/lit/ - Literature

>>20471949
No they were not

Yes they were

Cont.

>A more moderate and thoughtful attitude toward the Mosaic Law, on the other hand, comes to word in Ptolemy's Letter to Flora, written to allay the scruples of an educated Christian Lady. The writer is at pains to make it clear from the outset that the Law of Moses, though certainly not from the perfect Father, is neither from Satan; nor is the world: both are the work of a god of justice. Those who attribute creation and legislation to an evil god are as much in error as those who ascribe the Law to the supreme God: the former err because they do not know the god of justice, the latter, because they do not know the Father of All. From the middle position of the legislator-god follows a middle attitude toward his Law—which however is not identical with the whole body of the pentateuch. The latter contains three elements: ordinances from "God," from Moses, and from the elders. Those from "God" again are threefold: the pure legislation unmixed with evil, which the Savior came not to abolish but to make full, because it was still imperfect (e.g., the decalogue); the legislation tainted with badness and injustice, which the Savior abolished because it was alien to his nature and that of the Father (e.g., "an eye for an eye"); and the legislation symbolic of things pneumatic and other-worldly, which the Savior translated from the literal and sensible to the spiritual meaning (the ritual laws). The "God" who ordained this Law, being neither the perfect Father nor the devil, can only be the Demiurge, the maker of this universe, different in substance from either, holding median rank between them and therefore called the "middle principle." He is inferior to the ungenerated perfect God, superior to the adversary, neither good like the first nor evil and unjust like the second, but properly called "just" and the arbiter of his kind of justice (a kind inferior to that of the Father).

>>20471949
No

>>20471949
Yes

>>20471949
No, the Borborites were right.

>>20471949
The Marcionites were objectively correct.

bump

>>20471949
Read either Giovanni Filoramo, Kurt Rudolph, or that romanian guy who got killed by the securitate whose name I can't remember, Jonas is a spiteful, projecting semitoid.

>>20473710
>Jonas is a spiteful, projecting semitoid.
Why? I find his book to be very comprehensive and straightforward. Just finished the Valentinian Speculation chapter and I'd say that so far it's a very well-written and captivating work that contains a lot of condensed useful information that doesn't seem to be tainted by any biased undertones. Of course, I'm not that knowledgeable about Gnosticism as a whole, so I might be mistaken.

>>20471952
>God deliberately and knowingly designed a world where horrible evils could be done.
Even video game programmers can design a world where pvp and other evils are simply impossible to perform. What gives?

>>20473710
I’m also curious as to what is wrong with Jonas’ book.

>>20473710
Hello Jak

No he was wrong, gnosticism or initiated circles are all false and only to purvey mischievousness

read the Noble Quran, anon. quran411.com

https://archive.org/details/morals-behaviours-al-akhlaq-ibn-hazm-al-andaloosee/page/n89/mode/1up

Another book you can read for knowledge.

>>20474749
Who is jak?

>>20475108
>No he was wrong, gnosticism or initiated circles are all false and only to purvey mischievousness
wow, what a convincing argument this is. I mean, come on.

>>20474035

>God deliberately and knowingly designed a world in which you have actual free will to reject God, who is ontological goodness itself, since loving God can only be good if it is of your own free will, and this requires the possibility of rejecting God, and as a consequence bringing in horrible evils into the world

If you want a world without the possibility of horrible evils, then you want a world in which you are an NPC programmed to love God out of necessity, and not free will.

>>20475982
>you're an npc if you don't allow horrible evil to be possible
how's that line of reasoning work out logically? Btw, i never said anything about "loving God out of necessity", i just wondered why God allows pvp (and rather gruesome pvp at that, what with torture and all). "Loving God" wasn't the issue. Besides, plenty of people who claim to love god do some rather evil things... granted, it's debatable whether they *truly* love God like they claim when they commit those evils, but that just leads right back to the point of my original question: Why did God allow for lying as well as all the other evils?

A computer programmer can design a game where lying, torture, death, starvation, etc. is quite simply not even possible with the game. And those games are often still pretty fun even with those limitations.

And it's not like God hasn't put limitations elsewhere in this world-matrix he created. There's the limitation that people can't just shapeshift into fire breathing dragons and back again into humans (i mean this in a literal sense). So there's that limitation for example, there's all sorts of limitations hardwired into this physical world, and even science has only allowed us to bend some of those limits (e.g. we can build airplanes that shoot fire, but still we can't shapeshift into fire breathing dragons)

And free will absolutely does not apply to humans. We often ignorantly think we have free will, but God even says in the Old Testament that he "hardened Pharoah's heart" (for example), which is to say that God can manipulate our thoughts and feelings. He has already predetermined who will be saved and who won't be, he sees and knows everything that has happened, is happening, and will happen in the future. Because we don't have his ability to see into the future like he does, it *appears* to us that we have free will, but the truth is that we don't, at least not enough to warrant the claim we "have free will". At best we have a sliver of free-will, much as an insect has a sliver of free-will.

We're all already NPCs, even with the horrible evils. If we're gonna be NPCs no matter what, why not at least remove the horrible evils and make existence pleasant.

>>20475982
>God designed a world where horrible evil is possible so that he could see who would reject his laws and who would obey them.
If he's omniscient he shouldn't need to test people, he already knows the outcome. Honestly, there's no argument that can be made that doesn't fall apart and make one wonder if the gnostics are right and we truly do live in a prison/hell world designed by an evil god/demigod.

>>20476134

> i just wondered why God allows pvp (and rather gruesome pvp at that, what with torture and all). "Loving God" wasn't the issue.

Maybe you're just not familiar with the metaphysical side of biblical history, and the cosmic scope of the fall of Adam, but this was implicitly addressed in what I said:

Adam's fall caused all the PVP elements to enter into the world through Adam, because God is ontological goodness itself, and Adam's sin brought death, and ontological separation from goodness into the world. The entire point of Christ's incarnation, death, and resurrection, is to conquer death by death, and overcome the ontological separation of human nature and God by that act of redemption, which is why Christ is called the second Adam.

