During the 10/9/22 Roundtable, the story was shared about a little boy in school who was asked to write down the number that was for nothing, so he wrote a zero on the blackboard. But then he returned to the blackboard and erased the zero, because nothing is not even a claim. The below shares a similar explanation of the nothingness of error, and the specific handling of it in demonstrating Christian Science:
“Christian Science . . .says that so long as there is a human being on earth, there is but one way to be saved, and that is specifically to declare the truth and specifically to deny the error. And you are making no progress whatever as a Christian Scientist unless you are doing this. The specific denial of specific claims of error is the only way it can be done. Don’t imagine that you can float on some fleecy cloud with silver lining and simply declare yourself into heaven by saying that everything is good. A human being must get down into the mud, as it were, just far enough and long enough to see that mud claims to be something, and then demolish it.
Suppose there were a blackboard here and 2 + 2 = 5 were written there. I tell you that two and two are four, but you insist that two and two make five. I refuse to pay any attention to the error – I refuse to recognize it and you say that it is there just the same, that it doesn’t make any difference whether I refuse it or not – my ignoring it does not change it any. What have I got to do? I must rub out 2 + 2 = 5. We must rub out error and there is no use in trying to demonstrate Christian Science on any other basis” (Lectures and Articles on Christian Science, by Edward A. Kimball, pp. 459-460).