Gnosticism

[Guest guest]

LOL! That was the best explanation I've heard so far of why things are as they are!

(For all we know, we could be VERY deluded down here and this COULD be true.)

I think real Gnosticism believes that the world was created by some twisted type called a Demiurge to keep us enslaved in suffering and vice, and that our job is to raise ourselves out of this mundane world to where the true God resides, via our intuition (gnosis did not mean knowledge of the concrete mind as we know it today, but more like wisdom) and living a pure life. (Hope Kajira or someone will correct me if I got this wrong.)

Why would she would call herself a Satanist if she was a Gnostic? Or was this a sort of Gnostic-Satanist conglomerate? (Doesn't sound quite like original Gnosticism.)

Inger

Re: Satanism

(I actually knew a Satanist in graduate school - not a Church ofSatan member, but a member of some other Satanist church - "GnosticTemple" or some such nam. She spent lots of her time working in soupkitchens, literacy projects, anti-drug-abuse programs, "MothersAgainst Drunk Driving," street-cleanup programs to get rid of litter,programs against cruelty to animals, to raise money for job-trainingfor people with disabilities, and similar causes. She did thisbecause, in her belief, God wanted death and vice and cruelty and evilbut Satan wanted life and virtue and kindness and good. And I alsoknow that, on at least one occasion, she saved a life. (I learned thisfrom the man whom she had saved.)Her church had very unusual religious teachings. According to thoseteachings, an evil one called "God" had created the universe as hisown private amusement so that he and his friends could have funthroughout eternity watching people and animals go through all sortsof things including horrible suffering. Then (according to thoseteachings) someone good called "Satan" had rebelled against this, hadescaped from "God's" realm, and had vowed to fight back against evilin any way he could. This naturally made "God" angry, so (according to what herchurch believed) "God" then wrote many statements, books, and messagesall designed to make himself look good (including one called "TheBible") and started giving these out to all the different groups ofpeople on Earth: not just to make "God" look good, but also to createeven more fun for "God" and his pals because the differentbooks/statements/messages all disagreed with one another - so now thedifferent groups of humans could put on an even better show by arguingand even killing each other over the question of who had gotten theright book! She (my Satanist classmate) used to quote a lot of stuff from thevarious religious scriptures, including the Bible, to prove God's"evilness" as she saw it: for example, the Bible story where God tellssoldiers to wipe out the men, women, and boys of an enemy nation butto keep the virgin girls alive for themselves (Numbers 31:18).Question: does a person who does good in the name of Satan rankmorally higher, or morally lower, than a person who does evil in thename of God? Yours for better letters, Kate Gladstone Handwriting Repair and the World Handwriting Contest handwritingrepair@... http://learn.to/handwrite, http://www.global2000.net/handwritingrepair 325 South Manning Boulevard Albany, New York 12208-1731 USA telephone 518/482-6763 AND REMEMBER ... you can order books through my site! (Amazon.com link - I get a 5% - 15% commission on each book sold)FAM Secret Society is a community based on respect, friendship, support and acceptance. Everyone is valued. Check the Links section for more FAM forums.

[Guest guest]

It seems likely that my old classmate's church (this all happened

about 20 years ago) followed some kind of " Gnostic-Satanist

conglomerate " - I don't know for sure, because I never visited her

church (she never asked me to go, and I wouldn't have had the time

anyway - because, right then, my studies had to come first if I wanted

to finish graduate school.)

By the way, I've just realized that one of my questions -

> Question: does a person who does good in the name of Satan rank

> morally higher, or morally lower, than a person who does evil in the

> name of God?

- has already had one answer proposed, in a parable by Christian

thinker C. S. .

The last book in ' NARNIA parable/fiction series - " The Last

Battle " - tells, among other things, the story of a young man named

Emeth who grew up in a country called Calormen where everybody

worships a violent, demon-like monster called Tash. Emeth's parents

and his whole culture have raised him to love Tash, to regard Tash as

the source of everything good, to hope to go to " the country of Tash "

after death, etc., etc. Emeth has done good, kind things his whole

life - but he has always done them in the name of Tash.