>We often ignorantly think we have free will, but God even says in the Old Testament that he "hardened Pharoah's heart" (for example), which is to say that God can manipulate our thoughts and feelings.

If someone says "That meme made me angry", are they saying that meme literally reached into that person's soul and forced anger to exist in the person's soul against their will? Come on, man.

>>20476177
>Adam's fall caused all the pvp elements to enter into the world.
False. If that were true, and the world was originally a "PVE server" then Adam and Eve wouldn't have even been able to sin.

It's always been a pvp server, it was created that way.
>don't eat of the Fruit of this Tree that i've gonna put right in the center of the garden, with no guards, perfectly unprotected. And watch out for Satan the Snake that I not only created but allow to wander the Garden and who I KNOW (because i'm omniscient) beforehand is going to corrupt you and usher in horrible evils.

Gnostics seem to be right. Even that story of Job is pretty messed up: God makes a bet with Satan and allows for Satan to absolutely wreck Job's life, resulting in the deaths of his entire family, and then God gets mad that Job would even dare question God's judgment ("Excuse me, ARE YOU GOD? WELL I AM, I MADE EVERYTHING SO HOW DARE YOU QUESTION ME"). But it's all okay because God gave Job new wife and kids.
Still sucks to have been the first wife and kids, what prizes do they win for playing along with God's and Satan's bet?

Now, if this were a hell planet designed to harvest energy from pain/emotions, then all this would suddenly start making some sense.

>>20476196

Ok, so you wanted to be *really* autistic and specific about PvP elements and sticking to the video game analogy.

>If that were true, and the world was originally a "PVE server" then Adam and Eve wouldn't have even been able to sin.

I addressed this in the first post.

If you're just not interested in learning what the other perspective is on its own terms, and you just want to go on a single player rant, start a blog.

>>20476209
i'm using a video game analogy because it works. Computer programs "build worlds", God/Demiurge build the physical world. Whatever rules exist in this world (like gravity, pain nerves, the capacity for lying, etc.) is solely due to him creating such parameters.

>I addressed this in the first post.
where was that again? Can you just copy paste where you addressed that since i don't even know to what part you're referring and i'd rather not play the guessing game.

If God created a perfect pve world without sin, then Adam and Eve's sin would never have happened. The fact that sin was even possible to happen (even though it had not happened as of yet) is proof that the possibility of sin was hardwired into the world, and that was done on purpose, since he literally could have chosen not to go that route.

>but then we'd be npcs with no free will!
we already are npcs with no free will, only the illusion of free will since we don't see the future. God knows already exactly what will or will not happen, he can even harden people's hearts if he wants. He knew when he created Satan what Satan would do.

>but it's worth it in the end, because a small minority of the souls he created will go to Heaven to be with him and live without pain forever and ever in a pve world where evil no longer exists.
oh okay, so he *can* build a pve heaven where evil doesn't exist when he wants to, but just hasn't yet for "reasons". Meanwhile the majority of souls go hell (according to the "official story" anyways) and God knew beforehand that this majority would burn in hell for all eternity.

Seems like an inefficient system if your goal is to populate heaven with more souls.

>>20476231

>where was that again?

>God deliberately and knowingly designed a world in which you have actual free will to reject God, who is ontological goodness itself, since loving God can only be good if it is of your own free will, and this requires the possibility of rejecting God, and as a consequence bringing in horrible evils into the world

It's very simple. No possibility of sin -> No possibility to freely love God -> No possibility to freely love eternal good, truth, beauty, and life -> Possibility to reject eternal good, truth, beauty and life of your own free will necessary to freely accept eternal good, truth, beauty and life -> Possibility to afflict the cosmos with the consequences of rejecting eternal good, truth, beauty and life.

If your entire thing is just that you're trying to find ways to justify believing that we're NPCs, then at least be consistent and stop trying to morally judge anything, including God. Morality means nothing if you're an NPC, since morality means nothing without free will.

>>20471949
They touched upon something, yes.
>>20475982
Basic midwit take. How people continue to buy into this obvious bullshit baffles me.

>>20476266

>Empty emotionalistic rhetoric

Many such cases from people who are simply incapable or unwilling of thinking through the logical conclusions of their worldview.

>>20476244
>no possibility of sin = no possibility to freely love God
not sure i agree with this. Satan was an angel and chose to rebel, and yet the Bible also states that angels don't have free will.
So either God created Satan with the express purpose of rebelling (and also condemning billions of souls and angels/demons to hell) or angels have free will and can sin too (in which case the Bible is wrong about angels not having free will. And if the Bible is wrong on that account, then what else is it wrong on?)

The angels that still serve God and sing hymns to him eternally, are they doing it out of free will or because they're robots programmed to? If you say "they have free will" then how so considering they haven't incarnated as humans and been "tested". If you say "they're robots" then why did Satan and the rest of them rebel?

Your idea that this is all a test to see if we love God doesn't hold up, even though it sounds nice on the surface.

If everything was created *PERFECTLY* in the beginning (which the Bible explicitly states it was) then sin should not have even been an issue, ever.

And what kind of parent would put their child in harm's way knowingly just to test their child?
>Okay, i'm gonna put you next to this grenade okay little Billy? Now DON'T TOUCH THAT GRENADE. I know it's shiny and sparkly and you wanna play with the grenade, but DONT, ITS DANGEROUS
normal parents do their best to keep dangerous things away from their children, though it's difficult sometimes to completely bubblewrap your kid since we live in a pvp server, but still a normal parent does their best under shitty circumstances.

>you're trying to find ways to justify believing we're NPCs
and you're trying to find ways to ignore what the Bible says about God being omniscient and perfect. You're trying to ignore that the world was (supposedly) originally created perfect, without sin, and yet somehow sin still crept in (even though God also created that Sin, i.e. created Satan).

And you also keep trying to ignore the fact that we DONT have free will, only God has free will. Whatever free-will humans *might* have is extremely limited in scope. Only God has true free will, such as the free will to create a world WITHOUT sin, but which he freely chose not to do for reasons.

