>the Kybalion >vibrating in negative frequencies
Mister blogposter be actin' real high and mighty for someone who got filtered by falling for 19th century fanfiction and new age schizobabble
What? Dualism is moronic. It takes 5 minutes to refute. If you self-selected into dualism of all things you’re an idiot by default. Monism is a relatively difficult mistake to overcome, but dualism? Ha.
> Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made.
i love how the gospel of john is so clearly gnostic that whoever edited it felt the need to include this line at the very beginning
If the absolute is distinct and separate from the phenomenal world, it would be epistomelogically impossible for you to have any means to absolute knowledge and thus any knowledge that tells you that dualism is correct. It’s self-refuting by default.
1 month ago
Anonymous
Even in the most basic Gnostic formulations the absolute is the divine spark caught in matter, so it is not distinct from the phenomenal world but mixed with it.
1 month ago
Anonymous
Then that’s not dualism moron
1 month ago
Anonymous
Except Gnosticism is dualistic. Did you wander into the wrong thread?
1 month ago
Anonymous
Are you stupid? You just said Gnosticism is dualistic and then described a set of beliefs that are not dualistic as a matter of fact. Either Gnosticism is dualistic and what you said about spirit in matter is bullshit or Gnosticism is not dualistic. There is no alternative.
1 month ago
Anonymous
Gnosticism is dualistic with respect to the problem of evil. It doesn't hold the creator god responsible for suffering. Good and evil are two independent principles. Is this not a dualism?
1 month ago
Anonymous
We’re not talking about ethical dualism. When we spoke of dualism, we meant something like a picture of reality I.e. there’s a world of matter and a world of spirit. Gnostics generally accept either dualism or monism in this regard, that there is a world of matter and a world of spirit or that there is one world of both matter and spirit that is in reality one. Both of these are self-refuting anyway because they dissolve any means to absolute knowledge and thus knowledge itself. That’s why Gnostics, Buddhists, etc. always insist on some bullshit intuitive knowledge that defies reason, because they cannot evade this problem. They’re unreasonable by default (there is no justification for belief).
1 month ago
Anonymous
Knowledge of the the spirit world just is self-knowledge, so it neatly sidesteps your epistemological cat wrangling. Gnosis is a radically immanent knowledge by definition, not a transcendent knowledge of transcendent worlds. You're not as sophisticated as you think you are. The gnostikoi are presented as precisely those who do have knowledge by acquaintance of a higher order
1 month ago
Anonymous
Self-knowledge is a non-value. To say that any knowledge derived from knowledge of the Self or is self-evident just begs the question. Before it is the case there really is a Self, you must have a way to know that. And you don’t, not besides your Self, I mean, which is begging the question. So no, you actually don’t have any knowledge at all.
This is why Gnositicsm, Traditionalism, and all these other sorts of oriental delusions are moronic.
1 month ago
Anonymous
Knowledge of my (observable and scientifically supported) existential predicament -> knowledge of a specific kind of discrepancy between self and the world. The gnostics extrapolated from this discrepancy a whole ontological drama about the inner man and the hostile machinery of fate. That's all. A perfectly coherent cosmology, or I should say anti-cosmology, anti-ontology. You demonstrate no mastery of Gnosticism or Buddhism.
1 month ago
Anonymous
It’s literally not knowledge. To say that something is observable and thus reliable implies you really do know you are observing, and you don’t. What could possibly tell you that? Your observation? It’s begging the question. To say that it’s scientifically verifiable implies that science is reliable. How would you know that? Did science tell you? It’s begging the question. In order to know anything you must have a reasonable framework which gives an account for the possibility of knowledge at all in order to actually know anything. There’s no dualistic or monistic system that can do that. That’s why you and others always appeal either to mere sense data, which can’t verify whether the sense data is even reliable or even really there, or to some mystical institution that defies reason.
There’s absolutely nothing coherent about this. It’s self-refuting right from the start.
You’re an idiot for believing this. Really.
1 month ago
Anonymous
I'm explaining the steps in their reasoning and you're still coming at me with le bogeyman of mystical obscurantism. Boring. Enjoy the rest of your Sunday
1 month ago
Anonymous
The reasoning is unreasonable. If you cannot grasp that, then you have no business taking any religion seriously let alone a medieval heresy. You are gambling your immortal soul and do not even understand what you’re gambling on.
>he still thinks in terms of the dualism v.s monism dichotomy
Ngmi
>IQfy reading comprehension
Thanks for the commentary from the peanut gallery, anon. Very insightful.
1 month ago
Anonymous
>Self-knowledge is a non-value.
Cuck
1 month ago
Anonymous
We’re not talking about ethical dualism. When we spoke of dualism, we meant something like a picture of reality I.e. there’s a world of matter and a world of spirit. Gnostics generally accept either dualism or monism in this regard, that there is a world of matter and a world of spirit or that there is one world of both matter and spirit that is in reality one. Both of these are self-refuting anyway because they dissolve any means to absolute knowledge and thus knowledge itself. That’s why Gnostics, Buddhists, etc. always insist on some bullshit intuitive knowledge that defies reason, because they cannot evade this problem. They’re unreasonable by default (there is no justification for belief).
And the thing about intuition is that it can just be delusion, so you don’t necessarily have any reason to believe that either.
1 month ago
Anonymous
You don't need absolute knowledge about anything to know some things.
