/lit/ - Literature

Impossible, it makes too much sense cosmologically and has the best answer to the problem of evil, tied with Buddhism

Sure thing, easy peasy...hmmm....ok, let me see...uuhhhhh...aaarrrhh....FUCK FUCK FUCK....w-wait, hold up..NYAAAAAA...no no no no no no no no....ah, yes, now i have it...uh it's like this then, you see..ummmm...AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHH...I CAN'T FUCKING DO IT...IT'S IMPOSSIBLE....FUCK ME GNOSTICISM IS LITERALLY IRREFUTABLE....FUUUUUUUUUUUUCKCKK

>>14788724
Oh to be 19 again.

>>14788738
I'm actually 16 dude

>>14788743
Then you’re not allowed to be here. Mods?

>>14788738
Not an argument

>>14788745
Mods aren't gonna do shit faggot

>>14788753
The argument is you’re immature and incapable of thought, as all people who reply “not an argument” are.

>>14788758
you wanna bet?

>>14788716
Same retarded reason regular Christianity doesn't make sense; if God (the "real" one, to play your retarded game) is so good, why not just get rid of the Demiurge? Why bother doing this tip-toeing shit by sending Jesus?
>>14788724
Hermeticism or Neoplatonism makes 100% more sense, mostly because it isn't muddled by Christian coping with their retarded theology (besides the select few that straight up steal Hermetic ideas).

>>14788765
Refer to the op

>>14788783
>Why bother doing this tip-toeing shit by sending Jesus?
Read the VALIS trilogy

>>14788794
Uh, no. How about you answer my question now? Or is tip-toeing a running theme with Gnostics?
Also nice recommending literal fiction as an argument. I half expected you to tell me to watch the matrix or serial experiments lain.

>>14788716
Evil doesn't exist.

>>14788861
Elaborate

>>14788814
The world is a fiction.

>>14788875
I have moved...Beyond Good and Evil™

>>14788888
blessed digits. the light of the monad shines into this thread and dissipates the dark fiction that is the material world

>>14788888
>those digits
>saying "the world is a fiction" on a literature board, in a gnostic thread, as a reply to someone criticizing gnostic literature
my god, i cannot even wrap my mind around all the layers in this post...put me in the screencap boys

Gno I wogn't

>>14788716
Gnosticism is the final stage before true oneness with God, only obtained when the Gnostic can truly demonstrate his power in casting away his pride. The unification they sought is then revealed to have sat before them the entire time.

>>14788923
no, that's just poo in loo nondualism. the gnostic gets a literal heavenly body of light and shit

>>14788875
it only exists insofar as it is in/has being, evil is not an independently active force, it is a deviation from the Good which all things incline toward, and even its force of deviation derives from the power bostowed by the Good (or one of its ''aspects'')

>>14788933
>the gnostic gets a literal heavenly body of light and shit
childish fantasy induced by demiurge tockholm syndrome

>>14788939
>haha just sit around and do nothing lmao

Liberation theology is superior to gnostic larping, creation isn't evil but it's our job to bring prepare the world for the kingdom as much as possible

>>14788949
>lmao, bro just sit in the dirt and chill, and be all nondual n shieet. haha man that's what enlightenment is all about

>>14788888
Epic response, my dude. Way to dodge having to make an actual argument.

>>14788952
Liberation theology is only based if that liberation includes liberation from the catholic church

>>14788963
seething servant of the demiurge. the light of gnosis shines on you and you slink back into the deep dank dark hole that you crawled out of

>>14788949
not what I said, watch I can poorly mimic you too
>haha just convince yourself you're acting by the will of God because your brain give u cool anime music videos of beings of light n shiet
When I say that the unification sought is already present, this is not the same as saying that the unification sought is immediately understood or appreciated

>>14788716
Anyone got that pic of mine with this image included?

>>14788963
vast active living intelligence system shines through in the form of weird coincidences, such as quints, I'm sorry dude, but he pwned you.. no amount of vojak posting is going to save you

>>14788888
>>14788997
>tfw VALIS is actively monitoring this thread right now
she hasn't forgotten about us, boys

>>14788980
Shut the fuck up, you LARPing hylic. If you so enlightened and knew any better, you'd be meditating right now and not latched on to this electronic teat like the rest of us.
>>14788997
I have suspicion you are just >>14788980 samefagging based on your formatting but I will give you the benefit of the doubt. He got those quints for a reason; what he said in that moment wasn't wrong (although it's interesting he got 8s, since it connects to the concept of Ogdoad). I'm irritated by his faggy avoidance to my question with babies' first greenpill.

>>14788724
In which sense do you think Plato's cosmology fails? In Timaeus there is no evil principle, after all.

>>14788888
I know. I guess we all know, don't we?