But all these logical inconsistencies evaporate when one postulates an evil demiurge creating an evil world as his playground, and harvesting our emotions, as the gnostics believe.

But you're obviously not interested in learning what the gnostic perspective is on its own terms, and you just want to go on a rant instead of writing a blog. Which also explains why you're posting in a gnostic thread and telling others to "start a blog" for posting gnostic themed questions. So very logical of you :)

>>20476271
I am not a gnostic, and your "arguments" being endlessly regurgitated proselyte garbage, I feel no need to address them. Your worldview falls apart by itself.

>>20476279

>and yet the Bible also states that angels don't have free will.

Where?

If God is truly omnipotent, he can make possible a mode of existence where free will and complete absence of evil are compatible.
>b-but God is constrained by logic
>b-but my retarded definition of omnipotence means something else
lmao
Your god is either powerless or evil, then.
Nicaean Christians have always been ultimately unable to address evil in a satisfactory manner. It always amounts to various flavors of deflection and guilt tripping tactics. The acosmists are right, although which flavor of acosmism is is up for debate.

>>20476281

>I am not a gnostic
>Continued empty emotionalistic rhetoric

Responding to accusations that the original post never made? Many such cases from people who are simply incapable or unwilling of thinking through the logical conclusions of their worldview.

>>20476301

They are compatible. The actualisation of that compatibility is contingent on the free will of created beings to chose to not do evil, since by necessity chosing to freely love God means having the possibility to reject loving God.

The fact that the actualisation of this compatibility has been rejected by created beings is a product of historical circumstance.

>>20476306
>attacking a strawman because you're too stupid to understand I'm not even arguing with you
Par for the course with you people. I never intended to debate with you, your arguments and worldview don't interest me in the slightest. I merely pointed out how repulsive your worldview is, I don't care for your meaningless gotchas and sterile debates, I'm not obligated to help you jerk off

>>20476326
>The actualisation of that compatibility
Holy fucking cope. You'll go through every kind of mental gymnastics possible to weasel out of the obvious incoherence in your beliefs. So your god is constrained by historical circumstance, that's even more ridiculous. "Actualisation of compatibility" would've already been enacted if your god wasn't incompetent, malevolent or both.
>uuuuh they're compatible except they're not compatible yet we have to make them compatible, no god isn't playing mind tricks on us I swear
Pathetic

>>20476286
>Where?
that i actually don't know, though i have heard it mentioned somewhere. I'll withdraw that part of my post though, it's a rather minor point anyways. (I think the "angels are robots' idea had something to do with something similar to how the robots in Matrix were programmed to do certain things, it was their "job" assigned to them by God, i.e. they're programmed robots. The only free-will they had was in accepting or rejecting that job, but i guess you're right, that is still at least a modicum of free-will, but i still assert that only God has true free-will, everyone else, angels, humans, etc. are just npcs of varying degrees.)

>>20476328

>A strawman of an argument would have to be erected for it to be attacked, but no argument has actually been addressed or mentioned
>Continually responding to lazily copypasted material to fulfill a womanly desire for emotional outrage

Picking logical fallacies at random to accuse someone else of? Many such cases from people who are simply incapable or unwilling of thinking through the logical conclusions of their worldview.

>>20476346
>he still thinks he knows my worldview
>femininely psychologizes my behavior while accusing me of being womanly
kek
Your impotent rage is palpable. No need to throw a tantrum

>>20476345
The notion of angels lacking free will is a part of Islamic theology, not Christian.

>>20476345

Then I'll let you know what the Orthodox Christian teaching on the free will of angels is:

The race of angels was created with the same free will as Adam and Eve, but because of their bodiless nature, and original closeness to God, they had one opportunity to chose to commit to either loving God, or rejecting God. Then, after they have made their choice, they are bound within limits of freedom within that choice - The angels have infinite free will to act consistently with their commitment to love God, and the demons have infinite free will to act consistently with their commitment to hate God.

Free will isn't impeded if someone, of their own free will, limits the possibility of their own actions according to a prior commitment they have made. That's why, even in your own understanding of God, that God can freely chose to never lie.

However, there is one legitimate insight that you do have in saying that people are "partially NPCs" - because of the fallen world that people are born into, where their nature is infected with sin, their free will is overridden by the suggestion of demons, since demons don't respect free will at all and actively want to make people NPCs, by inflicting them with addictions. Freedom from sin, is freedom from being an NPC.

I'm sure that you would agree, that addictions of any kind impose NPC-like behavior on someone. Original sin and the fallen nature is like being born as a crack baby - the crack baby hasn't personally done anything wrong to be born with the consequences of its parents actions, but still has to overcome its difficulties.

>>20476306
>many such cases from people who are simply incapable or unwilling of thinking through the logical conclusions of their worldview.
um, no offense, but from my point of view, you're doing that exact thing. You claim we're doing that, but how do you know you're not guilty of that too?
You're in a gnostic thread telling gnostics they're wrong, but then not addressing any of the questions aside from "but free-will means freedom to do evil" and then generally not addressing any of the other arguments. You keep going back to the "God wanted us to freely choose to love him".
But you're automatically *assuming* (because you're not God, and therefore don't know, you just assume you're right because you see things from the limited human perspective) that God couldn't create a world where evil didn't exist, or at least didn't exist on such an egregious scale, but where that world was also one where we could freely choose to love him.

This sorta goes back to that old phrase "we live in the best of all possible worlds", that God designed things the way they are and it's the best he could do. And that is terrifying if so.