Any teleology other than Monotheism via a single great all powerful, all good deity would mean that absolute knowledge is impossible to have.
1 month ago
Anonymous
You do because without absolute knowledge you have no way to account for knowledge and thus no way to know that you really do know (anything).
1 month ago
Anonymous
So in your mind any religious/pseudo-religious framework other than Monotheism with a single all good and all powerful creator god is philosophically self-defeating because none of them can rely on there being absolute truths?
1 month ago
Anonymous
Yes, and even most monotheistic frameworks would be self-refuting. If you’re a dualist or a monist of any kind, you have no account for knowledge and thus no reason to accept dualism or monism.
1 month ago
Anonymous
What kind of monotheism do you see as non-self-refuting?
Abrahamic monotheism should be one of the invalid ones because of how much God's truth is shrouded in mystery and revelation that most people will never experience.
1 month ago
Anonymous
Nicene Christianity. The trinity overcomes this problem entirely, obviously.
I think most gnostics come to the ideology/aesthetic separate from any religious theology.
This isn't the 150s anymore. The modern gnostic likes gnosticism because it isn't Christiann and because it seems unique and different.
Gnosticism shouldn't even have "an aesthetic" because it's self-denying and world-denying.
The only non-larp Gnostics left in the world are the Mandaeans (who don't take converts) and debatably certain enclaves in Fujian who use Buddhist aesthetics to mask what could debatably be called a form of Chinese Manichaeism.
Why are a bunch of intellectuals/wannabe intellectuals drawn to the faith that demands the pursuit of higher knowledge? I dunno Satan, it’s totally incongruous.
You’re legit a fricking homosexual if you’re drawn to gnosticism either conceptually or aesthetically.
Yeah why are “intellectuals” drawn to an affectation of pretentious supposed erudition in the form a religion that doesn’t actually demand anything of you and exists purely as an exercise to jerk yourself off about how much better you are than everyone else because you’re LE SAD in the first world.
The only good thing resulting from any of it is that I assume some of you have at least done what you should have which is commit suicide and save us from your whiny weak wrist homosexualry
Can confirm. Whenever anyone asks me what my spiritual beliefs are I say gnostic. Foolishly, they assume I said "agnostic." I correct them and say, "no, I'm a gnostic. Not agnostic." When they ask what that means I simply say: "You wouldn't get it, it's quite complicated," and refuse to add anything further to the conversation
Because when we look at the history of Roman Catholicism (the dominant form of Christianity in European civilization for some millennia) and its impact on Western history, as well as the religious wars sparked by the Protestant Reformation and the sects of Christianity that splintered off from Catholicism, it’s hard not to see something brutal and hypocritical in it. From the Vatican consorting and conspiring with temporal/earthly political, financial, and military power, becoming a sort of earthly kingdom in opposition to Christ’s explicit teachings about a nontemporal heavenly kingdom, and atrocities attributed to Catholics/Christians from the murder of Hypatia to the Inquisition and medieval witch-hunts (including brutal torture of suspected witches to elicit confessions, and then their executions, etc.), it’s hard not to think something became corrupted in mainstream orthodox conceptions of Christianity very shortly after its beginnings, a tentative marker for which could be Constantine the Great’s conversion and hence fusion of Christianity with Roman state and military power, although the torture and murder of Hypatia by a zealous Christian mob was a few decades before even that.
The very existence and (reputed) origins of Gnosticism give a very interesting alternative/answer to this, suggesting there was a truer, deeper, more profound and original esoteric teaching of Christianity, which became corrupted, covered up, attacked, defamed and censored by a ‘false Christianity’ which put itself in its place (coincidentally, all rather similar both to Christ’s own sayings in canonical Gospels prophesying about later ‘Christians-in-name-only’, as well as reputedly taught by Christ and His close disciples in the Gnostic texts, speaking of a ‘false church’ that will supplant the true mystical church of the Body of Christ made up by faithful believers in communion with Him and undergoing the transformation of body and soul supposedly intended in Christian teaching — metanoia, transcending the mind or Nous, or going beyond the mind, or taking on a new mind beyond the old one, inadequately translated as “repentance” in most English-language forms of the Gospels).
Interestingly, it’s Philip K. Dick who first got me majorly interested in Gnosticism. I believe VALIS and his Exegesis (besides all the rest his post ‘73/VALIS-inspired works) were the genuine results and recounting of a bona-fide theophany Dick experienced; except the effect was so profound that it had an overwhelming impact on his mental health, making him something like a damaged channel for higher truth — part actually broken-inside, another part redeemed by a transcendental experience. Poor guy.
>I’ve always particularly liked the gnostic interpretation of Judas
Elaborate, anon. I always felt Judas was done dirty by many other Christians; was he not fulfilling his role in Christ's sacrifice?
1 month ago
Anonymous
No because people have free will. Judas chose to betray Christ just like a Satanist today chooses to betray Christ. It’s the same.
Gnosticism is moronic by the way. Before you stake your life on it, you should probably take even one year to understand the religion it’s a blatant heresy of. That should really be common sense.
1 month ago
Anonymous
That wasn't my question, nor was it directed to you. I'm not interested in some pseud's attempts to frick me in missionary.
1 month ago
Anonymous
> ask a question > gets the answer > nooooo I wanted the “answer” from the biased source, I didn’t want to have to challenge my worldview!!!!