Late in the book, everybody on Emeth's planet has died in

Armageddon-like wars and end-of-the-world stuff, but the good ones

(including Emeth) have come alive again in a beautiful country -

Heaven. Of course Emeth thinks he has actually gone to Tash's country,

so he wanders off to try and find Tash - then gets really freaked out

when instead of Tash he meets the god of an enemy nation: the real

God, as it turns out, the God that Emeth has grown up considering

" evil " his whole life. Emeth figures that the enemy God will destroy

him for having worshiped the wrong god instead of the real one - but

the real God says something like " The demon you worshiped was so evil

that nothing good could be done or desired in his name. Therefore,

every good action you did - and every desire you had to do good and

meet your god - is credited to the real God because everything good

belongs to the real God. You thought you were serving your demon, but

you were really serving the true God because good cannot serve a

demon: good serves God. When someone does evil in the name of good -

in the name of the real God - evil cannot belong to the real God:

doing evil is service to evil and demons even if the person believed

that he did it in service to God and good " (I don't have the exact

quote because I can't remember where I put all my NARNIA books, but

probably we have some other NARNIA fans here who can find that quote

and give the exact wording.)

Yours for better letters,

Kate Gladstone

Handwriting Repair and the World Handwriting Contest

handwritingrepair@...

http://learn.to/handwrite, http://www.global2000.net/handwritingrepair

325 South Manning Boulevard

Albany, New York 12208-1731 USA

telephone 518/482-6763

AND REMEMBER ...

you can order books through my site!

(Amazon.com link -

I get a 5% - 15% commission on each book sold)

[Guest guest]

I call myself a Gnostic, if you remember. On the Christian-leaning

wing of gnosticism, so not wanting an association with satanism! It is

easy though for all forms of esotericist or New Agey theorist to blend

their ideas with gnosticism, because gnosticism defines an attitude to

religion that can coexist withn other religions, probably with all the

major world ones. That's why a person who is interested in the moral

and social aspects of Jesus but without buying the atonement sacrifice

story, and of the Jewish radicals of his era like the Essenes, can

well call himself a gnostic.

I belive God is not omnipotent or magic but is subject to physical

laws like the rest of us, even if the coincidental values for the

physical constants that make life possible seem to come from his

intelligence. This is a classic gnostic belief, in reaction to the

existence of suffering and the thinness of explanations for it that

try to square it with a powerful God. I believe in the scientific

account for creation, but also in " vitalism " , an idea that says

spirits had a role at micro level in the organising of matter into

life and it wasn't left to impossible chemical chance alone. This

means we all, as pre-conscious spirits, played a part in the emergence

of living matter - and as we were following our imperfect and varied

urges, this is a scientific-era update of the gnostic demiurge idea. I

think the ancient gnostics were probing towards an idea like this,

that's why they saw creation as coming from an urge.

>

> I think real Gnosticism believes that the world was created by some

twisted type called a Demiurge to keep us enslaved in suffering and

vice, and that our job is to raise ourselves out of this mundane world

to where the true God resides, via our intuition (gnosis did not mean

knowledge of the concrete mind as we know it today, but more like

wisdom) and living a pure life.

For me, I would just say we raise ourselves by turning into

intelligent ghosts free from matter when we die. Who also belong to

the Kingdom of Heaven if we morally follow God, but heaven is not a

place separate from this cosmos and the " Kingdom " is just a name for a

way for God and socially nice spirits to organise a society for

themselves. Like an aspie group even.

[Guest guest]

Maurice:

> I call myself a Gnostic, if you remember.

Sorry, my mind failed to fix that firmly enough in my memory bank.

> On the Christian-leaning wing of gnosticism, so not wanting an association

> with satanism! It is easy though for all forms of esotericist or New Agey

> theorist to blend their ideas with gnosticism, because gnosticism defines

> an attitude to religion that can coexist withn other religions, probably

> with all the major world ones.

As can mine.

> That's why a person who is interested in the moral and social aspects of

> Jesus but without buying the atonement sacrifice story, and of the Jewish

> radicals of his era like the Essenes, can well call himself a gnostic.

> I belive God is not omnipotent or magic but is subject to physical

laws like the rest of us, even if the coincidental values for the

physical constants that make life possible seem to come from his

intelligence. This is a classic gnostic belief, in reaction to the

existence of suffering and the thinness of explanations for it that

try to square it with a powerful God. I believe in the scientific

account for creation, but also in " vitalism " , an idea that says

spirits had a role at micro level in the organising of matter into

life and it wasn't left to impossible chemical chance alone.

I believe that too.

