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!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
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.
Really neat, excellent source of inspiration for fiction, video game plots especially.
Please don't attempt believing in any form of magic IRL.
That Marxism is the only path to reach Sophia and defeat the demiurge
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 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?
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.
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.
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?