Going back to the video game analogy, people can still do "bad" things in a video game, but no where near the level of bad things that they can do in the real world. Video games have more limitations, earth reality has less limitations. But even in a video game it's possible to determine who is a good person and who is a bad person based on whether they do good or bad things in the video game. They is still a modicum of free will in a video game. So the question is, was it really necessary for God to allow the possibility of THIS MUCH EVIL in the world just to test his theory out? Couldn't he have reduced the capacity for evil even a little bit and still been able to do his test on humans?

and as the other poster mentioned, if God is truly omnipotent, he can make possible a mode of existence where free will and complete absence of evil are compatible. After all, that's what i thought Heaven was supposed to be all about. A place where evil no longer exists, and where people are still "people" and have some of that free will you go on about.
But if free will does exist in Heaven, then that means that the possibility for sin will exist in Heaven and that another Satan could arise and set the whole darn thing (the Fall, i mean) in motion again.
And if free will doesn't exist in Heaven, then people in heaven will basically be robots, and you already stated earlier that God doesn't want robots.

curious to see how you answer these

>>20476342

>Holy fucking cope. You'll go through every kind of mental gymnastics possible to weasel out of the obvious incoherence in your beliefs.

Today I learned that a syllogism was mental gymnastics.

>So your god is constrained by historical circumstance

The created world is bound by historical circumstances. If you want God to make a world in which consequences don't carry on into history, then you want God to make a crystal realm where nothing happens and nothing changes.

>>20476407
>Today I learned
Today you learned nothing, and you will keep learning nothing because you're too deep in delusion to see that your entire belief system is a scam
>The created world is bound by historical circumstances.
Inconsequential to an omnipotent being.
Arguing about abrahamic religion with its proponents feels like arm wrestling with toddlers, fuck this

>>20476400
He's an ortholarper. He is literally incapable of intellectual honesty. You should simply stop indulging him, I'm not so fond of the tripartite classification of beings in the gnostic systems but that's a hylic if I've ever seen one

>>20476400
wait, did i post this to the right person? a lot of this post is meant for the guy that is saying that "free will necessitates extreme evil being possible". Got a little lost in the responses and now don't know who i'm talking to anymore lol

>>20476400

I'm addressing one point at a time because I don't like bringing up hundreds of points at once. Nothing gets resolved if I chose to just bring up hundreds of other points, and try to win just by listing an avalanche of points.

There's no reason to actually stray from that "but free-will means freedom to do evil" point until it's actually understood and resolved, since if you're saying that I'm making the argument that God must intentionally make the world with evil already in it, then it seems like even the premise of what I'm saying still hasn't been understood.

Why would I start talking about dozens of other topics, if this first point hasn't even been addressed, because its very premise hasn't been understood?

Has anyone ever bothered doing a comparative study of Buddhist metaphysics and Gnostic (mostly Valentinian I suppose) metaphysics?

>>20476432
>you cannot possibly disagree with me, your disagreements must stem from incomprehension
Go get some fresh air.

>>20476407
>if you want God to make a world in which consequences don't carry on into history, then you want God to make a crystal realm where nothing happens and nothing changes
so God is constrained by human logic. From a human logic perspective, i can see how you'd think that such a place would be one where "nothing happens and nothing changes". But surely a God-mind could create a crystal realm that wasn't so static and unchanging.

Btw, if "crystal realm where nothing happens and nothing changes" is "bad/boring", then what exactly is Heaven? Cause i thought heaven was supposed to be FOREVER (i.e. unchanging) and also a place where no evil existed (i.e. nothing happens, at least, nothing bad, which is to say, it's gonna be niiiiice and boring and tranquil).

>>20476432
>Why would I start talking about dozens of other topics, if this first point hasn't even been addressed, because its very premise hasn't been understood
fair enough i suppose. Personally i'm capable enough of answering more than one question at a time, but to each his own i guess.

I still think you're wrong though. The Bible explicitly states that God creates both good AND EVIL. "Creates", not just allows, but Creates. That throws a monkey wrench into the common teaching that God is pure good, and only "allows evil so as to test whether humans freely love him or not". If God creates evil, then basically the gnostics are right, and the Old Testament God (which is where it says God creates good AND EVIL) is the demiurge, and different from the God of the Pleroma.

>>20476436
i've read some books where comparisons like that have been made. The book wasn't devoted to that topic, but mention of it was made. Don't ask me which books though, i don't keep track of that stuff lol, i just remember reading something about it. If I had to guess.... maybe Spengler? Joseph Campbell? Possibly Will Durant, or maybe Houston Stewart Chamberlain? Sorry, that's the best i can do :P

if God doesn't want robots, but rather free willed souls that love him, how come we aren't given the free will to choose to not live in a pvp world?

i.e. we don't have free will. We're NPCs that have had the choice/free will removed and decisions made for us. And on top of that we get the joy of living in a pvp world. Splendid.

There's lots of little inconsistencies i could bring up to, that bring into doubt certain "accepted" beliefs. Take for example aborted babies: are aborted babies allowed into Heaven? If so, how come God doesn't test them? If not, do they go to Hell? If sent to Hell, why? If not sent to Hell, then reincarnation? But the official teaching is that reincarnation doesn't exist, so it can't be that answer. (gnostics, incidentally, do believe in reincarnation.)

That's just one real world example that shows that there is something really "off" about the official version of things. Gnostics may not have all the correct answers but their stuff does make more sense.

>>20476522
>>20472238

>>20476465

I know the section that you're thinking of when you quote "God creates evil", Isaiah 45:7. The sense of the original Hebrew word, raa, is the same word used for injury, harm, and calamity(disasters like hailstorms, etc). Back in the time of the KJV's translation, the word "evil" still had this wider group of connotation in English. So, in this context, the meaning is more like "I create prosperity, and I create disasters".

Yes, I know, this will sound like quibbling about translations, but when you're citing the Bible as a resource, you can't escape from the continuous historical interpretation of the passage, or escape from the necessity to chose a tradition of interpretation. This is one reason I chose to become an Orthodox Christian - I could actually cross-reference the exposition of what the bible meant, across the commentaries of two millenia of Saints and Church Fathers. I couldn't take Protestantism seriously when I was an atheist, since picking up a book, and just making some stuff up outside of the context of the book, is going to have bad results, no matter what it is.