Yeah, but I’m the pseud…
You juvenile morons have made this board practically unusable. All of the smart people have left. No wonder why.
1 month ago
Anonymous
I'm interested in the gnostic perspective because I know very little about it, anon. I do not care about your moronic talk of "heresy".
1 month ago
Anonymous
You already made clear that you just want to affirm your preconceived biases. But thanks for clarifying again. I still blame you for this board being dog shit now.
1 month ago
Anonymous
Yeah what people really want on IQfy are proselytizing christcucks interrupting their conversations to try and convert them.
1 month ago
Anonymous
Don't waste your time with free will cuckolds. You could create a new caste system just based on a person's theodicy alone
1 month ago
Anonymous
Your "conversation" was moronic r/atheism-tier drivel.
1 month ago
Anonymous
scathing criticism
reddit boogeyman btfo
1 month ago
Anonymous
Why is Gnosticism moronic?
1 month ago
Anonymous
It’s already been explained several times ITT
1 month ago
Anonymous
I don't see any explanations, I see one pseud who just read the SEP article on dualism and the rest are family guy cutaways. Dude hipsters. Brother what is this 2014?
1 month ago
Anonymous
Go ahead and address that critique of dualism then. It’s not an explanation of how Gnosticism is moronic so this should be doable. Let’s hear it.
1 month ago
Anonymous
>just let my axioms completely dominate the conversation bro
No. moron. Gnostic dualism is preoccupied with the problem of evil.
1 month ago
Anonymous
> I can’t
I already knew that
1 month ago
Anonymous
It’s unreal how dumb this board has gotten. YOU are the one demanding your axioms dominate for no reason. You’re being challenged to justify your axioms and you totally fricking failed. This is philosophy 101. Don’t you people read?
1 month ago
Anonymous
Gnostic "epistemology" is explained by its cosmology. Gnosticism is a soteriology first, and you're just going to have to engage with it on that basis, or make claims that don't refer to anything at all
1 month ago
Anonymous
There is no Dualism in Gnosticism.
1 month ago
Anonymous
You still writing, Biddle? How's promoting Gnosticism on Twitter working out?
1 month ago
Anonymous
Exactly. His martyrdom is extreme as it gets and he fulfilled his role
It is truly the sigil of an Abrahamic golem to go >It would appear all human endeavor to discover god or spirituality has simply led back into humanity's inherent tendencies for brutality, corruption, warfare and cruelty while producing no answers whatsoever >Let's delve even deeper into the esoteric and arcane garbage, maybe the truth really is in there someplace
A genuine intellect accepts the material for what it is and doesn't try to postulate based off feelings or riddles. The agnostic is a coward; the atheist is bold enough to shed the cope and accept he's a collection of elaborate and functional matter.
They’re pseuds. That’s why. That, and the whole reason some people really get into literature in the first place is because they feel this world and their body to be a sort of prison.
Most of these people were never even really gnostics. It’s academic geeks who insist they were in retrospect. Bloom is almost the perfect example, a career academic who couldn’t write for shit. He probably thought being a good writer was as easy as having a niche religious view.
These people are losers, dude. And they’re just wrong. If Nathaniel Hawthorne was a gnostic then I’m a Buddhist monk from Tibet.
Because a lot of people like to make themselves think that reading is something special and elite.
Gnosticism panders to that idea with their take on secret god-knowledge. It's childish but that's all.
The bookish equivalent to soccer mom's going on about their personal relationship with the self-help version of Jesus who is totally cool with all their hot-takes because God is really just Love™ and mindfulness meditation.
Its just cool.
It leads to an interesting cosmology and relationship between man and god.
Yaldabaoth might be evil, but he's also a bit sad. And despite being evil, he can't just torture the world to death because it is still his own product that he must keep perpetuating for his own vanity. It creates this interesting bounded system.
Also it solves stuff like the problem of evil that otherwise non-devout Westerners have difficulty squaring with Abrahamism.
>I'm one of the elect because I have X idea about the world that no one else knows but the elect >But the world is evil so me being a waste in body and mind is not really my fault and I shouldn't do anything about it
Kind of makes me grin that someone was a big enough butthole to create a belief system for people who don't want to better themselves and simultaneously has a need to look down on other people for doing so.
Gnosticism is the final boss of spirituality. You only get it when you have truly ascended. The path to gnosis is not for the weak. With that said, most of it is just watered-down Buddhism, so I usually just cut out the middle man and read that instead.
Augustine.
(in Joh. tract. i. c. 13) For sin was not made by Him; for it is manifest that
sin is nothing, and that men become nothing when they sin.
Origen.
(in Joh. tom. ii. c. 7) If all things were made by the Word, and in the number
of all things is wickedness, and the whole influx of sin, these too were made
by the Word; which is false. Now ‘nothing’ and ‘a thing which is not,’ mean the
same. And the Apostle seems to call wicked things, things which are not, God
calleth those things which be not, (Rom. 4:17) as though they were.
All wickedness then is called nothing, forasmuch as it is made without
the Word. Those who say however that the devil is not a creature of God, err.
In so far as he is the devil, he is not a creature of God; but he, whose
character it is to be the devil, is a creature of God. It is as if we should
say a murderer is not a creature of God, when, so far as he is a man, he is
a creature of God.
the 'in our time' episode on Gnosticism was really good. Really fun. You could tell Bragg wanted to "shag" one of the contributors.
