/lit/ - Literature

If the world is so bad, why don't you just die lmao
t. Plodinus :DDDD

>>15951537
Because now if you beat Yaldabaoth you still need to beat the crazy therapist too.

>>15951537
I don't think you need so many books to reach Gnosticism. Gnosticism is a midwit tier philosophy.

>>15951551
But that's stupid because death just shunts you back into the system

>>15951551
pretty much.

>>15951572
How so?

Daily Reminder that if you're a Gnostic but don't accept Jesus as your Lord and Savior, you are a LARPER.

>>15951537
can gnostic fags frig off? the Church btfo you heretics 2000 years ago. get over it.

If god bad, why good stuff happen

>>15951590
So are the Mandaeans larpers?

>>15951594
No, you just killed them lol.

>>15951590
The only surviving Gnostics think Jesus was a fraud and John the Baptist was the real deal.

>>15951598
Because the bad god is a false god.

>>15951572
I'm pretty sure it's a fad for teenagers and college kids right now. It's in the media and fiction a lot more lately and it fits the "edgy religion that sidesteps the problem of evil and is almost kind of a real thing people believe" like how universalism was when I was a teen.

>>15951607
yes
>>15951614
ok, have fun worshiping John the Baptist.

>>15951537
Jesus made it pretty clear that he was sent from the Father. John 8:54
>Jesus answered, If I honour myself, my honour is nothing: it is my Father that honoureth me; of whom ye say, that he is your God
Jesus's Father is the one the Jews think they worship, but of course the Jews actually worship Satan because they deny Jesus

>>15951551
In the gnostic cosmological system death results in reincarnation right back into material existence. This "epic counter argument" has been logically answered so many times yet some anons still think its a good argument, like the other guy who replied to you.

>>15951629
Gnosticism has been in-vogue since the Nag Hammadi text were found in the 1940s.

>What are some arguments against gnosticism?
only fragments of gnostic texts exist leaving us with an incomplete "belief system"

>>15951587

Pffhh. Typical philosopher, asking questions.

>>15951607
death is the ultimate BTFO

>>15951598
God is not "bad" necessarily, just deeply flawed. And the real God is good.

>>15951537
>Jung
>a Gnostic
Why do I always hear this?

>>15951594
A Christian, bloodmouth, repressed sex addict, former-pagan, proto-liberal theologian and monk was teaching a class on Augustine, known flip-flopper.

“Before the class begins, you must accept that Jesus was the final prophet!"

At this moment a brave, Manichee, vegetarian, elect who had prayed for 15000 hours and understood the futility of reproduction and the importance of picture books stood up and said:

“What is evil, hylic?"

The professor smirked quite carnivorously and unenlightenedly replied, “Evil is merely the absence of God, you stupid heretic.”

“Wrong. If evil is not a powerful force in of itself... then why do bad things happen?"

The professor was visibly shaken, and dropped his copy of "Confessions". He stormed out of the room crying those meat eater tears. The same tears that are spent on unborn children (who will suffer anyway) instead of the animals being killed right now. There is no doubt that at this point our monk wished he had chosen to become an elect instead. He wished so much that he could blame a proper force of evil for his humiliating defeat, but he had just denied its existence!

The students applauded and an eagle named "Shapur" flew in and roosted on the flag. The Arzhang was read several times, and Mani and his head themselves showed up and prayed for the souls of the hearers.

The monk was defrocked the next day and later died of a heart attack brought about by his grisly diet. Because he could not free the light trapped within him, he was reborn as a nematode in a raccoon's anus.

>>15951655
There is only one God, YHWH. He is good, and Jesus Christ is his only begotten Son who died for our sins

>>15951646
not nessisialry, as other anons pointed out: there is a gnostic sect with a living tradition still alive. Also see some sort of quasi-gnosticism in Bosnian Islam and Druzism.

>>15951537
>What are some arguments against gnosticism?
1. There are many mutually incompatible Gnostic traditions of old (Marcionism, Valentinianism, Basilideanism, etc), and additional mutually incompatible Gnostic texts (e.g. gospels) of unknown affiliation. Even if you want to be a Gnostic, the truth is that nobody today who wants to be a Gnostic is interested in accuracy but rather they want to LARP. When people are really interested in believing 'the truth' they are immensely bothered by the impasse of there being multiple mutually incompatible traditions, especially when they're all fragmentary. Any reconstruction will have to be systematic and pick one flavor, giving reasons for rejecting the others. But no modern neo-Gnostic really seems to do that. If you want to be a Gnostic because you want to believe the truth, you won't LARP, and will dedicate your life to picking one specific Gnostic tradition, and the despair that comes when you realize you only have access to a fragmentary reconstruction of any such tradition.
2. You should never believe religious movements that emerge with claims of authority passed to them in secrecy through secret lineages from a more exoteric religion's earliest founders. Of coruse you should expect esoteric traditions within exoteric religions, but you should expect any such esoteric traditions to have been passed down to the leaders openly picked in the eyes of all the religion's membership by the previous leaders. When random nobodies pop up saying they received secret tradition that bypasses said visible lineage of leadership, that's a big red flag, because anyone can make up random crap and claim they got it that way, but provide no proof. Gnosticism came about in this illicit manner, so you should reject it.

