Editorial May 8, 1965 Issue

Christian Science and School Courses

Helen Wood Bauman

The reluctance of some Christian Science parents to permit their children to take school courses concerned with evolution and related subjects for fear these may foster atheism needs careful review. If such courses include the study of diseases and their causes, parents should firmly seek exemption for their children. This would call for careful investigation. But there are courses dealing with evolution that have a place in a pupil's general education.

In the first place, such subjects concern the mortal sense of man and do not infringe upon the truly scientific knowledge of man as God's image, which the Bible and Christian Science reveal. In the second place, a child who is well grounded at home concerning the origin of the real man will not be confused by theories of evolution and will not be influenced by them to abandon what he knows of spiritual man and his development. Instead, a child will see the contrast between God's spiritual creation and its material counterfeit.

The Christian Science student will not be facing these courses as does the fundamentalist, who accepts literally the story of Adam and Eve in the second chapter of Genesis as the authentic record of the creation of man. Instead, the Scientist will know that this second record is a remarkable allegory, the purpose of which is to illustrate the ways of the carnal mind in its claim to create and control a mortal, fleshly sense of man, the counterfeit of God's man.

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