Gnosticism sounds really blasphemous. Wholly removed from God, the world is seen as an ugly mistake despite all its natural beauty, but people have their little hidden divine they need to reawaken.

@RehnSturm256 Yes, in terms of Abrahamic religion, Gnosticism is very much the arch-heresy. But the most important part that you’re missing here is that Gnosticism (usually) very much blames the Abrahamic god for the evils and deficiencies of the world, because it (usually) directly conflates Yahweh with the Demiurge/Yaldabaoth.

The part that puzzles me is this: Gnostics generally believe that Yahweh lies all throughout Genesis (for example he can’t find Adam in the Garden despite claiming to be omniscient, and doesn’t follow through on his promise killing Adam when he finds him) yet they believe his claims about being the supreme god and creator of the world, and come to the conclusion that an evil god must have created an evil world.

@RehnSturm256 God is satan and is living in denial while OUR TRUE BETTER GOD IS ACTUALLY THE CHRIST (despite that making no sense)

yeah gnostics were probably on some good crack or some shit

@RehnSturm256 that being said, as a created creator with vaguely malicious intent to my own creations myself, i think the concept of a demiurge is pretty rad

@EscBoy @RehnSturm256 Originally in Gnosticism "Christ" was just the title that Gnostics gave themselves. "Christos" is a Greek word meaning "Anointed one"; the idea was that Gnostics self-anoint as the master of their own qualia and the only authority on their own universe - every Gnostic is his own priest and they can believe different things. So it's actually "our true better god is a distant and unknowable centre of everything and the divine feminine guides us to gnosis, and each of us is a Christ."

The usage of "Christ" to relate to Jesus is a direct answer to that: suddenly there is only "one Christ" and that's Jesus. Rather than developing their own qualia, Christians instead adopt the qualia of Jesus, since Jesus "Is The Way" to Yahweh.

@EscBoy @RehnSturm256 In fact I would argue that all of Christianity is a Jewish evangelical reaction to Greek tradition, the New Testament sets itself up very much as an "answer" to Platonic philosophy, THE WHOLE THING IS IN GREEK ANYWAY, and Jesus gradually took on the characteristics expected of a Greek magician (including the long hair he isn't depicted with in pre-100AD drawings of him) for cred the same way Yahweh took on the qualities of Zeus and the (famously horrifying) angels started to look like Olympians.

@druid @EscBoy

God’s omniscience aside, because Abrahamic followers will say things like, “erm, He purposefully ignored the serpent in the Garden to test his creation!” or other such convenient ideas, I just find it hard to look at the world without humanity as something evil or mistakenly made.

At worst, the world is chaos, with life flourishing and decaying and flourishing again. And at best? Well the feeling of soil beneath our feet, the sunrise and set on the horizon, the green of the trees. All these things are great beauty. Meanwhile humanity - when given the chance and without any limits - would destroy if all to fill his vices or greed.

@druid @RehnSturm256 honestly i don't know much about gnostiscism except the real basics (no sin because earthly form is irrelivant, jewish God is satan/demiurge, christ is son/incarnation/representitive (not sure which) of highest god) and that there's surge in edgy neognostics intentionally confusing people

@druid @RehnSturm256 "all of Christianity is a Jewish evangelical reaction to Greek tradition" yeah, there was a lot of greek influence on jewish society at the time, and therefore the church. it's like how american/europan stuff influences modern cultures that aren't that. it's even comparable with weaboos and japan

@RehnSturm256 @EscBoy This is honestly why I ended up gravitating towards Hinduism, it doesn't have any of these problems at all. There's no problem of evil (evil is part of Brahman like everything else,) and there's no single anthropomorphicised figure masquerading as the supreme being (though sometimes the uninitiated fail to understand this when they read godhead statements from sects, e.g. "Krishna is the godhead.")

The kaleidoscopic nature of it is exactly what you say in your second paragraph there.

@druid @RehnSturm256 most of the rest of it is because the first non jewish christians were either believers of greek/roman gods, or entrenched in that culture, so depictions of God/Jesus/the Holy Spirit tended to follow the familiar iconography.

also the "biblically accurate angel" this is pretty overblown, a lot of the time angels did tend to look like just normal people

@EscBoy @RehnSturm256 These are good posts and the middle post in the chain reminded me of just how heavy the Zoroastrian influence on Judaism was in earlier times too. During the late Babylonian Captivity, Babylon was almost overwhelmingly Zoroastrian, and Zoroastrians were even talking about the possibility of a virgin-born messiah.

@druid @RehnSturm256 XD learning about foreign mythological influence on judaism was the best part of getting my theology degree.

>basically all of the creation narrative is a massive middle finger to other cannanite religions

> the 10 plagues each take a fat shit over the egyptian gods, and the parting of the red sea is a spin on how other chief gods got their position by beating up river/ocean/water gods/monsters

@druid @RehnSturm256 >i had a 3rd example and i legit forgot it. i may need to go back to bed

Well the creation story is different though YAH/the Demiurge was the failed creation of Sophia, one of the creations of the real father God (one of his many .. Archons? I forget the term, but in Gnosticism there are many other beings and a whole story before the creation of man).

She created something without the knowledge of aid or help of the all-father, and it ended up being depraved. She hid it on it's own little platform and asked for forgiveness. It was granted, but she had to be on the level near her creation where it was failing to make his own creatures like everyone else made from the father was able to. The others felt bad for Sophia and convinced her creation to breath into what he was trying to make. Therefore man was given a piece of the divine Sophia. The Demiurge got angry and made them forgot and cast them out. Sophia made them eat the fruit to try and save them.