So, if you want to stick to that interpretation of the passage because it makes more sense with a specifically gnostic tradition of reading, fine - but that's not what the historical interpretation has been for non-gnostics, because the word being used in that context in old English, old Hebrew, and old Greek, doesn't mean what people think it means now.

>>20476522

>if God doesn't want robots, but rather free willed souls that love him, how come we aren't given the free will to choose to not live in a pvp world?

Look man, this just sounds a paraphrase of "Why can't the world be exactly how I want it to be?". You're limited, and you're born into a historical circumstance that you have to deal with, and you can't escape it, or your consequences in it, by wishful thinking.

You can plainly see that Gnosticism, and other related beliefs, in its goals to escape the matrix and escape from suffering, is literally just pure escapism at the metaphysical level. It's a refusal to face reality, and so part of it necessarily is about re-interpreting reality as if it were an illusion.

Which then raises questions, like if you're secretly an immortal, perfect, infinitely powerful shard of divinity that has simply been tricked into believing that it's an immortal, perfect, eternal, and infinitely powerful shard of divinity, then it means that immortal, perfect, eternal and infinite power isn't a safeguard against being deceived, which is quite silly.

>>20476555

*has simply been tricked into believing that it's NOT an immortal, perfect, eternal, etc

>>20476545
God creating disasters isn't that much different from God creating evil, to me at least. It still goes back to my earlier point about how God hardwired evil into the world.
He created storms, floods, earthquakes, torture, pedophilia, rape, lies, etc., all the evil in the world that has happened or will happen at some point is because the possibility of it was hardwired into the world. Just like in a video game the developers can remove the option for jumping (like the original Gauntlet game, for example) or they can add the ability to jump in a game (like Super Mario Brothers game). It's all up to the developer.

You claim that evil is necessary to allow for free will, but that's clearly not so. Angels aren't subject to physical torture, for example, and yet earlier it was claimed (by you i think, or by that one poster) that angels have free will. But according to that line of reasoning, not being able to be tortured means you're an npc and not capable of free will.

so yea, logical inconsistency. It's clearly not necessary for certain evils to exist, like torture for example, in order for free to exist.

And just as in the video game examples i used (Gauntlet and Super Mario Brothers), in one game you couldn't jump, in the other you could, but in both you still had free will to do other things, just in one game things were more limited and in the other game things were slightly less limited.

And this is the same as on Earth. Certain limits have been put in place, and some limits have been removed. But the limits that have been removed are some of the most awful things imaginable, and like the gnostics it leads me to wonder "WHY".
Is Heaven gonna have those lack of limits too? Or will more limits be put in place? If the latter, does that mean people in heaven lose their free will?

>>20476555
jesus fucking christ what made you like this

>>20476555
>infinitely powerful
You could at least try to read up on actual gnostic metaphysics before spouting stuff that is blatantly wrong.

>>20476576

>You claim that evil is necessary to allow for free will

I've explicitly told you that I don't claim that already.

>>20476587

Then tell me, which school of gnosticism do you believe that makes the case that the god-like being that each person is isn't infinitely powerful, and why do the other schools that say that they are are wrong?

>>20476555
Look man, this sounds a paraphrase of "Stop criticizing the Demiurge, if he wants to create a torture cell for humans to be reincarnated into for eternity, then that's his business."

You're limited, and you're born into a limited mindset and think "this is the things are and will always be and there's nothing outside the box", and you just have deal with it and at the same time never question anything and always do what authority figures (mere humans) tell you because they know best.

>gnosticism is pure escapism
LOL, oh, and the idea of Heaven and an afterlife aren't escapism? Seriously dude, you're in the same boat as the gnostics on that one. From the viewpoint of an atheist you're just as ridiculous as you think gnostics are.

You're demonstrating a lack of an ability to answer any of these questions (it's okay, you tried at least with your "free will requires torture porn to exist" argument) and are now just resorting to "fuck it, this is life, just accept it.". From the atheists perspective you are the one "refusing to face reality".

>if you're an immortal perfect eternal shard of divinity, tricked into believing...
do you mean tricked into believing that it's *NOT* an immortal perfect etc etc?

>.... being immortal and perfect and infinite isn't a safeguard against being deceived, which is quite silly.
Silliness abounds. It sounds just as silly that a perfect God created a perfect world and then perfect humans and perfect angels and also created free-will (which is perfect, remember, because the Bible says everything was perfect, so therefore free will is perfect too) and then non-perfect evil arose because of this perfect free will, and now God is going to condemn the majority of humans and angels to eternal hellfire because of a perfect flaw he created in the first place.

SILLINESS ABOUNDS.

>>20476576
>>20476594

To elaborate on this, if I was actually making this case:

>>But according to that line of reasoning, not being able to be tortured means you're an npc and not capable of free will.

Then yeah, it would be completely psychotic to defend that position.

But that's not the position I've stated, or ever defended. We can't get anywhere if you're going to keep asserting that I'm making that case.

I will clarify it again: I've said that the potential for evil is necessary for free will. I never said that actualised evil is necessary for free will.

>>20476594
ummm... unless you're a different poster than the guy i was talking to earlier, you're clearly mistaken.

You (or the guy i was talking to earlier with) said that "God gave men and angels free will to determine who really loved him", and that this free will necessitates evil being a possibility.

If you're not that poster, not sure how the mixup happened. So hard to keep track of people on here.

>>20476598
The overwhelming majority of schools especially those influenced by sethianism make a case for the alien God being necessarily limited in terms of influence on the kenoma by virtue of being infinitely good. You have no idea what the fuck you're talking about and should refrain from posting about subjects you're very obviously unfamiliar with
I recommend starting with Lacarriere or Rudolph for a basic exposition of gnosticism

>>20476607

Yes, I'm the same poster. You probably were writing that post before you saw this post >>20476606
, but I answered it there.

You are saying that I am making the case that evil must already exist in the world in order for free will to exist. I don't make that claim.

