 Posted Sunday, October 15, 2006 11:54 AM
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Digitalican,
Welcome to the forum and thank you for taking your time to respond to my invitation.
I think divergent points of view are essential to crystalizing our own thoughts and beliefs.
Precisely the reason I feel the need to include the Christian Way link on the articles related to CS beliefs.
Dispute has arisen only when the perspective offered by christianway.org is not directly relevant to the article at hand but relevant only by indirection to the article's subject.
Your point of view appears to be that the articles on MBE and S&H are not relevant to CS beliefs. I have yet to understand that perspective. I yielded to the authority of the Wikipedia mediator, but am also sure that he does not have a level of experience with CS necessary to understand the relationships represented.
... It is, after all, only one small link. That, however, is the way link clutter comes -- one small link at a time. One of the goals of trying to build an encyclopedia is to keep each article concise, accurate, relevant and uncluttered...
You present a good case for why the controversies of CS should be referenced by a single line rather than another article or section of an existing one.
Don't talk Soapergem into doing your work for you. Make your edits and be responsible for them.
No intent to talk anyone into doing any work on my behalf. Ultimately, after seeking counsel and doing duly diligent research, I will be responsible for my edits. Would it have been better for me to have gone ahead and made the edits?
So into the edits we go...
I'm puzzled about edit #1. I think I need further explanation.
<< Change the first paragraph to:
Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures was written by Mary Baker Eddy. >>
The issue seems to be that the S&H article is merely about a textbook and that by not containing information about CS doctrine it was therefore inappropriate to link to a site which discusses CS doctrine. Might have that wrong, but it was a basis for my suggestions which would lead to me being agreeable to deleting the CW link.
As it reads now, the paragraph cites S&H as the foundation of the Christian Science movement. The foundation at least implies doctrine and beliefs.
Edit #2 is also strange. Unless our ESP licenses are up-to-date (and I turned mine back in several years ago) we can't lay claim to understanding what did or did not inspire someone other than ourselves to do something. Empathy even at its best can never tell us why someone has done something, only what we would have done if we were them. I would agree entirely with the inclusion of the word "alleged."
<< Change the second paragraph to something like:
The author claimed it was inspired by the biblical studies she began in 1867, following her alleged healing experience during the prior year. (the citation to Peel's reference to her suing the town of Lynn for irreparable damages six months later should be included) >>
You're right I should have included a citation. That she claimed to be inspired by biblical studies is obvious to me and CSists, but not to a general audience. One such citation might be S&H viii:24-32 which reads:
In the author's work, RETROSPECTION AND INTROSPECTION, may be found a biographical sketch, narrating experiences which led her, in the year 1866, to the discovery of the system that she denominated Christian Science. As early as 1862 she began to write down and give to friends the results of her Scriptural study, for the Bible was her sole teacher; but these compositions were crude,--the first steps of a child in the newly discovered world of Spirit.
Based on that, the date should also be changed.
I would conterpropose for edit #3: The book itself posits a wholly metaphysical view of Christianity in which sin, disease, and death are not of God, and are therefore not real. Further, it suggests that by striving toward a spiritual view of the world as God's creation, these "false beliefs" can be overcome. This summarizes the content entirely within the context of what the book says, without referencing beliefs or practice.
<< Delete the following paragraph which represents the CS core beliefs:
The book itself posits a wholly metaphysical view of Christianity in which sin, disease, and death are not of God, and are therefore not real. Christian Scientists believe that by striving toward a spiritual view of the world as God's creation, they can overcome the "false beliefs" of these adversities. >>
I don't see an essential change. The paragraph still presents the beliefs of CS and therefore makes external links which discuss those beliefs relevant.
I agree entirely with edit #4.
...and this is how we iterate to a solution.
<< Change the last full paragraph before the bullets to:
The second section, "Key to the Scriptures", examines parts of Genesis and Revelation, and provides a Glossary of Eddy's metaphysical interpretations of commonly-used terms from the Bible. The final section, the last 100 pages, are testimonies of people who had claimed to have "been reformed and healed through the perusal or study of (the) book". >>
Glad we're making progress.
My desire, in all of this, is to clean up the various Christian Science articles on Wikipedia and tie them together with an infobox, which lists all the related articles.