We're too scared to see what lies at the dream's end. Maybe one day. The heavens are going to roll up, like a scroll.

whatever happened to that based schizo gnosis warosu poster

>>14789321
who?

>>14789321
if you mean 5oclock he still posts here every 3 months or so

>>14788914
You're are deeply my nugger

>>14788783
>if God (the "real" one, to play your retarded game) is so good, why not just get rid of the Demiurge?
Because in most Gnostic sects, he is not omnipotent. Evil coming into this world was a cosmic accident.

>>14788716
>refute my religion
nice one OP

>>14790635
No, I think the "mainline gnostic" explanation is the God is not a personalistic entity that "does" things. He is a transcendant *state of being* from which we have fallen into materiality.

>>14788888

>>14788738
Egsblain.

>>14790635
How do "cosmic accidents" happen exactly?

Already done in the first few centuries

>>14788716
Why not just subscribe to Simulation Theory at this point? May as well be the same thing. It can be run by an AI if that floats your boat.

>>14790788
It pretty much is the same thing.

>>14788724
Can you summarize the answer it gives to the problem of evil?

>>14788716
it's a brainlet spooked version of Christianity

God is terrifying because we don't like to think about anyone having power over us, nevermind infinitely more power. Gnostics are faggots who crack under pressure and make an emotional decision about God; that he must be a demiurge with an army of archons. But that's a lie.

Love Jesus. Gnostics are retards. Simple as.

>>14790811
The idea that the ultimate God is some being that has an agenda and wants and gives humans rules to follow and punishes them or rewards them etc is retarded. Gnostics don't deny that such a god exists, if not many such beings. They just deny that this god is the ultimate one.

>>14790817
>The idea that the ultimate God is some being that has an agenda and wants and gives humans rules to follow and punishes them or rewards them etc is retarded

source: my ass

>>14790833
All those qualities would make God into a mutable being. To posit the ultimate foundation of reality as a mutable being with a personality is metaphysically idiotic.

>>14790840
Then just go be a Buddhist or something.

>>14790846
Why are you so averse to having a conversation? My first and second reply to you were in earnest, but you reply with pointless one liners like "source: my ass" or "go be a Buddhist". Why do you even bother?

Gnosticism is as true as the gnostic who espouses it. I've already spent enough time arguing about archons, and I'm fairly certain that heliotheism is past it's expiration date.

>>14790833
>source: my ass
that's theology

>>14788783
God IS Jesus, bro

>>14790857
because he's a retard christian archontic slave

>>14790840
>All those qualities would make God into a mutable being
could you explain what you mean by this? if god does have expectations and rules for us, why would that be a problem?

>>14792273
It’s only a problem if that God is the ultimate foundation of reality. If that god is a lesser being then there is no issue. Mutability means change. If the ultimate foundation of reality is a mutable being, metaphysically you would end up with some kind of weird version of the Herclitian flux. Only instead of the flux consisting of an impersonal process it’s a being with motives and moods (as the Bible indicates Yaweh is subject to). I don’t think you could have a coherent metaphysics if you posit that the foundation of reality has such a character. On the other hand, if that God is just another being among others, like human beings for instance, then there isn’t really an issue.

Considered myself a Gnostic before coming back to Catholicism.
What a wild ride it was!

>>14792307
>God has a plan for humanity
How's that incoherent metaphysics?

>>14792312
lol retard

>>14792312
Can’t blame you, catlick “”theology”” is pagan

>>14792324
Gnosticism is Jewish

>>14792336
>who is Marcion, Mani, Valentinus, Basilides
>who are the Cathars

"No."

>>14792344
Not talking about refuted heretics.
Cathars not Jews. Okay then.
John M. O'Brien
Comparative Studies in Society and History
Vol. 10, No. 2 (Jan., 1968), pp. 215-220

>>14792322
Man, listen to what I’m saying. It’s only a problem if that God is the ultimate metaphysical foundation of reality. Ultimate metaphysical foundations can’t have “plans” because that would make those foundations mutable and composite. If that God is a lesser being that’s fine.

>>14792351
>Not talking about refuted heretics.

no one cares what catholishits think about what they don't understand

>>14792336
the irony is cucklickism is jewish pagan mysticism

Advaita Vedanta is like a perfected and more logical gnosticism

>>14792355
God is outside of creation. That's been known since the Greeks my dude.
>>14792356
Touchy touchy. I don't see many gnostic churches around yet my church, albeit having extreme difficulties, still stand. By definition, that makes someone care what we think.