>>20476606
>bro it's the POTENTIAL that's necessary
>wtf you ignorant and inherently limited being that is utterly removed from my divine comprehension of creation, why did you actualize that potential?
Is yahweh a histrionic woman? Why does he leave the cookie jar open and in plain sight then throw a tard tantrum when the kids reach inside it?

>>20476609

>The overwhelming majority of schools especially those influenced by sethianism make a case for the alien God being necessarily limited in terms of influence on the kenoma by virtue of being infinitely good.

>God being necessarily limited in terms of influence by virtue of being infinitely good

So, you're implying that every single person sympathetic to gnosticism here, that their argument "If God is actually infinitely good, then he wouldn't make a realm without evil" is completely invalid if they knew what the gnostic definition of what is possible by virtue of infinite goodness?

>>20476615
>>20475982

>>20476616
>is completely invalid
Your lack of reading comprehension is depressing
Gnostic posters pointing out the incoherence in the nicaean claim that yahweh is both omnipotent and infinitely benevolent is absolutely compatible with the traditional sethian view

>>20476606
>6606
begone Satan.

> i never asserted that the non-existence of torture means you're not capable of free will.
> i will clarify it again, the potential for evil is necessary for free will.
Pick one and only one. You're contradicting yourself. You CLAIM (with your limited human understanding) that free will can't exist without the possibility for evil existing. But you don't *know* that, you're just asserting that.
If God can eradicate the possibility of evil in Heaven and yet still retain free will of the residents of Heaven, then clearly your viewpoint that "possibility of evil is necessary for free will to exist" is a false viewpoint.

And if Heaven isn't a place where evil doesn't exist, then... what's the point again?

>>20476621
>bro I'm the absolute omnipotent and omniscient maker of reality, nothing is beyond by reach
>well except human logic, I have to abide by these arbitrary standards... what? why didn't I just devise an entirely different system on which to base reality? s-stop asking questions
This is genuinely embarrassing

>>20476622

Okay, so how is infinite benevolence without infinite capacity to actualise the benevolence compatible? If its capacity for actualising its infinite benevolence is limited by a metaphysically necessary limit, then that necessarily implies its benevolence is not infinite.

>>20476611
>I am not making the claim that free will and evil are two sides of the same coin. You can have free will without evil.
Did i get that right? But if you can have free will without evil, then why not just create a world without evil but where free will still exists.

>because you can't have free will without the possibility of evil too.
oh okay, so you are making the claim that free will and evil are two sides of the same coin.

>>20476629
Various sects have various answers to this, it's not the gotcha you think it is. This is where acosmism comes into play. You're asking me to spoonfeed you what is essentially gnosticism 101, read Jonas' chapter on Marcion for a precise answer to your question
>capacity for actualising
It is infinite in the Pleroma. Jonas talks about the Limit which itself was an Aeon, read the relevant chapter which puts it more eloquently than I can
You are operating under the assumption that your neoplatonic-influenced model of good and evil is right (it's not, it's actually utter garbage and Plotinus danced around theodicy endlessly without ever truly answering it) when the gnostic model is completely different in that it grants substantial existence to both good and evil and makes them (generally speaking, there is no monolithic gnosticism) absolutely incompatible

>>20476621
>don't you dare question the Demiurge for creating evil.
big yikes, bro.

As i said way back at the beginning: computer game programmers can design a game without torture porn, and players still have free will do go and do various things that aren't boring at all.

If a *HUMAN* computer game programmer can think outside the box like this, how much easier would it be for a God to think outside such narrow limits?
>torture porn MUST EXIST, human logic necessitates that torture porn exists.

Amen = Amon (Ra)
Israel = ISis, RA, EL (first two primal and, respectively, supreme Ancient Egyptian gods, last one a supreme Mesopotamian and Canaanite God)
12 tribes of Israel, 12 apostles = 12 zodiac constellations

In Genesis 1:26 and 3:22 God refers to himself in the plural form (Elohim, which is the plural form of El (God) and which denotes the Cannanite, Ugaritic and Mesopotamian pantheon of gods)
>Then God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness,
>And the Lord God said, “The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil.

El/Enlil = Cronos/Zeus = Saturn

In Revelation 22:16 Jesus refers to himself as the Bright Morning Star (the archetypal Sun God)
>“I, Jesus, have sent my angel to give you this testimony for the churches. I am the Root and the Offspring of David, and the bright Morning Star.

The Jews use tefillin (black cube = Saturn) during prayer/worship
Islam's most important and sacred place of worship is the Kaaba, which is a black cube

New Jerusalem is described in the Bible as a white cube
Revelation 21:16
>The city was laid out like a square, as long as it was wide. He measured the city with the rod and found it to be 12,000 stadia in length, and as wide and high as it is long

A cube, when unfolded, becomes a cross

The birth if Jesus marks the beginning of the Pisces age. Jesus and his apostles refer to themselves as fishermen (some of them were literal fishermen). In the Gospels Jesus multiplies the fishes to feed the people. The first (esoteric) Christian sign is the Ichthys symbol (a fish). Apkallu - the seven sages in Mesopotamian mythology that bring to mankind wisdom/knowledge (gnosis) - are depicted as part man, part fish

The Bible is a mashup of esoteric, astrotheologic, occult and syncretistic themes and symbolism, and it's a real pity that most people, especially Christians, don't realize this

>>20476625

> i never asserted that the non-existence of torture means you're not capable of free will.
> i will clarify it again, the potential for evil is necessary for free will.

>Pick one and only one. You're contradicting yourself.

There's no contradiction, for the very simple reason that the possibility for something existing is not the same thing as it actually existing. Torture itself was also not even potentially possible, until the fall of Adam and Eve. To elaborate on this, torture doesn't need to exist in order for evil to exist, since the first evil actualised was rejection of God, not torture. Torture hasn't been invented yet, and brought into existence, until later in history, but the possibility for torture existed.

This is made much more obvious with the example of murder, with Cain as the first murderer - before Cain murdered Abel, death and corruption entered into the world, and evil entered into the world, before the the first murder was committed, by Cain. The moment Cain murdered Abel, is when murder itself entered into the world - but everyone had free will to murder or not murder before that, but murder was literally impossible before Adam and Eve fell, because death had not entered into the world yet.