It functions as a decent, brief overview.
Dogmatic agnosticism ("I don't know, and probably can't know, so don't bother me") is cowardly, but both temporary agnosticism (as the result of inquiring) and zetetic agnosticism (always being open to inquiring even if the answers found end up falling flat) aren't anything like cowardice.
FRICK THE DEMIURGE
FRICK THE LOOSH ARCHONS
FRICK THE SAMSARHA REINCARNATION MATRIX
I AM FREE AND SOVERIGEN
Notice how no one the thread talks about the real issue and cares more about how "based" they are to the intellectual collective of ratpigmonkey bio-bots? They argue how it roots with other regional and other meaningless materialistic facts while they ignore the whole point of gnosticism? If they are against gnosticism the gloss over the he real issue, the reincarnation cycle combines with the shame guilt matrix. We all suffer from the same bullshit about trying to put on a show for other people only to spin our wheels in our heads on how "based" we are. Then death strikes us and regreat floods our mind. Only to be ass fricked by archon while he guilt trips us to continue the cycle with the pandora's box of manipulation tactics. Reading books is not gonna help you. If your being fricked with archons you need to realize your inner power and frick them and get controllable with the idea of death. It unfricking believable how moronic we are in these suits of never-ending devouring and defecation. The farther you descend down this road your gonna be ass fricking more powerful demons until they mind wipe you, thats what they did to me. This whole reality and its sub-realms is a equilibrium of ass fricking. You know your on the right path when your being fricked and your fricking them back. The people who "know" understand what I mean. I'm not a Gnostic, as that philosophy has some read herrings, like trusting a single mother to rescue while you need to save your self. We have the power of god, aka imagination(canvas), awareness(focus), and feeling(knowing). They fear that.
You might call me schizophrenic, maybe I am, but will that help you post death?
They can't reconcile being that smart and at the same time being also a bit religious, so they have to find some middle-of-the-road solution to satisfy their edginess where they can't just submit to the religion of their country and just separate their smartness from fate.
I guess it's because any observant rational mind cannot look at the material universe and see anything other than a violent order of pain and consumption, while at the same time the irrational side of a literary mind senses the internal divine spark which lies in contrast to the horrors of the external world, and so mere pessimism is not sufficient.
Stop samegayging, moron. No, you just googled and pasted an incredibly popular poem that is invariably discussed vis a vis blake and gnosticism http://www.thehypertexts.com/William%20Blake%20God.htm
>No reply
Then I will consider you not Christian yourself, Mormons and even Muslims are more Christian than you are, for anyone who does not even announce Jesus is the King of the israelites and all followers of God's covenant, does not agree with Jesus' core teachings
Literary types are people who spend most of their lives interacting with imaginary worlds constructed by language. It's easy to fall into a Gnostic mindset if you don't interact with physical reality.
Because gnosticism is marked by the appearance of certain heresies or false teachings such as the secret philosophic schemes for the elite and academics consider themselves part of the elite
Because it's complete schizo nonsense made up by a charlatan who wanted to be Samaritan Jesus. That speaks to many writer types; they all want to be the one whose words echo on for eternity, so they hitch onto the one whose words truly are eternal. It is the religion of the false prophets. Whispering hidden nothing to each other, promising truth and revelation, and doing nothing but using all this influence to acquire money and women. Utter low culture trash of an ideology, which is why only the modern liberal literates take a liking to it, whereas it has existed in the trash for the rest of history where it belongs.
You don't think any of those posts are devastating takedowns of Gnosticism, do you?
1 month ago
Anonymous
Gnosticism is not in need of a devastating takedown, because its own history devastates it. Simply look through the history of Gnosticism, not only the texts, but the people, most notably Simon Magus and his followers, and you'll see it's the fruit of charlatans. I will not draw up complex arguments against a man who did nothing but lie about being God for money and women. His character betrays him, and his ideology is thus all worthless.
1 month ago
Anonymous
Cute, but next time you can try Valentinus, Basilides, Mani, or Marcion. Magus is not the springhead of Gnosticism. Another wienersucker who doesn't read
Because it’s the most IQfy worldview. Interesting digits btw
>my theodicy is a nature calendar
let's see an animal being eaten alive
I love gnosticism. It is truly the religion of literature.
> Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made.
i love how the gospel of john is so clearly gnostic that whoever edited it felt the need to include this line at the very beginning
Not just for lit. It's the only logical conclusion after being alive for more than 2 seconds.
>the Kybalion
>vibrating in negative frequencies
Mister blogposter be actin' real high and mighty for someone who got filtered by falling for 19th century fanfiction and new age schizobabble
Pessimists and physically weak people despise the material world. Hateful mental conditions are directly the result of hateful physical conditions.
High IQ feelers tend to self-select into dualism
The same is true of their opposites, and it all resolves into death anyways. The world is only as good as its unhappiest part.
What? Dualism is moronic. It takes 5 minutes to refute. If you self-selected into dualism of all things you’re an idiot by default. Monism is a relatively difficult mistake to overcome, but dualism? Ha.
You are such a pseud it’s painful.
Refute dualism now
If the absolute is distinct and separate from the phenomenal world, it would be epistomelogically impossible for you to have any means to absolute knowledge and thus any knowledge that tells you that dualism is correct. It’s self-refuting by default.
