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Historically fascinating. Deeply antithetical to materialism, so of no practical interest.
in my opinion the gnostics were a set of disparate groups in early christianity. at best gnosis (knowledge) meant an explicit rejection of the roman imperial system, slavery, debt, gender, property, and the ideological superstructure that went along with it (the illusions created by the demiurge), in favor of a quasi-materialist search for truth and meaning in the manifestations of god in the world around us. at worst it seems to have meant a complete rejection of the material world, with gnosis meaning that knowledge derived from hallucinations.
either way, they were disorganized. their rejection of roman imperialism did little to end roman imperialism. the bishop system (from biscop, from episkopos, literally “overseer”) was able to fit within the roman system, so as that spread and cemented itself as the official religion of the empire over the 3rd and 4th centuries, the gnostics were labelled as heretics and squashed. if they really wanted to defeat the demiurge they should have formed a vanguard party.
so to develop on @CascadeOfLight’s idea, it’s marxism-leninism-maoism that’s the only path to reach sophia and defeat the demiurge
no gnosis, no right to preach!no gnosis, no right to preach!
:michael-laugh:
I’m upset that I’ll never be able to quote this in real life because no one I know exists at the intersection that is Maoist Gnosticism (Gnostic Maoism?)
The ‘worldbuilding’ of it is quite cool. Funny worm god (yaldabaoth), interesting ‘secret twist’. Ties to more ancient religions (manichaeism).
Shame that one of the primary historical ‘reasons’ it exists is antisemitism. TLDR, is it was made as kinda of a way to say ‘the old testament (jewish) god was a fake evil demiurge, and to worship him is to worship evil’. So, just a different way of wording ‘jews actually worship satan’.
Jewish gnosticism also existed, maybe even before Christian gnosticism. Arguably Christianity grew out of a Jewish gnostic movement. I think that some Jewish sects differentiate between the gods “El” and “Yahweh” from the old testament and they consider “El” to be the demiurge and “Yahweh” to be the god of light.
It would make sense that this occurred after some heavy cultural borrowing from the zoroastrian Persians who had a dualistic cosmology
dont christians also worship the demiurge?
Yes, but its beside the point. With Jesus being jewish, its jews who ‘tricked’ people into worshipping the demiurge. Its that classic “jews are tricksters, christains are just people who got tricked” bullshit. And, just overall, a lot of their teachings are just, inherently ‘twisting’ a lot of jewish era mysticism around, which is of course funny in a way, considering how much they also steal from jewish mysticism.
Regardless, all of that is more or less history; I don’t think people calling themselves gnostic today are generally specifically anti-semetic. And its not like Christianity of the era was particularly accepting of jews.
He comes across evil in the book
Really neat, excellent source of inspiration for fiction, video game plots especially.
Please don’t attempt believing in any form of magic IRL.
shit i gotta go return all these candles
That Marxism is the only path to reach Sophia and defeat the demiurge
Interesting example of religion being used to gain truth beyond scientific understanding. Gnostics considered themselves strangers in a strange land. They were among the first to reconcile the belief of a good God with a shit world without “might makes right” apologism. They also identified the conflict between the ideals religions preach and the fact that humans are base, unconscious animals. Consciousness/personality is only an ad hoc phenomenon for most people. Their brains make decisions based on instinct then the personality is tasked with justifying those decisions to other members of the social group.
What the Gnostics get wrong is adding in a bunch of Christian themes and stories to an already complete pseudo-hermetic philosophy. It could be considered a Christian “Skillful Means” vis-à-vis Buddhism. But I think you would have to assign an intention when it was probably just a mixing of religions.
truth beyond scientific understanding
Alchemists formed the basis for modern day Chemistry. They were wrong and had no idea why they were able to do the things they did but that doesn’t mean they weren’t able to find truth.