> This means we all, as pre-conscious spirits, played a part in the

> emergence

of living matter - and as we were following our imperfect and varied

urges, this is a scientific-era update of the gnostic demiurge idea. I

think the ancient gnostics were probing towards an idea like this,

that's why they saw creation as coming from an urge.

So you don't believe in the Demiurge as a specific being?

The way you describe it sounds very similar to Hylozoism, actually. Perhaps

I'll give an account of that, just for comparison?

Inger

[Guest guest]

Re:

> > This means we all, as pre-conscious spirits, played a part in the

> > emergence

> of living matter - and as we were following our imperfect and varied

> urges, this is a scientific-era update of the gnostic demiurge idea. I

> think the ancient gnostics were probing towards an idea like this,

> that's why they saw creation as coming from an urge.

Uh ... Maurice ... the " urge " part of " demiurge " doesn't actually mean

what " urge " means in English.

The word " demiurge " comes from Greek " demiourgos " meaning

" co-worker. " Some of the earliest gnostic documents (as you probably

know) talk about God giving another spirit an assignment to create the

world, and then the second (creator) spirit didn't like one or more of

the ideas in the plans that God told him, so this disobedient

co-worker (the one who actually made the universe) changed the

blueprint (so to speak) - this co-worker/creator/demiurge didn't obey

God's orders to make things a certain way, but instead he made them a

different way.

Yours for better letters,

Kate Gladstone

Handwriting Repair and the World Handwriting Contest

handwritingrepair@...

http://learn.to/handwrite, http://www.global2000.net/handwritingrepair

325 South Manning Boulevard

Albany, New York 12208-1731 USA

telephone 518/482-6763

AND REMEMBER ...

you can order books through my site!

(Amazon.com link -

I get a 5% - 15% commission on each book sold)

[Guest guest]

>

> Uh ... Maurice ... the "urge" part of "demiurge" doesn't actually mean

> what "urge" means in English.

So it's obviously a different language, but Greek is also a prime

source of roots for English words, and these words come from the same

root. A worker has a will to action, and an urge is a will to action.

The similarity of root meanings leads to the parallel of present

meanings that my point reated on.

Here is a page on Aristotle that uses the words as parallel, http://72.14.203.104/search?q=cache:Hof15cpUp9IJ:www.kouroo.info/general/Plato.pdf+urge+urgos+from+greek & hl=en & gl=uk & ct=clnk & cd=3

(The URL is from a cached Google search)

[Guest guest]

>> Inger: So you don't believe in the Demiurge as a specific being?>

> Maurice: That's right, cos I'm not a creationist.

OK. :-)

> >> Inger: The way you describe it sounds very similar to Hylozoism, actually.

> Maurice: Never come across that word before.> Quick search on it, brings up this from the Catholic Encyclopaedia - www.newadvent.org/cathen/07594a.htm Gr., hyle, matter + zoe, life, the doctrine according to which all matter possesses life. Sounds like another word for animism. Don't think this is me at all, I'm not talking about every physical object havign a spirit.

No, it is not the same as animism or physical objects having a spirit (although I believe that too). Hylozoism means every tiny molecule in the whole Universe has some type of consciousness.

> I'm talking about spirits being distinct agents, separate from matter, but able to influence the behaviour of matter at micro levels by means of fluctuations of space.

> I see life as originating with spirits in this way holding together long carbon-chain molecules, so preventing the tendency of material chemistry to decompose them again, and tipping the chemical equilibrium in favour of forming ever more of these molecules. The attraction of this to the spirits was that in the presence of complexity was a trigger to the ability to perceive anything, hence to rudimentary spirit consciousness. Their perception of particular molecule patterns and seeking after them again I will also guess helped set up the chemically unlikely-sounding business of self-replicating molecules. > Why were the spirits in the right place, on Earth where this compelxity was located, instead of in intergalactic space? Because they were attracted, not by a physical force but by the instinct to chase after perception, to complex assemblages of matter and the places where they were. So to stars and planets themselves in the first place, then to the most chemically active places on terrestrial planet surfaces.That still sounds like Hylozoism. I took the trouble of writing a whole long post about it. # 21544 in the archives. I'd be very happy if you read it just to say if you see ANY similarity at all. If not, then that's fine too. Just curious.

From the little I have read about Gnosticism, I feel an affinity for it.

Inger