Even in the most basic Gnostic formulations the absolute is the divine spark caught in matter, so it is not distinct from the phenomenal world but mixed with it.
Then that’s not dualism moron
Except Gnosticism is dualistic. Did you wander into the wrong thread?
Are you stupid? You just said Gnosticism is dualistic and then described a set of beliefs that are not dualistic as a matter of fact. Either Gnosticism is dualistic and what you said about spirit in matter is bullshit or Gnosticism is not dualistic. There is no alternative.
Gnosticism is dualistic with respect to the problem of evil. It doesn't hold the creator god responsible for suffering. Good and evil are two independent principles. Is this not a dualism?
We’re not talking about ethical dualism. When we spoke of dualism, we meant something like a picture of reality I.e. there’s a world of matter and a world of spirit. Gnostics generally accept either dualism or monism in this regard, that there is a world of matter and a world of spirit or that there is one world of both matter and spirit that is in reality one. Both of these are self-refuting anyway because they dissolve any means to absolute knowledge and thus knowledge itself. That’s why Gnostics, Buddhists, etc. always insist on some bullshit intuitive knowledge that defies reason, because they cannot evade this problem. They’re unreasonable by default (there is no justification for belief).
Knowledge of the the spirit world just is self-knowledge, so it neatly sidesteps your epistemological cat wrangling. Gnosis is a radically immanent knowledge by definition, not a transcendent knowledge of transcendent worlds. You're not as sophisticated as you think you are. The gnostikoi are presented as precisely those who do have knowledge by acquaintance of a higher order
Self-knowledge is a non-value. To say that any knowledge derived from knowledge of the Self or is self-evident just begs the question. Before it is the case there really is a Self, you must have a way to know that. And you don’t, not besides your Self, I mean, which is begging the question. So no, you actually don’t have any knowledge at all.
This is why Gnositicsm, Traditionalism, and all these other sorts of oriental delusions are moronic.
Knowledge of my (observable and scientifically supported) existential predicament -> knowledge of a specific kind of discrepancy between self and the world. The gnostics extrapolated from this discrepancy a whole ontological drama about the inner man and the hostile machinery of fate. That's all. A perfectly coherent cosmology, or I should say anti-cosmology, anti-ontology. You demonstrate no mastery of Gnosticism or Buddhism.
It’s literally not knowledge. To say that something is observable and thus reliable implies you really do know you are observing, and you don’t. What could possibly tell you that? Your observation? It’s begging the question. To say that it’s scientifically verifiable implies that science is reliable. How would you know that? Did science tell you? It’s begging the question. In order to know anything you must have a reasonable framework which gives an account for the possibility of knowledge at all in order to actually know anything. There’s no dualistic or monistic system that can do that. That’s why you and others always appeal either to mere sense data, which can’t verify whether the sense data is even reliable or even really there, or to some mystical institution that defies reason.
There’s absolutely nothing coherent about this. It’s self-refuting right from the start.
You’re an idiot for believing this. Really.
I'm explaining the steps in their reasoning and you're still coming at me with le bogeyman of mystical obscurantism. Boring. Enjoy the rest of your Sunday
The reasoning is unreasonable. If you cannot grasp that, then you have no business taking any religion seriously let alone a medieval heresy. You are gambling your immortal soul and do not even understand what you’re gambling on.
>IQfy reading comprehension
Thanks for the commentary from the peanut gallery, anon. Very insightful.
>Self-knowledge is a non-value.
Cuck
And the thing about intuition is that it can just be delusion, so you don’t necessarily have any reason to believe that either.
You don't need absolute knowledge about anything to know some things.
Any teleology other than Monotheism via a single great all powerful, all good deity would mean that absolute knowledge is impossible to have.
You do because without absolute knowledge you have no way to account for knowledge and thus no way to know that you really do know (anything).
So in your mind any religious/pseudo-religious framework other than Monotheism with a single all good and all powerful creator god is philosophically self-defeating because none of them can rely on there being absolute truths?
Yes, and even most monotheistic frameworks would be self-refuting. If you’re a dualist or a monist of any kind, you have no account for knowledge and thus no reason to accept dualism or monism.
What kind of monotheism do you see as non-self-refuting?
Abrahamic monotheism should be one of the invalid ones because of how much God's truth is shrouded in mystery and revelation that most people will never experience.
Nicene Christianity. The trinity overcomes this problem entirely, obviously.
You worship a desert israelite.
Well, Gnosticism tends to be dualistic, why is it moronic?
>he still thinks in terms of the dualism v.s monism dichotomy
Ngmi
Interesting
Source?
For what? That high IQ sensitives almost always exhibit a gnostic temperament? iykyk
Cringe Marxism. Some people are just born evil. If this wasn’t true, places like pre-refugee Scandinavia would have had 0 crime.
Dimwit slop that has no connection to religion but let’s academics feel intelligent
>no connection to religion
?
I think most gnostics come to the ideology/aesthetic separate from any religious theology.
This isn't the 150s anymore. The modern gnostic likes gnosticism because it isn't Christiann and because it seems unique and different.
Gnosticism shouldn't even have "an aesthetic" because it's self-denying and world-denying.
The only non-larp Gnostics left in the world are the Mandaeans (who don't take converts) and debatably certain enclaves in Fujian who use Buddhist aesthetics to mask what could debatably be called a form of Chinese Manichaeism.
