Talk:Christian Science practitioner

To merge or not

• I vote no to merging. This article is pretty factual in its presentation. It would be lost in the main article which seems to me to be a hodge-podge of opinions and arguments. The main article could be improved by more cutouts such as this article that deal with specifics. My parents were both CS practitioners, one listed in the Journal and one not. They both went through class with teachers who had been taught directly by Mary Baker Eddy. I was a member of both the Mother Church and a branch church, but I am now an Episcopalian. I am not a defender of the Christian Science religion, but I cringe at the lack of a NPOV by some opponents as well as by some proponents. clariosophic 19:02, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

• • The discussion on this in the Christian Science article was 1 for and 3 against merging. Accordingly I have deleted the merge notice that was put up in November 2006. clariosophic 21:19, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

New Merge Notice

• There is a new merge notice. I vote yes this should be merged. This article is a stub and the section in the main article Christian_science#Practitioners.2C_nursing_homes contains a great deal more information.MrBill3 (talk) 03:07, 7 May 2013 (UTC)

• I agree. The Christian Science article has improved dramatically since the merge was first declined. Furthermore it is difficult to understand what a Christian Science practitioner is without explaining what Christian Science is. And there is not much more that could really be said to expand this stub.Wikiuser1239 (talk) 23:03, 21 May 2013 (UTC)

• Disagree. I think this article can be expanded. I started doing it, but because of time constraints, had to stop and have not yet come back to it. Marrante (talk) 23:34, 1 June 2013 (UTC)

• Disagree - I also think that this is a topic that could be expanded and the faith healing article is already kind of sprawling and in need of some rewrite itself, in my opinion. Maybe someday I will have the time to take a deep dive and rewrite this if there is no merge. Rap Chart Mike (talk) 16:33, 2 August 2019 (UTC)

Degrees

Marrante, these are not degrees in any meaningful sense. [1] You said something about accreditation. Do you have a source outside the church that refers to these as degrees? SlimVirgin ^(talk) 02:10, 8 June 2013 (UTC)

Hi again, the article should be written using neutral language, so we can't call these healings, or the course credits degrees, and we also can't say that she discovered Christian Science. It's a religion and she founded it. SlimVirgin ^(talk) 03:13, 8 June 2013 (UTC)

Just saw these posts. (I only just put this article on my watch list.) I may have taken care of the degree issue. I understand the problem of it, but the source doesn't say "title" and they are legitimate degrees, made possible by a state charter. I hope the second ref with quote included makes it acceptable. As for the religion, it wasn't a religion until she had any significant number of followers. Before that, it was just a woman with some ideas and students who liked them. She called it a science. For those who don't recognize it as such, it is still the name of it and you can't "found" a science anymore than you can "found" ideas. You discover them. I put the word in quotes for you. Hope that helps. You have to remember that in 1866, she really didn't know what it was herself, so you can hardly call it the date of founding anything. Marrante (talk) 03:32, 8 June 2013 (UTC)

They're not degrees; they're two-week courses. Are there sources outside the church that call them degrees? As for science, it's not a science, regardless of the name; to say that she discovered something means there was something out there for her to discover. A lot of sources would say that what she encountered (not discovered) is what people now call the placebo effect. Other sources might say not even that. So this article has to find neutral language for all these issues. Bear in mind that you will also have to include criticism, per WP:NPOV, given that there has been a significant amount of it in reliable sources. SlimVirgin ^(talk) 03:39, 8 June 2013 (UTC)

Does the placebo effect also apply to situations like this and this and this? People tend to forget that students of CS rely on it to correct every inharmonious situation; medicine is restricted to bodily ailments (including mental health, I suppose). But I guess averting a plane crash would be outside their expertise. I have modified the article some and will continue to work on it to satisfy WP's requirements. Marrante (talk) 07:29, 8 June 2013 (UTC)

Forgot to add this just now. To refer to CS class instruction as "just two-week courses" (actually, one is just a one-week course) is like saying that the recent tornado in Moore, OK was just a 50-minute weather event. A lot can happen in 50 minutes, as the world saw. Now, imagine if that tornado had been on the ground for two weeks straight. It's a shame to be using such a negative image to convey something that is so unlike that tornado, but my point is that using the time frame to judge what happens in that class is as absurd as saying that tornado was just 50 minutes, what could happen? Btw, Albert Einstein studied S&H. I have heard this story for years, but recently found out that I know a woman who heard this about Einstein first-hand from the man Einstein asked, "Do you people realize what you have?" Wasn't it Einstein who said "time is relative"? Marrante (talk) 07:51, 8 June 2013 (UTC)

I thought of a better example today. Perhaps you know that people who witnessed the 9-11 attacks with their own eyes were terribly disturbed by what they saw, far more than those who merely saw the news. This all took place on a single day. Or this: a person is in a hostage situation and emerges two weeks later, physically unscathed, but begins having nightmares, loses his job because he can't concentrate and is a mental wreck. Would you pooh-pooh the two-week timeframe there too? I just tried to google for the Massachusetts Act of 1874 (Chapter 375, Section 4), which granted the charter to the college, allowing it to grant degrees, but did not get anywhere. I don't live near MA, but do have some leads I can pursue to get more information. However, consider this: CS had numerous legal challenges, particularly in the early 1900s, so if this charter had not been legitimate, don't you think opponents would have jumped on it as an easy target for them?

You wrote above, "As for science, it's not a science, regardless of the name; to say that she discovered something means there was something out there for her to discover". Do you know for a fact that there was nothing to discover? That's a pretty bold claim, more impressive than Fermat's Last Theorem. I can accept your not recognizing CS as a science, but, apparently neither is medicine. Google has many more hits just like these, 31,200,000 (minus 3) to be exact. Marrante (talk) 16:08, 9 June 2013 (UTC)

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