There are variations to the story, but the basics of Gnosticism is that we are being deceived about the true nature of the world. If we could only awaken the secret knowledge, we would be liberated. Most common liberation stories are Gnostic (sometimes be accident, but sometimes very intentional). The Matrix, Plato's Cave, The LEGO Movie .. they all follow that pattern. "Once you know the truth it will set you free."

The trouble with the whole Plato's Cave and its variants .. how do you know you're really out of the cave? What if you just move into a different cave, or are given a different more compelling story, to make you fight against your brothers when really no one knows the truth?

@druid @RehnSturm256 my god beat up an ocean!

my God MADE the ocean!

but my other god made people!

yeah but my God made everything with no effort in a week!

my God can beat up your god vibes

@EscBoy @druid @RehnSturm256 my god can beat box so good you think it’s real drum samples

@EscBoy @RehnSturm256 Lmao that's all they do all day, it's true. See also: "MY God TOTALLY SEIGED FORT KNOX" (Jericho's walls DID NOT FALL AT ALL in the time period the Bible alleges, it's actually one of the only periods in the history of Jericho where there are no archaeological slaughter layers.)

Also I just wanted to throw out there something that I learned from Esoterica on Youtube: Apparently in the original Hebrew of Genesis, the word used for the "primordial waters" that Yahweh zooms over in the beginning is suggestive of the Sumerian goddess Tiamat.

I think the nature of life is to grow, and it has to compete with other life. Unchecked growth ultimately leads to starvation. There's no real morality in this; it's just chance and entropy.

The things that are beautiful, it seems like it took hundreds of thousands of years to evolve these ideas and concepts ... to have a language where complex things are defined as sounds .. (to even have a word for vibrating the air to transmit sensory perceptions .. sound .. what and advance word and concept!)

Morality is a weird thing. Tribes and families and groups had to collectively reward things that seemed to benefit them and punish those which harmed their growth.

I wonder if there are sapient species of spider-like creatures in the universe, who would find everything we consider beautiful as disgusting, and things we find disgusting they would find beautiful .. because different things would be needed for both societies to thrive.

@druid @RehnSturm256 oh yeah, i remember.

the torah (genesis, exodus, leviticus, numbers, deuteronomy) was written during the babylonian exile, which is why there's so many specific polemics (my God can beat up your god moments) to babylonian gods, rituals and tropes.

@druid @EscBoy @RehnSturm256 son of a god and a virgin is a common archetype anyways

@druid @RehnSturm256
also it indulges in egyptian beliefs about the afterlife to a degree. egyptians believed in a second death that occurs when people forgot you. the pharoh and a woman who falsely accused someone of rape are not named, seemingly as a form of condemning them to the second death that they beleived in

@djsumdog @druid @RehnSturm256 they'd certainly find a nice soup gross and a nice fat fly a delicacy

@druid @RehnSturm256 idk about the first part but i completely buy the second part. that sounds about right lol

@djsumdog @RehnSturm256
>Archons? I forget the term

Emanations! The Archons are the usual "four direction guardians" we see in every religion ever but with the usual sinister Gnostic bent, and they usually have a big boss called Abraxas. (I hear he's the final boss in Cruelty Squad lmao.)

The creation story you told is almost word for word the classic Gnostic one I learned too, yeah - though not quite. In the version I'm familiar with, Sophia desires to observe God directly and cannot, so she makes a veil to observe God through, and that veil is our world, and the shadow of God upon the veil is the Demiurge. Also just to throw this out there, I've never seen a version of the story where God is anthropomorphicised or given a gender or a fatherly role, only where God is the Greek Logos (Brahman for IQcels)

>Most common liberation stories are Gnostic

Danganronpa V3 is the best one!!

>how do you know you're really out of the cave?

Oh, you know alright.

@sathariel @EscBoy @RehnSturm256 VIRGINS??? DID SOMEONE SAY VIRGINS??????? I'LL TURN INTO A BULL AND FUCK THEM

>b-but sire her father locked her in a dungeon

THEN I'LL TURN INTO RAIN AND IMPREGNATE HER THROUGH HER SKIN

@druid zeus/perseus moment

@druid ok this has kept me up long enough it is naptime zzzz

@EscBoy No worries! I should put the christmas tree up anyway. A pleasure talking to you!

@RehnSturm256 Gnosticism is definitionally blasphemous. Saying that God is actually an evil being for creating this material plane on which man choses?

@druid @EscBoy @RehnSturm256 >hinduism
my friend that is the shit eating child murder religion

@RehnSturm256 I heard you wanted to tussle.

@ceo_of_monoeye_dating

@RehnSturm256 Hail Sophia

@ceo_of_monoeye_dating only if she is a loli

@RehnSturm256 She is the divine mother to whom we all must return.

@RehnSturm256 Man is the ultimate orderer of the world, the only creature with the capacity to do this. Therefore, the only threat to man is shittier man.

@branman65 @EscBoy @RehnSturm256 I know the shit eating is just your weird fetish seeping in but go on then, where is the child murder?

@druid @EscBoy @RehnSturm256 kali

@druid @EscBoy @RehnSturm256 also the cow poop stuff

@druid cheers lad

@RehnSturm256 I believe similar about divinity being through the blood (guess that's why Wikipedia described it as Gnostic lol), but I believe the world simply "is" it's not good or evil in of it's self, I think that's the most rational explanation for things.