Why are a bunch of intellectuals/wannabe intellectuals drawn to the faith that demands the pursuit of higher knowledge? I dunno Satan, it’s totally incongruous.
You’re legit a fricking homosexual if you’re drawn to gnosticism either conceptually or aesthetically.
Yeah why are “intellectuals” drawn to an affectation of pretentious supposed erudition in the form a religion that doesn’t actually demand anything of you and exists purely as an exercise to jerk yourself off about how much better you are than everyone else because you’re LE SAD in the first world.
The only good thing resulting from any of it is that I assume some of you have at least done what you should have which is commit suicide and save us from your whiny weak wrist homosexualry
Tiresome
>this like christianity but like underground and super obscure....you probably never heard of it sooooo
hipster logic
Can confirm. Whenever anyone asks me what my spiritual beliefs are I say gnostic. Foolishly, they assume I said "agnostic." I correct them and say, "no, I'm a gnostic. Not agnostic." When they ask what that means I simply say: "You wouldn't get it, it's quite complicated," and refuse to add anything further to the conversation
Shame on you for obscuring the way.
If they truy want to reach gnosis they shall go out of their and search themselves
>reach gnosis
and what is gnosis? some type of pantheistic monism, or the belief that you yourself are God?
It's the mark of the pseud.
The only one who wasn't a pseud was Philip Dick but he was legit schizo.
Because when we look at the history of Roman Catholicism (the dominant form of Christianity in European civilization for some millennia) and its impact on Western history, as well as the religious wars sparked by the Protestant Reformation and the sects of Christianity that splintered off from Catholicism, it’s hard not to see something brutal and hypocritical in it. From the Vatican consorting and conspiring with temporal/earthly political, financial, and military power, becoming a sort of earthly kingdom in opposition to Christ’s explicit teachings about a nontemporal heavenly kingdom, and atrocities attributed to Catholics/Christians from the murder of Hypatia to the Inquisition and medieval witch-hunts (including brutal torture of suspected witches to elicit confessions, and then their executions, etc.), it’s hard not to think something became corrupted in mainstream orthodox conceptions of Christianity very shortly after its beginnings, a tentative marker for which could be Constantine the Great’s conversion and hence fusion of Christianity with Roman state and military power, although the torture and murder of Hypatia by a zealous Christian mob was a few decades before even that.
The very existence and (reputed) origins of Gnosticism give a very interesting alternative/answer to this, suggesting there was a truer, deeper, more profound and original esoteric teaching of Christianity, which became corrupted, covered up, attacked, defamed and censored by a ‘false Christianity’ which put itself in its place (coincidentally, all rather similar both to Christ’s own sayings in canonical Gospels prophesying about later ‘Christians-in-name-only’, as well as reputedly taught by Christ and His close disciples in the Gnostic texts, speaking of a ‘false church’ that will supplant the true mystical church of the Body of Christ made up by faithful believers in communion with Him and undergoing the transformation of body and soul supposedly intended in Christian teaching — metanoia, transcending the mind or Nous, or going beyond the mind, or taking on a new mind beyond the old one, inadequately translated as “repentance” in most English-language forms of the Gospels).
Interestingly, it’s Philip K. Dick who first got me majorly interested in Gnosticism. I believe VALIS and his Exegesis (besides all the rest his post ‘73/VALIS-inspired works) were the genuine results and recounting of a bona-fide theophany Dick experienced; except the effect was so profound that it had an overwhelming impact on his mental health, making him something like a damaged channel for higher truth — part actually broken-inside, another part redeemed by a transcendental experience. Poor guy.
This.
I’ve always particularly liked the gnostic interpretation of Judas
>I’ve always particularly liked the gnostic interpretation of Judas
Elaborate, anon. I always felt Judas was done dirty by many other Christians; was he not fulfilling his role in Christ's sacrifice?
No because people have free will. Judas chose to betray Christ just like a Satanist today chooses to betray Christ. It’s the same.
Gnosticism is moronic by the way. Before you stake your life on it, you should probably take even one year to understand the religion it’s a blatant heresy of. That should really be common sense.
That wasn't my question, nor was it directed to you. I'm not interested in some pseud's attempts to frick me in missionary.
> ask a question
> gets the answer
> nooooo I wanted the “answer” from the biased source, I didn’t want to have to challenge my worldview!!!!
Yeah, but I’m the pseud…
You juvenile morons have made this board practically unusable. All of the smart people have left. No wonder why.
I'm interested in the gnostic perspective because I know very little about it, anon. I do not care about your moronic talk of "heresy".
You already made clear that you just want to affirm your preconceived biases. But thanks for clarifying again. I still blame you for this board being dog shit now.
Yeah what people really want on IQfy are proselytizing christcucks interrupting their conversations to try and convert them.
Don't waste your time with free will cuckolds. You could create a new caste system just based on a person's theodicy alone
Your "conversation" was moronic r/atheism-tier drivel.
scathing criticism
reddit boogeyman btfo
Why is Gnosticism moronic?
It’s already been explained several times ITT
I don't see any explanations, I see one pseud who just read the SEP article on dualism and the rest are family guy cutaways. Dude hipsters. Brother what is this 2014?
Go ahead and address that critique of dualism then. It’s not an explanation of how Gnosticism is moronic so this should be doable. Let’s hear it.
>just let my axioms completely dominate the conversation bro
No. moron. Gnostic dualism is preoccupied with the problem of evil.
