christian science is wild y'all

apparently

- sickness and disease are illusions
- only prayer can literally heal
- prayer heals best in the absence of medicine and therapy!
- except glasses are okay and so are dentists and getting broken bones fixed but otherwise no medicine!
- healing prayer is an argument with oneself about the fact that you're not sick
- except you can also pay a Christian Science practitioner to pray on your behalf

okay so here's a quote from Christian Science Practitioner Frank Prinz-Wondollek, 2011

"[A]ll healing is a metaphysical process. That means that there is no person to be healed, no material body, no patient, no matter, no illness, no one to heal, no substance, no person, no thing and no place that needs to be influenced. This is what the practitioner must first be clear about."

at first glance this actually looks like a cool revolutionary idea: ignore the idea of one or more pigeonhole diagnoses and try to treat the patient in a way that doesn't involve assigning labels or prescribing one correct treatment regimen for the patient to either follow or die

but then it becomes clear that CS is rejecting not only bad etiology, but also literally everything else about the very concept of treating someone

it doesn't leave room for any sort of concrete treatment

Christian Science is just etiological nihilism

I mean if we're gonna just deny that sickness/disease/malaise/dysphoria has a cause outside of God, why not soothe your soul by denying that *anything* has a cause outside of God

if you're willing ignore that pesky link between cause and effect in the context of sickness, just go ahead and generalize that to the rest of your life-experience