Hurricane forecasters have gotten better at predicting a storm's track, but they still have problems predicting a hurricane's intensity—whether it will be a Category 1 storm or a Category 5 one, or somewhere in between. A variety of small factors—things like sea spray and sea foam—are thought to play a role in determining a storm's intensity. They're extremely hard to measure, and their effects even harder to understand.

While any efforts to help protect people and avert damage are to be applauded, the fact is that there's something more helpful to know than a hurricane's intensity: the intensity of good.

"Since God, divine Mind, governs all, not partially but supremely, predicting disease does not dignify therapeutics," Mary Baker Eddy writes in the Christian Science textbook, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures (p. 149). It could similarly be said that because God governs all, not partially but supremely, predicting the intensity of a storm does not dignify meteorology. Why? Because if God fully governs—and He does—God, good, is supreme. This means there's a tremendous intensity of good—a complete intensity that precludes the possibility of anything bad. Mrs. Eddy defines good as God (see Science and Health, p. 587), and the Apostle John declares "God is love" (see I John 4:16). The intensity of that good, of that divine Love, is what matters. Focusing on it, we'll bring that intensity of good more and more into our lives, as people have proved through the ages, Christ Jesus being the Master.

To focus on God, good, we have to let God and His goodness displace mortal images of thought that assume there's a power other than God—a power that can be violently dispatched in things like hurricanes. As Mrs. Eddy writes, ". . . so-called material sense creates its own forms of thought, gives them material names, and then worships and fears them" (Science and Health, p. 187). A little earlier she notes, "We should prevent the images of disease from taking form in thought, and we should efface the outlines of disease already formulated in the minds of mortals" (Science and Health, pp. 174–175). Why? Science and Health explains (p. 411): "Disease is an image of thought externalized. The mental state is called a material state. Whatever is cherished in mortal mind as the physical condition is imaged forth on the body." In the same way, mental states are "imaged forth" in the atmosphere too.

So how do we "efface the outlines of disease" and other destructive conditions? By letting God and His goodness into our consciousness, which is actually our natural state. Instead of letting a limited, erroneous, and ultimately illusory material sense foist its forms of thought on us, we can look to Mind, God, as the cause of every effect. Mrs. Eddy puts it this way: "Belief in a material basis, from which may be deduced all rationality, is slowly yielding to the idea of a metaphysical basis, looking away from matter to Mind as the cause of every effect. Materialistic hypotheses challenge metaphysics to meet in final combat. In this revolutionary period, like the shepherd-boy with his sling, woman goes forth to battle with Goliath" (Science and Health, p. 268). Each one of us can keep the highest form of spiritual man—the image and likeness of God, fully expressing Him—foremost in our thought and progressively defeat evil with the intensity of total good. Instead of delving further and further into matter and its notions of cause and effect, we can delve into our relationship with God and His laws—into a divine Science. As Mrs. Eddy says (Science and Health, p. 460),

Ontology is defined as "the science of the necessary constituents and relations of all beings," and it underlies all metaphysical practice. Our system of Mind-healing rests on the apprehension of the nature and essence of all being,—on the divine Mind and Love's essential qualities. Its pharmacy is moral, and its medicine is intellectual and spiritual, though used for physical healing.