> I can’t
I already knew that
It’s unreal how dumb this board has gotten. YOU are the one demanding your axioms dominate for no reason. You’re being challenged to justify your axioms and you totally fricking failed. This is philosophy 101. Don’t you people read?
Gnostic "epistemology" is explained by its cosmology. Gnosticism is a soteriology first, and you're just going to have to engage with it on that basis, or make claims that don't refer to anything at all
There is no Dualism in Gnosticism.
You still writing, Biddle? How's promoting Gnosticism on Twitter working out?
Exactly. His martyrdom is extreme as it gets and he fulfilled his role
It is truly the sigil of an Abrahamic golem to go
>It would appear all human endeavor to discover god or spirituality has simply led back into humanity's inherent tendencies for brutality, corruption, warfare and cruelty while producing no answers whatsoever
>Let's delve even deeper into the esoteric and arcane garbage, maybe the truth really is in there someplace
A genuine intellect accepts the material for what it is and doesn't try to postulate based off feelings or riddles. The agnostic is a coward; the atheist is bold enough to shed the cope and accept he's a collection of elaborate and functional matter.
is there a IQfy chart for Finishing With the Gnostics?
They’re pseuds. That’s why. That, and the whole reason some people really get into literature in the first place is because they feel this world and their body to be a sort of prison.
Amongst pseudy types, thou mean’st.
Most of these people were never even really gnostics. It’s academic geeks who insist they were in retrospect. Bloom is almost the perfect example, a career academic who couldn’t write for shit. He probably thought being a good writer was as easy as having a niche religious view.
These people are losers, dude. And they’re just wrong. If Nathaniel Hawthorne was a gnostic then I’m a Buddhist monk from Tibet.
Because it’s based. For some reason it tends to get a certain segment of anons worked up, like the e-catholic types
120-150 midwit edge and soft-narcissism, 'woe is me', envy and spite for their outcast youth
150 IQ is midwit now? And here I thought I was highwit at a tested 135-145 IQ…
>highwit not seeing through a midwit reductionism
I can barely crack 115. Do better.
>relying on conformity tests
Zero creativity.
Because a lot of people like to make themselves think that reading is something special and elite.
Gnosticism panders to that idea with their take on secret god-knowledge. It's childish but that's all.
The bookish equivalent to soccer mom's going on about their personal relationship with the self-help version of Jesus who is totally cool with all their hot-takes because God is really just Love™ and mindfulness meditation.
Its just cool.
It leads to an interesting cosmology and relationship between man and god.
Yaldabaoth might be evil, but he's also a bit sad. And despite being evil, he can't just torture the world to death because it is still his own product that he must keep perpetuating for his own vanity. It creates this interesting bounded system.
Also it solves stuff like the problem of evil that otherwise non-devout Westerners have difficulty squaring with Abrahamism.
> Christianity
> God made nature and nature isn’t good or bad but God is good
> Gnosticism
> God made nature and both nature and God are bad
> Liberalism
> Nature made itself and it’s good
> Progressivism
> Nature made itself and it’s bad
That about sum it up?
Evil, not “bad”.
>I'm one of the elect because I have X idea about the world that no one else knows but the elect
>But the world is evil so me being a waste in body and mind is not really my fault and I shouldn't do anything about it
Kind of makes me grin that someone was a big enough butthole to create a belief system for people who don't want to better themselves and simultaneously has a need to look down on other people for doing so.
Gnosticism is the final boss of spirituality. You only get it when you have truly ascended. The path to gnosis is not for the weak. With that said, most of it is just watered-down Buddhism, so I usually just cut out the middle man and read that instead.
due to their narcissism
Augustine.
(in Joh. tract. i. c. 13) For sin was not made by Him; for it is manifest that
sin is nothing, and that men become nothing when they sin.
Origen.
(in Joh. tom. ii. c. 7) If all things were made by the Word, and in the number
of all things is wickedness, and the whole influx of sin, these too were made
by the Word; which is false. Now ‘nothing’ and ‘a thing which is not,’ mean the
same. And the Apostle seems to call wicked things, things which are not, God
calleth those things which be not, (Rom. 4:17) as though they were.
All wickedness then is called nothing, forasmuch as it is made without
the Word. Those who say however that the devil is not a creature of God, err.
In so far as he is the devil, he is not a creature of God; but he, whose
character it is to be the devil, is a creature of God. It is as if we should
say a murderer is not a creature of God, when, so far as he is a man, he is
a creature of God.
>is nothing
>become nothing
All this entails is that "nothing" exists.
They mistake what they read about for reality and sometimes see glimpses of the world outside of text
the 'in our time' episode on Gnosticism was really good. Really fun. You could tell Bragg wanted to "shag" one of the contributors.
It functions as a decent, brief overview.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01s4rhz
Gnosticism is for heretical LARP'ers
It's capital-K Knowledge for people with trouble understanding both philosophy and science, while being "too learned" for religion.
Gnostics and agnostics are fricking cowards
How are gnostics cowards?
Dogmatic agnosticism ("I don't know, and probably can't know, so don't bother me") is cowardly, but both temporary agnosticism (as the result of inquiring) and zetetic agnosticism (always being open to inquiring even if the answers found end up falling flat) aren't anything like cowardice.
>zetetic
Completely off-topic, but thank you for this keyword.