>>15951644
It can be as "in-vogue" as it likes, but I bet you're going to have a hard time finding real-life practitioners above the age of 30 for a while.

>>15951537
None of the cool kids do it...

>>15951659
kek. have a (you).

>>15951629
>gnosticism sidesteps the problem of evil
This is a very bad take.

>>15951629
Gnosticism has been cool for over a hundred years (Guenon himself was involved in French Gnostic revival 100 years ago). Nag Hammadi made it even bigger, and it has been a mainstream cultural concept since PKD.

>>15951644
>in-vogue
so teenagers

>>15951646
there is no gnostic orthodoxy, a complete system was never the intention of the original gnostikoi

>>15951653
There was a guy on here that said Catholics like you are just might is right fags with extra steps and rosaries. He was right.

>>15951659
Based and electpilled

>>15951666
>there is a gnostic sect with a living tradition still alive
any "gnostics sects" are just reconstructions using a sorted documents. I'm not denying things groups exist its just a broken line of tradition.
>Also see some sort of quasi-gnosticism in Bosnian Islam and Druzism.
religious ideas tend to leak into others this is not new or unique to gnosticism

>>15951673
1. A modern gnostic would invent a new tradition, a new mythology, with a new thematic core, while doing justice to what we all vaguely refer to as the "gnostic temperament". This is a non-issue.
2. Non-issue. Intuition separates the wheat from the chaff.

>>15951642
that's not the epic counter-arguments just one out of several
the real epic argument is the fact that what caused the cause?
If any link in the chain is born evil, the cause has to be evil, and the cause of that evil, and the cause of that evil, all the way up to "Agathon".

>>15951750
It's not a counter-argument, it's addressed directly even in the few texts we have.

Your second point applies equally as well to Abrahamic traditions, and does not apply in any capacity to Manichaeism or the Sethians. Soft, Valentinian dualism is basically just Plotinian emanationism with the Fall made more explicit, a tragic episode in the life of the divine and cosmic accident or "rupture", and not just the consequence of its natural outflow.

>>15951750
Don't Manichaeans and Zurvanists believe that the One is pure neutral and makes up everything, but that good and evil formed within it as equal but opposite twins of infinite power that will clash forever? And then I think Mani goes a step forward and says this world is a giant filter where the light trapped in material things is drained out through the stars while the Zurvanites took a fatalist approach and thought it was all fucked.

>>15951792
There's no One in Manichaeism, though both Manichaeanism and Zoroastrianism were pro-cosmic. I'm not sure about the Zurvanites, however.

>>15951644
>>15951702
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uLOdiGGuoNk
I understand what you guys are saying, but I don't think calling your religion "in-vogue" and "cool" is dispelling anybody's doubts that it's a religion for teenagers.

>>15951858
Why do you consider a preoccupation with the problem of evil the prerogative of "teenagers"? Could it be you worship a false God?

>>15951858
I'm not a Gnostic, I'm just pointing out that it has seen interest for a while. Cormac McCarthy considers himself to be a Gnostic iirc, Gnostic themes appear in mainstream media like Matrix, Evangelion, Lain, etc.

>>15951713
>there is no gnostic orthodoxy,
in other words, you conceive Gnosticism as postmodernism. Which is exactly why the OG Gnostics became corrupt.
>>15951702
"cultural" accpetance, sure. It's a handy way for edgelords to beat theistic religions over the head, without realizing the irony that gnotics worship Jesus and are 80% in line with Traditional Christianity.
>>15951679
the problem with practicing neognosticism is the same problem with practicing neopaganism. Since Gnosticism a dead tradition people can pretty much make-up what constitutes "practice" as they see fit. Calvinball: the religion.It will amount to some sort of new ageism and occultism at best. At worse, it will just be lazy man's faith. Pretty much a Sola Fide, except instead of faith it's knowledge of gnosis (not even the experience of gnosis) which somehow allows to an individual to transcend.

>>15951933
>in other words, you conceive Gnosticism as postmodernism. Which is exactly why the OG Gnostics became corrupt.

in that case, is Plato a postmodernist for what he says with Socrates' mouth? Are the Middle and Late platonists postmodernists for interpreting Plato's dialogues allegorically?

>It's a handy way for edgelords to beat theistic religions over the head, without realizing the irony that gnotics worship Jesus and are 80% in line with Traditional Christianity.

It's more like Christianity, in its proper form, is already gnostic.

>Since Gnosticism a dead tradition people can pretty much make-up what constitutes "practice" as they see fit.

incorrect, Gnosticism is a mentality, a temperament, not calcified dogma.