Vikings commonly threw bones of their ancestors in smelting furnaces because they believed the souls would strength the iron. They were right, bone and poor quality iron formed a rudimentary type of steel which did indeed make a stronger blade. The explanation is entirely chemical, but they were able to reach a truth beyond their current level of scientific understanding.
Acting like people from the past were just big dummies who did things for no reason is idealism. They couldn’t scientifically understand why these things occurred but they still understood the effects of the world around them.
- again!
the explanation is the thing that’s claimed to have truth value but it’s complete bullshit. Observing a process and not having an explanation for why exactly it works is not beyond anything, There are a fuckload of drugs we use in modern medicine that we don’t really know all the biochemistry going on, what value is there in inventing ghosts as an “explanation”?
doing something because you observe a result isn’t “no reason”, the story they made up isn’t finding truth at all.
the explanation is the thing that’s claimed to have truth value but it’s complete bullshit.
The truth in this example is that you can make iron stronger by adding bones. Being incorrect about the process doesn’t make the result any less truthful.
Observing a process and not having an explanation for why exactly it works is not beyond anything
In that case, it’s elephants all the way down. I can understand how trees work and discover new things about them without understanding how sub-atomic particles interact in their leaves. You think having no understanding of the underlining phenomenon makes the things you observe and discover above it untruthful. But everything we know about the universe today relies on principles we don’t understand yet. By your own definition, all of modern science is false because we haven’t yet filled in certain gaps.
the story they made up isn’t finding truth at all.
Was the Plum Pudding model just something J.J. Thomson made up? In a historical epoch in which ghosts, werewolves, and gods were presumed to exist, this was an extremely logical explanation. Being wrong doesn’t mean these people were just guessing and talking out their ass.
It’s horseshit, just like every other aspect of religion.
Knowledge is reactionary. Don’t know things.
What do you think about Gnosticism?
I have no opinion
Missed opportunity to say you’re agnostic.
The demiurge is a better solve to the problem of evil than anything orthodox christianity has to offer. That elegance makes it attractive. But as someone else mentioned it’s antithetical to materialism and ultimately not of any real use.
Because of the dualism, it’s really easy to get navel gazy with it. Like, why make a cursed world better instead of just pursuing internal spiritual salvation and just eternally looking inward?
Most religions aren’t good to be taken at face value.
At the very least, the spiritual understanding of an adult should be a lot more developed and sophisticated than that of a small child. Tens of millions of people accept a religious summary that is designed to be spoonfed to children. Also, children should not be taken to religious services until they are old enough to consciously choose this themselves.
I don’t know about the last part. Children need structure. Ritual and drama speak to children quite well.
Children should not, by any means, be actively primed and trained to be adherents of a particular religion. I shouldn’t have to spell that out, it’s not controversial or dubious at all.
I don’t suppose you experienced going to religious services regularly as a kid?
I don’t really have one, I don’t know much about it.
Religion is cool and good if it is used as a path or tool towards personal growth or introspection. Religion is bad and harmful when it is used as a path of outward projection.
I know people of pretty much all religions who don’t use those religions to excuse harmful views and instead use those religions as an excuse to push themselves to be better humans and I see nothing wrong with that.
I know this community is borderline anti religious so blast me in the comments
what does any of that have to do with gnosticism? there’s very little organized these days, even less in the anglosphere, and the newage crystal hippie woo stuff isn’t much older than scientology.
I don’t like the “g”.
any unfalsifiable assertion is worthless trash and isn’t a path to knowledge unless you really want to undermine the entire concept of knowing things. not sure how one would simultaneously claim to know stuff and that knowledge can’t hold certainty.
note that we don’t strictly need to be able or particularly likely to find or demonstrate the counter-evidence. Evolutionary biology would have to be reevaluated if modern rabbit fossils were found in the precambrian sediment layers, but rabbits are small so we could go a while simply not finding them.
not sure how one would simultaneously claim to know stuff and that knowledge can’t hold certainty.
That’s a soluble problem. Solutions like pragmatism have been offered.