>who summoned me?
It prioritizes naval-gazing pseudo-mystical abstraction over physical reality and that's appealing when most "literary types" are weak betas.
This is the only correct answer in a sea of disgusting subhuman mongrelised shit that is IQfy
FRICK THE DEMIURGE
FRICK THE LOOSH ARCHONS
FRICK THE SAMSARHA REINCARNATION MATRIX
I AM FREE AND SOVERIGEN
Notice how no one the thread talks about the real issue and cares more about how "based" they are to the intellectual collective of ratpigmonkey bio-bots? They argue how it roots with other regional and other meaningless materialistic facts while they ignore the whole point of gnosticism? If they are against gnosticism the gloss over the he real issue, the reincarnation cycle combines with the shame guilt matrix. We all suffer from the same bullshit about trying to put on a show for other people only to spin our wheels in our heads on how "based" we are. Then death strikes us and regreat floods our mind. Only to be ass fricked by archon while he guilt trips us to continue the cycle with the pandora's box of manipulation tactics. Reading books is not gonna help you. If your being fricked with archons you need to realize your inner power and frick them and get controllable with the idea of death. It unfricking believable how moronic we are in these suits of never-ending devouring and defecation. The farther you descend down this road your gonna be ass fricking more powerful demons until they mind wipe you, thats what they did to me. This whole reality and its sub-realms is a equilibrium of ass fricking. You know your on the right path when your being fricked and your fricking them back. The people who "know" understand what I mean. I'm not a Gnostic, as that philosophy has some read herrings, like trusting a single mother to rescue while you need to save your self. We have the power of god, aka imagination(canvas), awareness(focus), and feeling(knowing). They fear that.
You might call me schizophrenic, maybe I am, but will that help you post death?
Christbros, why can’t we stop winning?
They can't reconcile being that smart and at the same time being also a bit religious, so they have to find some middle-of-the-road solution to satisfy their edginess where they can't just submit to the religion of their country and just separate their smartness from fate.
>why is a religion that preaches the search of knowledge so popular among those who seek knowledge???
I guess it's because any observant rational mind cannot look at the material universe and see anything other than a violent order of pain and consumption, while at the same time the irrational side of a literary mind senses the internal divine spark which lies in contrast to the horrors of the external world, and so mere pessimism is not sufficient.
an answer written by a sapient
bot post
bot post
an answer written by a sapient
>i did the thing you did but not the way you did it
bot post
>always assuming the most banal and superficial intent instead of strongmanning
bot post
>defending banal and superficial "refutations" of gnosticism
tiresome
its a midwit philosophy & most literary types are midwits
What does Gnosticism say about Jesus
This entire thread is the most abhorrent case of pseudhomosexualry I have ever seen. Please get a job you homosexuals.
Mad cause low iq?
You have read neither.
He obviously does. He quoted two of their poems with relevant gnostic undertones.
Stop samegayging, moron. No, you just googled and pasted an incredibly popular poem that is invariably discussed vis a vis blake and gnosticism http://www.thehypertexts.com/William%20Blake%20God.htm
I do read Blake. I love Blake. He is my hero of gnosis.
Wow, some of you have become quite knowledgeable about a bunch of nonsense that people just made up.
Basically mainstream Orthodoxy Christianity is like Warhammer 40k Emperor of Mankind and his Imperium.
Gnosticism are the people who get mad at the Emperor of Mankind's hypocrisy so they embrace chaos worship.
Reddit analogy
Papists are not true Christians
Christ is King, say it
>No reply
Then I will consider you not Christian yourself, Mormons and even Muslims are more Christian than you are, for anyone who does not even announce Jesus is the King of the israelites and all followers of God's covenant, does not agree with Jesus' core teachings
Literary types are people who spend most of their lives interacting with imaginary worlds constructed by language. It's easy to fall into a Gnostic mindset if you don't interact with physical reality.
Because gnosticism is marked by the appearance of certain heresies or false teachings such as the secret philosophic schemes for the elite and academics consider themselves part of the elite
Because it's complete schizo nonsense made up by a charlatan who wanted to be Samaritan Jesus. That speaks to many writer types; they all want to be the one whose words echo on for eternity, so they hitch onto the one whose words truly are eternal. It is the religion of the false prophets. Whispering hidden nothing to each other, promising truth and revelation, and doing nothing but using all this influence to acquire money and women. Utter low culture trash of an ideology, which is why only the modern liberal literates take a liking to it, whereas it has existed in the trash for the rest of history where it belongs.
>the 10th variation of this same moronic post in less than 24 hours
It's honestly things like this that make Gnosticism so appealing
>people keep calling me moronic
>I must be onto something
Intellectual contrarianism is a disease.
You don't think any of those posts are devastating takedowns of Gnosticism, do you?
Gnosticism is not in need of a devastating takedown, because its own history devastates it. Simply look through the history of Gnosticism, not only the texts, but the people, most notably Simon Magus and his followers, and you'll see it's the fruit of charlatans. I will not draw up complex arguments against a man who did nothing but lie about being God for money and women. His character betrays him, and his ideology is thus all worthless.
Cute, but next time you can try Valentinus, Basilides, Mani, or Marcion. Magus is not the springhead of Gnosticism. Another wienersucker who doesn't read
the god of the israelites is wicked, and I'm tired of pretending he isn't
Gnosisters, our response?