>>15951551
Fpbp

>>15951869
I don't think that the problem of evil is something relegated to teenagers, but the approach of gnosticism and universalism are such overly simple answers that it denotes someone that doesn't want to approach harder answers such as "there may just be no God at all" or "maybe suffering has a purpose". Gnostics especially have a sort of Scooby-Doo vibe, with "Ohhhh, the ghost was the Demiurge the whole time!"

>>15951986
Their answers are actually pretty sophisticated. What's simplistic about them?

>>15951957
>not calcified dogma.
I'd say that the content of the nag hammadi library represents "dogma" insofar that it gives commandments to be followed.
>And how should we pray and give alms? And what diet should we observe?”
>Jesus says: “Do not lie. And do not do what you hate.
so right away, Gnostics are told not to lie. Doesn't this count as "dogma"?

>>15952006
So were the Pythagoreans dogmatists in the vein of the early Church now, because they had rules member of the order should follow?

>>15952031
you tell me. I'm not even being sarcastic, I really don't know. I hear the word "dogmatic" thrown around a lost. Mostly as a pejorative. yet i'm to see why exactly something constitutes dogmatism and something else doesn't. if Gnosticism would have existed freely alongside Christianity it would have essentially been to Christianity what Buddhism is to Hinduism. It would have been filled with dogmas of various sorts. We can see the evidence for this in the existing Middle-Eastern Gnostics, the Medieval Gnostic hereisies like Catharism and Bogmillism, and the gnostic text themselves all had plenty of dogmatic aspects.

>>15951577
>>15951642
But if you have gnosis, don't you get out upon death?

>>15952067
it would be more accurate to say "Gnosticism" WAS early Christianity. it was maricon who forced the burgeoning church to get their act together, through Augustine the Manichaeans directly influenced the Catholic Church.

a tradition stops being dogmatist when it places its primary value on individuated relationships with the divine

>>15952084
The body is used to cultivate the super-consciousness needed to guarantee your release. In Manichaeism, specifically, there's no reason to kill yourself because the design of the world is ultimately benevolent.

Why are the only gnostic survivors ethnoreligions (Mandaeans, Druze, Yazidis, Alawites)? Manichaeans were universalizing and spread throughout Europe, Asia, and Africa and still went extinct.

>>15952139
>stop eating meat & beans bro
hmm you tell me....

>>15952148
Based.

>>15951996
I suppose just the idea of "well, the God's just evil, then" to sort of avoid the idea of thinking hard about the nature of suffering, or the possibility of a void.

>>15952139
Comfortable truths propagate easier.

>>15952191
If you worship this God, it's a demon. If you don't, you're not the kind of theist gnostics were reacting to in the first place.

>>15952139
Mandaeans believe that you should have lots of sex*, have many children, enjoy nice things, etc. and try to make goodness shine in this world. They reject asceticism and celibacy entirely, even their initiated priests.
*only with one person, and only after marriage
The average Druze has almost zero responsibility in normal life. They are only required to be monogamous with another Druze and make Druze children. Only a handful of Druze actually get initiated into their mysteries, the rest live like normal people.
Yazidi identity probably strengthened because Muslims are constantly chasing them around. They believe they were born of a miracle baby born from Adam's seed spilling on the ground while he was fucking Eve (I think), so they think they are a different race of creature from humans entirely. Muslims hate them because their guardian angel is described as being a powerful peacock and a peacock is what got Iblis into Eden.
I don't know what the deal with Alawites is. I know they are very secretive about how they differ from mainstream Islam. They believe in reincarnation and hold creating more Alawites to be very important.
Anyway, the recurring theme here is that they have a strong group identity and encourage their followers to keep having babies while many other gnostics thought sex and childbirth were morally wrong. Relying on converts to grow is difficult if society as a whole thinks you're trouble.

>>15951971
The problem is that when you die your soul just gets recycled and thrown back into the meat grinder until you escape or the world is destroyed.
Its possible suicide makes it worse because its possible to taint your soul

>>15951629
> I'm pretty sure it's a fad for teenagers and college kids right now
How do you know?
> It's in the media and fiction a lot more lately
Please give examples.

>>15951713
might isn't right, right is right and orthodox Church teachings are right. also, take your Rick n Morty jokes and shove them up your r*dditor ass.

>>15952609
tradcaths shouldn't call other people redditors

>>15952628
im not some Spic Fuentes esque tradcath im just a regular Catholic. keep larping like a gnostic if it makes you feel good, just know that its not a real religion and hasn't been for probably a thousand or so years. also I told you to go back, so go the fuck back r*ddit nigger.

>>15952650
hostile tone, cloying appeal to his church daddies, pretends submission to God but always looks to the world and history to see how he's doing... yup, it all checks out.

>>15952587
No shit sherlock. Fucking shit, gnostics are literal npc's. He was ironically telling you to kys. If you read the orphic myths you would know how to escape.

>>15951792
Your explanation of the One as neural is correct for the Zurvanites, but the Manichees were ditheists. Both good and evil preexisted in Manichaeism.

>>15953060
Just read the Egyptians, then.

>>15951537
>what are some arguments against santaclausism?
it's all a bunch of made up bullshit bro