the most articulate, non-threatening, loving and diplomatic responses to a question like…

View original post 1,092 more words

Religious Trauma Syndrome: How Some Organized Religion Leads to Mental Health Problems

2 Comments

Christian Science isn’t really into the hellfire, brimstone and apocalypse, but it does manage to instill a deep distrust of doctors/medicine, and some dangerously unrealistic ideas that you can heal yourself through prayer alone — and when that fails, it means you’ve failed, so you have to pray harder… Not a healthy cycle to fall into.

Valerie Tarico's avatarAwayPoint

Religious Trauma Syndrome- AnguishAt age sixteen I began what would be a four year struggle with bulimia.  When the symptoms started, I turned in desperation to adults who knew more than I did about how to stop shameful behavior—my Bible study leader and a visiting youth minister.  “If you ask anything in faith, believing,” they said.  “It will be done.” I knew they were quoting the Word of God. We prayed together, and I went home confident that God had heard my prayers.

But my horrible compulsions didn’t go away. By the fall of my sophomore year in college, I was desperate and depressed enough that I made a suicide attempt. The problem wasn’t just the bulimia.  I was convinced by then that I was a complete spiritual failure. My college counseling department had offered to get me real help (which they later did). But to my mind, at that point, such help…

View original post 2,655 more words

Infographic – Evolutionary Tree of Myth and Religion (reblog)

Awesome visual on the evolution of religion!

Matt's avatarJericho Brisance

In keeping with my affinity for educational visual aids, I simply couldn’t resist adding this one to the lineup. Excellent work from Simon Davies @ www.Facebook.com/HumanOdyssey. Thanks to Seth Andrews at TTA for the Facebook post.

My own thoughts… I had a conversation with a friend quite recently, and he asked me what I thought “the truth” was. I told him that at bottom, I think religion is simply something that people like to do. We fear death. We fear uncertainty. And we fear insignificance. Religion gives us an incantation against the parts of our own minds that grasp these realities. Further, we Christians are not special, and we do not have corroborating evidences that our competing faiths lack. The mirage of uniqueness grows from the soil of ignorance. We do not understand “the others”, and so we do not understand ourselves. Only deep reading about our faith from outsiders, and about other faiths…

View original post 14 more words

An Open Letter to Debi Pearl

Growing up, I knew many Christian Science parents who followed ideas that mirrored those of in To Train Up A Child wrapped in other ideals, under the guise of “parent-led” decisions – strict scheduling, extreme sleep-training, boot-camp-style potty training and parent-led feeding of a nursing baby.

At the end of the day, you have to meet the child where they are, it is not a power struggle for dominance (although it may feel that way at 2 am when the little one refuses to sleep). This is something I’m still working on myself, I find I have to stop and remind myself, “they’re only little kids” not evil masterminds.

Instead of turning to books like My First 300 Babies or the Babywise series (both praised in the Christian Science community as excellent standards for parenting and must-have books), why not try Peaceful Parenting? Appropriately this link (http://peacefulparent.com/pitfalls-obedience-training/) is about the pitfalls of obedience training, something the (conservative) Christian community seems to relish.

nickducote's avatarHomeschoolers Anonymous

Screen Shot 2013-11-08 at 5.31.15 PM

HA note: The following is reprinted with permission from Libby Anne’s blog Love Joy Feminism. It was originally published on Patheos on October 24, 2013.

Dear Debi,

I was very excited when I read your article of this past August, titled “The Roland Study.” In that article, you began with this opening paragraph:

My grandson Roland, who just turned one, has taught me more about the development of babies and toddlers than I learned my first sixty-plus years of life. It is not that he is such a fine teacher; it’s just that, now that I’m a grandmother, not responsible for meeting the daily needs of my children, I can seriously focus on what makes him tick:  how much he understands, what causes him joy or anxiety or fear, his interests and responses—and, most importantly, what a child is capable of learning at various ages.

I am…

View original post 1,196 more words