I captured the article titles and URLs into an Excel spreadsheet and began to categorize them. Here's what I have so far:
Main Topic
Biographies
Books - not CS Published
Organizational Structures or Entities
Organizations - Associated
Publications
Misc.
I appreciate To Go Be Man's willingness to organize and work on an article on Controveries in the Christian Science church. Far from excluding information critical of the church or marginalizing it, this should make such information more readily available to those looking for it.
As to writing the controversies page, how complete do you think it needs to be before first posting? For example, could we start with an outline and let it grow?
Do Go Be Man
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Posted Sunday, October 15, 2006 1:11 PM
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Do Go,
I just made a few changes to the MBE article.
tmcl
tmcl
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Posted Sunday, October 15, 2006 1:27 PM
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tmcl,
I just made a few changes to the MBE article.
Good edits! You came through as expected. 
Do Go Be Man
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Posted Sunday, October 15, 2006 2:11 PM
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I just read the article on Christian Science itself in Wikipedia. I liked it a lot, and don't see anything offhand that I think needs changing in that article. Some of it sounded as though it could have been written by Erol. Erol, if you wrote some of it, I want to express my appreciation for what you wrote.
tmcl
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Posted Sunday, October 15, 2006 2:39 PM
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One of the errors in the article, "Church of Christ, Scientist," is this:
[Eddy claimed that] Quimby's services comprised only that of "paid polisher" as an assistant over the ensuing, long-term writing and iterative editing of Science and Health with Key to the Sciptures, work over which she maintained penultimate approval (her spelling and other copyeditorial skills being sometimes less than reliable).
Whoever wrote the above is confusing Quimby (who died several years before Mrs. Eddy even started writing Science and Health), with MBE's copy editor, James Henry Wiggin. I'll have to think of a way to correct this.
tmcl
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Posted Sunday, October 15, 2006 2:49 PM
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Do Go,
As I read more of the Wikipedia articles, I notice that controversies regarding Christian Science are referred to here and there in some of the articles. I guess you feel that there is a need to assemble all of these in one place? Also, there seems to be some overlap among the various articles in the material they cover.
tmcl
tmcl
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Posted Sunday, October 15, 2006 5:18 PM
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tmcl,
I notice that controversies regarding Christian Science are referred to here and there in some of the articles. I guess you feel that there is a need to assemble all of these in one place?
Actually, all I wanted to do was add the Christian Way link to articles that include CS doctrine such as I found in many other articles. The controversies page was someone else's idea. Believing in the KISS principle, I would still prefer just to add the link.
Do Go Be Man
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Posted Sunday, October 15, 2006 5:22 PM
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TMCL,
I can't find a blush icon, so you'll just have to imagine one...
But thanks, and yes, I did have an input here and there.
Erol
<< I just read the article on Christian Science itself in Wikipedia. I liked it a lot, and don't see anything offhand that I think needs changing in that article. Some of it sounded as though it could have been written by Erol. Erol, if you wrote some of it, I want to express my appreciation for what you wrote. >>
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Posted Sunday, October 15, 2006 7:14 PM
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I was busy tonight editing the Wikipedia S&H article. As I said on the S&H Talk page:
Results of my invitations to join the discussions in the Christian Forums have been very encouraging. Several of the edits today resulted from that positive dialog.
Were this article strictly about the book itself, the case for removing the Christian Way link would be stronger in my mind. The article, however, does provide discussion of Christian Science doctrine, which is entirely appropriate for the movement's textbook.
Of the five current external links, four provide direct access to resources on Christian Science doctrine including the text, a blog by a Christian Science practitioner, and a site providing other Christian Science study resources.
I don't intend to crosspost everything, but the point about the subject matter of the undisputed external links seems important to the ongoing discussion.
Do Go Be Man
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Posted Sunday, October 15, 2006 7:33 PM
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Do Go,
I just read the Science and Health article. An error in it that stood out to me is the satement that Science and Health underwent 200 revisions in Mrs. Eddy's lifetime. Actually, it went through over 400 editions in her lifetime, most of which included some revisions to the text, but which should not be seen as major revisions. The book underwent a limited number of major revisions (I believe under 10). I have seen a document put out by the MBE Library that describes the changes in the major revisions, but I don't own a copy of it.
tmcl
tmcl
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