Actor Val Kilmer, a follower of Christian Science, has died of pneumonia at 65

Reported here:

... His daughter Mercedes told The New York Times the cause was pneumonia. He was 65. He had been battling throat cancer for several years. ...

A lifelong Christian Scientist, Kilmer was unwilling to confirm his cancer diagnosis when it was revealed by Michael Douglas in 2016. He combined his fascination with Christian Science founder Mary Baker Eddy with his love of Mark Twain in a screenplay that featured the two figures. He toured the country with his one-man show “Citizen Twain” for several years, which incorporated film and live readings of the humorist’s work. ... 

It's not called quackery for nothing, but now it's a $13 billion business in the United States

 Brown writes that, before he became the founder of chiropractic, Daniel David Palmer was a Spiritualist and practitioner of animal magnetism. Palmer subscribed to eclectic spiritual ideas based on the unity of God and nature and the idea that humans can restore themselves to a state of harmony without depending on divine intervention.

Palmer claimed to have received communication from a deceased physician who taught him the principles of chiropractic—a term he invented in 1896, combining the Greek words cheir and praktos to mean “done by hand.”

Palmer considered introducing Chiropractic as a religion in its own right but ultimately settled on describing it as an amalgamation of Christian Science and modern medicine. He wrote that it was based on adjusting the body to permit the free flow of “Innate Intelligence,” or just “Innate,” which he explained as “a segment of that Intelligence which fills the universe” (i.e. God) found in each individual.

More. 

How could ancient peoples be so gullible as to believe preposterous myths?

Because they were people just like us.

Of all the offspring of Time, Error is the most ancient.

-- Charles Mackay

  

 

 

76% of American Christians are now the very antithesis of disciples of Jesus

Relevant Magazine, August 23, 2023, here:

76 percent of Christians now believe God wants them to prosper financially. That number rises among younger generations, with 81 percent of churchgoers between the ages of 18 to 34 and 85 percent of churchgoers 35-49 holding onto that belief.

Luke 14:33 :

So you cannot become my disciple without giving up everything you own. 

      

Tara Isabella Burton traces the origin of this prosperity gospel heresy to a new England faith healer named Phineas Parkhurst Quimby who influenced Mary Baker Eddy, the founder of Christian Science.   

Dubbed "the mind cure" and "New Thought" historically, it mushroomed into a diverse number of iterations over time both religious and secular beyond this humble beginning, not the least of which was in Norman Vincent Peale. Today it broadly goes by the term "manifesting, the art and quasi-spiritual science of willing things into existence".

The latter succinctly encapsulates what faith-healing, prosperity Pentecostalists like Kenneth Hagin and Ken Copeland styled "calling those things which be not as though they were" (Romans 4:17). They believe the Christian's tongue has the power to create something out of nothing, just like God.

Burton aptly describes it as

  the instinct to conflate spiritual forces, political and economic outcomes and our own personal desires.

Here, for The New York Times.

Christian Science, the church which paved the way for legislation allowing every crackpot cult to hurt and kill families and children

Dying the Christian Science way: the horror of my father’s last days:

It was church officials who engineered the 1970s US federal regulation that led to virtually every state enacting laws allowing parents to neglect children and get away with it. ... [C]hildren have died of everything from pneumonia, seizures and sepsis to a ruptured esophagus, mostly due to medical neglect – and the name of every one of them should be nailed to the door of the Mother Church. ... It could disappear today or tomorrow or years from now, but its own beliefs, and the religious exemptions it has seeded in laws all across the US, will leave a disaster in their wake, resulting in lives ruined, in unnecessary suffering and death, and in legislation that allows every crackpot cult and anti-vaccination zealot to sacrifice their children. Christian Scientists can renounce Eddy all they want, but it will not undo the evil they have done. That is their legacy.