>>14792355
I genuinely, unironically don't understand what you are trying to say. God - the Creator, the First Cause, the Prime Mover, the Necessary Existence - created everything else from nothing. He created things because His nature is to create. If He were some "lesser god", just because He has plans and intent with His creation, that would only push the problem back one step. If this "lesser god" was created, then the same could be said about the "true" First Cause - as you were saying, if God is just another being, we still need something to have caused Him and the other beings like Him. I just don't follow your logic

>>14792374
>temporal power is a sign of truth

spoken like a true catholishit

>>14792364
Gap in logic. I'm guessing that's why the Jews hate Catholics like no other group on earth bar Palestinians.

>>14788889
omg a rare neetch

>>14792386
2000 years - temporal. In what, geological timescale?

>>14792375
The first Being isn't a causal agent. There are different ways of accounting for it, and I don't have any preference for one or another explanation at the moment. Another anon mentioned Advaita, and that would be an example of a first Being (note: NOT a first "cause") that doesn't "do" things or have "plans". You could also think in terms of an irreducible dualism between God and matter, both eternally existing. God doesn't do anything so much as matter attempts to "copy" him by creating things that are Beautiful, Harmonious, etc

>>14792344
based

>>14792324
cringe and retarded

>>14792421
This is some twisted stuff anon. I think this is the main problem with gnosticism and why it cannot, ever be taken seriously. God/matter -irreducible dualism? That's what the Greeks thought and called demiurge because if that's the case, why the fuck would God care about us? Human history dictates otherwise though. That God has a plan, that Logos was incarnate and if we follow Logos we attain the eternal life.

all of these debates over which religion is superior seems so silly, nobody today can practice any of them

>>14792434
The Roman pagan cult is the biggest Christian sect but nonetheless pagan in origin

>>14792451
t. Retard

>>14792448
The Bible is pretty clear that God doesn't care about us. Recall the Flood, God enslaving the Hebrews to his sacrificial Law, destroying Babel, the plagues in Egypt etc

>>14792455
>The Roman pagan cult is the biggest Christian sect but nonetheless pagan in origin
evidence you have no idea what you're talking about. It's not a sect, and i'm not objection on the basis of negative connotation. It's literally not a sect.

>>14792455
I wish I was 17 again watching Zeitgeist for the first time and thinking "Woh".

>>14792458
Also don't forget that God kicked man out of paradise for something as banal as eating the wrong fruit.

Why do we have these threads every day

>>14792458
>What is NT and what does good news mean.
I'll give you an analogy. Your son is a flaming fag taking it up the arse and you, as a good father, how do you respond? I'm guessing by not interfering nowadays because the state would throw you in jail but I guess you will understand the point. So where exactly is this so called "not caring" you're describing?

>>14790788
simulation theory is just gnosticism for the modern man who is scared of or too philosophically retarded to use religious language.

>>14792472
I don't understand your analogy. Is English your first language? The whole premise of the Good News of man being liberated from the sacrificial law and all that just makes God schizophrenic. First he institutes a Law based on continual offer of sacrifices (which apparently he doesn't even "need" since he's all powerful) then he abolishes that law and calls it the "good news". It's a very strange sort of God. Hence many have concluded that this is in fact a mutable being and not the ultimate metaphysical foundation of reality.

>>14788716
It's heretical

>>14788794
>>14788888
Based

>>14792491
English is not my first language but what I tried to say is: you teach and restrain your child in a way to make him as good a person as he can be. Some things were allowed to happen during the times of OT because of the way people lived (Sodom/Gomorrah etc).
I'm not a theologian but I'm pretty sure some anon here could explain to you the reasons for sacrifice/prophecy fulfilment etc etc. The ultimate idea is that God has shown that he cared for us, for the first time on such a massive scale, by sending his Son, Logos itself into this world. That's what the Greeks never could have even imagined hence the demiurge.

>>14792484
I think it speaks a lot about gnosticism itself.

>>14788888
the world is not fiction, its ourselves that are fiction

>>14792523
What you're saying, in my view, only works on paper. Human history does not fit this image of God "caring" for us by sending us his "son". The history of Christianity is a confused mess. There's many problems just with the idea of "religions of revelation" to begin with. There are so many different sides to this, that's why I tried to restrict the conversation to God's mutability and the metaphysical consequences of that, but now you're opening up several cans of worms here. It's too much address, man.

>>14792546
Well, you take the bible outside of the church and try to interpret it - that's when it becomes a mess. Just look at the protestants, especially the ones in Europe. When taken outside of the church, the bible becomes a revolutionary document my dude. If you could humble yourself enough to read through what St. Augustine has written, or any other church father really, it would become clearer.
I can see it being hard to tackle with this stuff at first but my guess is you'd get a lot of much wanted answers.

>>14792579
I've read several Church Fathers, including Augustine.

>>14792579
catlick interpretation of the bible results in praying to pagan fertility goddesses and participating in greco-judeo blood rituals

>>14792586
Shoo CIA glowie. Recoil like a viper that you are.