>>20476645

>>20476627
this.

>>20476648
>but everyone had free will to murder or not murder before that, but murder was literally impossible before Adam and Eve fell, because death had not entered into the world yet.
This is so hopelessly convoluted and obviously a post-hoc rationalization of a teaching that is inherently just not that sensible.

>>20476638

>(generally speaking, there is no monolithic gnosticism)

Then why should I interpret gnosticism how you, or a majority interpret, instead of taking a minority gnostic interpretation where the god-spark each person is actually has infinite power?

If you want to say "That's not what MY gnosticism is", fine, but you can't say "That's not what gnosticism is" and then weasel your way out of consistent doctrine by saying gnosticism isn't monolithic.

>>20476654

World was made without death. Murder not possible, since death must exist for murder to exist.

Rejecting God introduced death into the world. Murder now possible.

Cain and Abel born. No murder happened yet.

Cain murdered Abel. Murder happens for the first time, and is invented.

This is about as convoluted as frying eggs.

>>20476657
>Then why should I interpret
You shouldn't, you should read up on what gnosticism is and what it means and entails because right now you really have no fucking idea what you're arguing against and it's just tedious to talk to you
Gnosticism as a whole can more or less be summed up as a set of principles. Past that, it's down to specific sectarian interpretations, or even individual interpretations as in the case of people like PKD, because there is no gnostic orthodoxy, and gnosis is, by essence, purely individual

>>20476660

>You shouldn't, you should read up on what gnosticism is

>because there is no gnostic orthodoxy, and gnosis is, by essence, purely individual

Then why are those individual gnostics, who you have admitted are a minority in gnosticism, but included in gnosticism as a whole, who believe that the god-spark is infinitely powerful, invalid in their belief, if you allow their belief within the umbrella of gnosticism?

>>20476659
>Rejecting God introduced death into the world. Murder now possible.
See >>20476627, your doctrine is absolutely nonsensical
Yes it's convoluted as fuck, you'd see it if you had any other point of reference (most orthodox don't because their doctrine is terrified of being uncovered as the pile of nonsense it is, hence why they label everything that threatens them "prelest" and "demons" without ever making an argument), honestly compare this bullshit with madhyamaka, yogacara or daoist philosophy and it's like comparing a kid's confused scribbles to Dali's persistence of memory

>>20476648
>Torture itself was also not even potentially possible in Garden of Eden, until the Fall.
But sinning by eating the Fruit of the No-No Tree was potentially possible in the perfect Garden of Eden.

now you're just chasing your own tail, so confused you don't even know which direction to go.
How can free will (sans even the potentiality for torture porn) exist in the Garden, and have it still be "free will"? That exact scenario you're suggesting is literally what i'm suggesting when i talk about why God didn't create a world where free will and no potential for evil exists. If anyone can do that, it's God, right?!

The potentiality for torture porn existed in the Garden since God put the No-No Tree in the Garden where Adam and Eve would be tempted.
Jesus said to Satan "Tempt not the Lord your God", well how about don't tempt Adam and Eve!! Fair is fair, right?!

>>20476664

The created world is bound by finite logical limits, and suffers consequences of actions within its limits.

This isn't hard.

>>20476671
>The created world is bound by finite logical limits
See >>20476627, which you will never address because you are disingenuous and deep down you know your doctrine makes zero sense

>>20476668
(con't.)
put another way, why didn't God just create a Garden of Eden and then NOT put the No-No Tree in it? Or at the very least put the Snake (that he created) in a cage somewhere not in the Garden, maybe make another garden for it or something.

>>20476663
>ummm if gnosticism isn't monolithic then why do some people have an outlandish intepretation of it that I don't agree with?
What's your question exactly?
First off, show me those gnostics who believe the god spark is infinitely powerful within kenoma
Then, tell me why I should defend beliefs that I'm not even a proponent of just because they fall within the vast umbrella of what can be considered gnosticism
Finally, drop the petty gotchas because you're not currently arguing against gnosticism in any form but trying to point out logical inconsistencies in the hypothetical beliefs of hypothetical people whom I already said I did not agree with

>>20476668

>But sinning by eating the Fruit of the No-No Tree was potentially possible in the perfect Garden of Eden.

Yes. That's not a problem.

>That exact scenario you're suggesting is literally what i'm suggesting when i talk about why God didn't create a world where free will and no potential for evil exists.

This has been repeated multiple times. Because without the potential for evil, then it would be impossible to love God, goodness, truth, light of your own free will. Creating beings that love you and worship you out of necessity, like robots, would literally be an actual narcissistic evil.

Adam and Eve could have chosen to obey God, and enjoyed the innumerable number of other non-forbidden trees to their hearts content. Some Church Fathers have even written that they would have been allowed to eat of the tree eventually, and that their sin was not the eating of the tree in and of itself, but disobeying God and refusing to accept responsibility for their actions.

>>20476672

The created world is bound by finite logical limits.

The created world isn't God.

They are different things.

Do you seriously not know that?

>>20476680
>without the potential for evil, then it would be impossible to love God, goodness, truth, light of your own free will.
So yahweh made a purposefully imperfect system when his omnipotence allowed him to make a system where this wouldn't have been a problem under different rules. Yahweh is incompetent and retarded
>>20476681
The created world is bound by the limits an omnipotent creator would choose to give it
Keep trying to weasel out of my point, the complete incoherence of your beliefs has been exposed already
>The created world isn't God
This is such a fucking stupid doctrine, but that's another argument entirely.

>>20476659
>rejecting God introduced death into the world.
But Satan, according to the official orthodox version, rejected God prior that, and yet Garden of Eden still remained perfect.

If God had wanted he could have just punished Adam and Eve individually for eating a fruit, instead of punishing ALL OF HUMANITY for the horrible sin of eating a fruit that he put in their path.

