CHRISTIAN SCIENCE has gained a unique place in today's religious discussion by uniting the religion of Christianity with the discipline of a science, a system that seeks laws that predict outcomes in a reproducible way. This union arose out of years of prayer and exploration, during which religious founder Mary Baker Eddy searched for a way to revive the healing method that Christ Jesus had practiced—one that, she believed, healed on the basis of divine laws. "In the year 1866," she explained, "I discovered the Christ Science or divine laws of Life, Truth, and Love, and named my discovery Christian Science" (Science and Health, p. 107). She was convinced that these laws could be taught, and that then many people could use them to benefit themselves and society.

But there is a substantive difference between science as a human endeavor, and the Science described as spiritual law by the founder of Christian Science.

To be regarded as scientific by the academic community, a physical theory must be testable. Many experimentalists today occupy themselves by attacking a new theory in the attempt to shoot it down or find its flaws. A favorite target is Einstein's Relativity Theory, which has been subjected to repeated attacks from many angles. A widely accepted point in the philosophy of science—as advanced by its main proponent, philosopher Karl Popper—argues that a physical theory is never really true, but merely survives until one tested example proves it wrong. In this way, Sir Isaac Newton's notion of absolute time yielded to progress when Einstein and others showed that measurements of time depended upon the observer's perspective. Ever since, the old idea of time as an absolute has been regarded as just a convenient approximation.

From the perspective of "divine Science," however, Mary Baker Eddy did not regard demonstrations of spiritual laws as capable of becoming mere "approximations" as time went on. Basing her conviction on the example of Christ Jesus, she affirmed that the Science of divine reality must be unaffected by human experience or knowledge. This Science of being describes Life as God—infinite, perfect, and unchanged throughout eternity. Its rules might be misunderstood or be subjected to malpractice, but a divine Science could not be falsified, proceeding from Truth itself.

What appear as infractions of divine law in human life don't invalidate divine Science. Mary Baker Eddy explained, for example: "If you or I should appear to die, we should not be dead. The seeming decease, caused by a majority of human beliefs that man must die, or produced by mental assassins, does not in the least disprove Christian Science; rather does it evidence the truth of its basic proposition that mortal thoughts in belief rule the materiality miscalled life in the body or in matter" (Science and Health, p. 164). Interestingly, the infraction of the divine rule, understood within the full statement of Christian Science, strengthens rather than weakens that rule.

Falsifiability frequently plays itself out in the public sphere. Consider, for example, the differing positions people take regarding theories of life and evolution. Religious leaders, biologists, philosophers, and government officials have weighed in on the side of at least two competing ideas. One position, which dates back to Darwin, says that life on Earth has evolved over millions of years by a process of "natural selection," in which offspring with the more advantageous life-qualities survive, while others die out.

On the other side of the divide, millions of religious believers support a theory called creationism, and contend that life began at a distinct time in history. They point to the Biblical record in Genesis (chapters 2 and 3) as the authority for the starting date.

While there are many details to these two concepts that go beyond the scope of this article, they have one feature in common, namely, that they're both human theories that are testable by physical scientific methods. Consequently, they'll be regarded as valid only until they're proven wrong. Physical science's falsifiability concept applies to creationism as well as to natural selection, since both treat life as finite and based upon material growth, maturity, and death.

The Christian Science textbook suggests that of the two theories of origin and creation—the literal Biblical view and Darwin's theory—the latter will be last to be disproved: "In its history of mortality, Darwin's theory of evolution from a material basis is more consistent than most theories" (Science and Health, p. 547).

Can we conceive of, and apply in practice, a scientific scheme in which rules are always legitimate—never falsifiable by evidence? An example from mathematics may help: Under the rule of addition, three plus four always equals seven. It doesn't matter how many people assert the sum to be eight or any other number. The rule remains inviolate and perfect. It always works.

That hints at the rules of divine Science. Once you know the truth of any situation you encounter in a scientifically spiritual way, you disarm falsehoods of any power to alarm or harm. If you experience a condition that appears to be unhealthy, you're already surrounded by the spiritual arms of divine Love, where all is harmony. Regardless of the nature of the challenge, the inviolable spiritual law of harmony is present to silence any false suggestion that matter can affect your well-being. There's no time, no place, where God's healing law is not applicable to your circumstances.

I've been comforted by Love's unchangeable law in a variety of situations. For example, after praying to acknowledge my unchangeable identity as part of God's spiritual creation, excessively dry and cracked skin from which I suffered was restored to its normal softness. Relationships, too, can be understood as governed by divine law. I've seen prayer restore normal harmony and cooperation in our home when friction threatened family peace—because as spiritual ideas of the divine Mind, we coexist in harmony. These are two examples of the infinite variety of applications of divine law, which is never falsified by material conditions, but always falsifies their claims to superiority.

The beauty of spiritually scientific laws is that they are true here and now, and forever. Like a correct sum in arithmetic, these laws exist everywhere, for everyone who acknowledges them. |CSS

After leaving Illinois, where he taught college science, David Cornell now lives near Seattle, Washington, where he does community volunteer work.

No human hypotheses, whether in philosophy, medicine, or religion, can survive the wreck of time; but whatever is of God, hath life abiding in it, and ultimately will be known as self-evident truth, as demonstrable as mathematics.

Each successive period of progress is a period more humane and spiritual.

The only logical conclusion is that all is Mind and its manifestation, from the rolling of worlds, in the most subtle ether, to a potato-patch.

—Mary Baker Eddy,

Miscellaneous Writings 1883-1896, pp. 25-26