>>14788889
The rarest of all neetches

>>14788936
Good isn't an independently active force either. To have the knowledge of something being good, you must have the knowledge of what it is not (evil).

>>14792536
I suppose it does, however if you boil it down to just the word I think gnosticism makes a lot more sense than many other religious philosophies. It just means "knowing", suggesting that you only believe in things you actually know, versus subscribing to an already set structure of beliefs and then backing it up with flimsy "faith".

>>14792705
Believing in things that you "know" leads to secret knowledge.
Faith is by definition, not flimsy but God-given.

>>14792336
So is Catholicism. Even moreso.

>>14792336
The most essential aspects of it are Greco-Egyptian and Zoroastrian in origin. Only the surface aspects are somewhat (though barely) "Judaic", in that case it is more like an inversion of Judaism from the inside.

>>14792758
>Believing in things that you "know" leads to secret knowledge.
what's wrong with that?
>Faith is by definition, not flimsy but God-given.
faith is by definition the ultimate cope.

>>14788734
Fuck off ironic r*dditor

I can't believe christian larpers have become even more obnoxious and prevalent than gnostic ones, oh how times have changed

>>14792451

good luck accessing all of the secret traditions that weren't written down

>>14792663
to have knowledge at all is already something good, to be, to experience, etc as well, capacity, potency is good

>>14788716
can someone explain the image in the op to me and are their good intros to gnosticism out there? please spoon feed me or at least point me in the right direction

>>14793712

defeating the demiurge would be akin to saving pleroma, or bringing on the kingdom of god. every little act against the demiurge will build up over time. read mundus millenialis and the nag hammadi bible

>>14793752
thank you fren

>>14792396
>only our thing is 2000 years old tho, ignore all the other things that survived

>>14792579
>If you could humble yourself enough to read
every
single
fucking
time
with you Christians. You just assume everyone who disagrees with you simply must be stupid (though you won't say it like that, oh no, how immoral) while signaling your oh-so-humble striving to understand God (repressing macabre pride in your aesthetic pleasures as "duty"), and yet every single time, again, what serious study have you done into works outside your own dogma? How can you call yourself a fisher of men when you refuse attention the art of fishing, and finding fish? You are a club of narcissists, to me it seems that if you really believed you were saved your pageantry would be much less offensive.

>>14788716
the onus is on the person asserting gnosticism to do at least some work explaining why their perspective and practice is more theologically and ecclesiastically sound than traditional Christianity

>>14792579
If you humbled yourself to actually read the Bible you wouldn’t be a cucklick

>>14794014
I don't know, like I've been interested in bhagavat gita and spent a night among hare krishna types, went deep into gnosticism for years, have a degree in STEM, am interested in people of the world in general? Is that good enough to justify my belief in Christianity or that is not wholesome enough for you?
>>14794140
Reading it everyday, m8

>>14794419
Very much doubt it. You seem extremely insecure, no doubt stemming from your lack of reading the Word.

>>14794456
You seem like you don't give a fuck about the Word whatsoever because nowhere in the Bible does it say sola scriptura.

>>14788716
>gnosticism
>worshiping gnost
wtf why would you worship a god with a retarded name like gnost lole, it kinda looks like ghost but worse

>>14788889
*tips*

>>14788716
Too much unprovable lore. Ignores some logical assumptions about the supreme being, instead falling into the same philosophical trap that Christians do; this world is evil because it is ruled by an evil deity, however there is a higher deity than that deity who is good.

>>14794474
Wow such a dishonest nigger-tier dodge. Try reading Matthew & John
> But he answered and said, It is written, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God
> In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

>>14794419
>interested in bhagavat gita
but God forbid moved
>spent a night among hare krishna types
not even sure what that's supposed to mean
>went deep into gnosticism for years
very comfortable in the pool of monotheism and Christianity aren't we?
>have a degree in STEM
absolutely irrelevant, Christian faith transcends phenomenal world, your degree of understanding in STEM rightfully has no bearing here
>am interested in people of the world in general
useless platitude
>Is that good enough to justify my belief in Christianity
no

>>14788716
the monad is just another demiurge

>>14788724
>muh 'problem' of evil
Subhuman hylic Anglo bugman detected.

Suffering compels me to find infinite ways to cope. Thanks demiurge!

>>14795618
it's demiurges all the way down

>>14794842
Neither of those verses support sola scriptura. Hint, even if they did, it wouldn't matter because it results in a cyclical argument. Why is the Bible authoritative? Because it says it's authoritative! You need something external to verify it. To Catholics and Orthodox, that's sacred tradition and the Church and to Calvinists and the like that's the the Holy Spirit

>>14795750

spoopy

>>14792523
Gnosticism came out of the Jews around 600 BC