Think of it like this: a computer programmer designs a game or any program really in such a way that the user can't fudge with the program (on purpose or even accidentally) while using the program. To do that they'd need to go into various folders and change the coding.

But the Garden of Eden story is like saying a user accidentally changed the program coding simply by using the program, didn't even go into folders or deliberately alter coding. Just seems like sloppy coding to me.

And the whole historical tendency of orthodox religions to murder and torture anyone that questions the loving Demiurge gets kinda tiresome too. You never see gnostics behaving like that.

>>20476677
cont from here
>>20476680

The point was to give Adam and Eve an opportunity to either accept or reject God, the fact that it was through the tree of knowledge of good and evil was just the chosen method, and there's no reason to think that they would not have been given permission to eat of it later.

The cookie jar analogy brought up against me is relevant here - the possibility rewarding children who can keep their hands out of the cookie jar, with the cookies in the jar.

>>20476689
So god plays mind games with his creation and damns them when they make a mistake out of their lack of omniscience — a mistake that he would have foreseen anyway due to his own omniscience
lmfao
Even in greek mythology gods aren't this fucking petty and evil

>>20476680
>creating robots that love you is more evil than creating the potential for torture porn
lol, okay, you are a literal demon

>Hey everyone, i just made a new video game, you can do really cool stuff in it, farm, plant a flower garden, talk, swim, raise pets like dogs and cats, play darts, go-carts, etc... oh, i also added torture porn, but if you use that i'll be very angry with you.
>excuse mr programmer, why would you add torture porn to your new game?
>To see if all the gamers love me,
uh... lol. How about this, i promise to love you even more if you take out all the torture porn and other evil. Real genuine love, but only on condition you take out the torture porn

>>20476697
lmao
abrahamism really is a mind cancer

>>20476687

>If God had wanted he could have just punished Adam and Eve individually for eating a fruit, instead of punishing ALL OF HUMANITY for the horrible sin of eating a fruit that he put in their path.

>Computer analogies

Fine, I'll use a computer analogy, since you're fond of them.

Do you know prototypical inheritance in the OO parts of Javascript? Adam and Eve are the prototypical humans. When the new constructor is called on each new instance of a human, they inherit the properties of their prototype. By Adam and Eve corrupting their own properties and methods, it necessarily means that all of their inheritors inherit corrupted methods and properties.

In order for their descendants to not inherit their corruption and capacity for death, they would have to not actually be their descendants, which is a barefaced contradiction. If God were to prevent them from bringing forth children, this would contradict God's commandment to them to be fruitful and multiply, which was given prior to their corruption.

>>20476681
>the created world is bound by finite logical limits.
>the created world isn't God.
>TOTALLY DIFFERENT.
>but God still has to follow the finite logical limits of the created world when he creates a world from scratch in his infinite limitlessness, and THAT'S why torture porn has to exist.

>>20476701
>the universe is coded in JS
If you needed any more evidence that yahweh is an incompetent and clearly evil piece of shit, there you have it.

>>20476697

>actual existant evil is better than potential non-existent evil

What?

>>20476701
So your god chose to use a suboptimal paradigm that would ensure something as retarded as the inheritance of sin would exist, instead of going for an option that would only condemn adam and eve.
The more you keep arguing about this, the stupider it gets.

>>20476689
>it's all a test.
Look, i can dig the "test", the part i'm questioning is why does the test have to involve torture porn, etc.? Video games are fond of tests too, they come in all sorts of various shapes and sizes, but i can't think of any that involve torture porn.

and your constant assertion that "the test HAS to involve the possibility for torture porn" is 100% false. God could have tested us in other ways, frankly he doesn't need to test anyone at all since he's omniscient and already knows how everyone will act.
To say that God has to allow us the chance anyways, even though he already knows the answer, is to imply that you don't think God is omniscient.

Orthodox version is so full of holes, it's ridiculous.

>>20476718
>Orthodox version is so full of holes
Catholic version is even more ridiculous. Honestly all the nicaean shit is nonsensical

>>20476703

>has to

No.

>choses to

Yes.

>I don't like what God has freely chosen to do with the world he has created, because it means consequences for my actions exist

Yeah, learning to take responsibility for your actions is tough, but it's the only way you can learn from your mistakes.

>>20476708
>robots programmed to love (basically a human puppy) is more evil than torture porn.

What?

Seriously though, if i had to choose between loving a guy that built robots that love, or a guy that designs games with torture porn in it....
gee, that's a TOUGH CALL

>>20476730
>>choses to
So your god is a moody sociopath who chooses the option where he makes people suffer eternally instead of choosing any other, better option
Also drop the smug condescension, your beliefs are centered around guilt tripping people into believing getting tortured for eternity is something a just and benevolent god would ever do. If you honestly believe this garbage and are not larping, you are a twisted piece of shit

>>20476718

>Look, i can dig the "test", the part i'm questioning is why does the test have to involve torture porn, etc.?

It doesn't have to involve torture porn.

>i can't think of any that involve torture porn.

You must be new to 4chan.

>and your constant assertion that "the test HAS to involve the possibility for torture porn" is 100% false.

To keep with the video game analogy: Minecraft. You can make an infinite number of artistic expressions with the blocks in that game. It can involve very many beautiful possibilities.

One of those possibilities, is someone making an image of torture porn in it.

Whose fault is that? Notch's fault?

No.

It's the person who chose to make torture porn out of minecraft blocks.

>>20476730
>learning to take responsibility for your actions
hey jackass, i'm not torture porning anyone! Innocent children don't ask to be raped by adults! You're a literal demon worshiper that thinks innocent people deserve to be tortured because some other guy chooses to be evil.

Stop being a literal demon, please!

>>20476734
>It doesn't have to involve torture porn.
The fact that it includes the possibility for it is already a sign that god is 1. incompetent 2. malevolent
>NOOOO my game has to include the possibility for eternal suffering otherwise we're not truly free!
You are literally insane and unhinged.

>>20476733

> your beliefs are centered around [things that I don't believe]

Everyone gets the full experience of God in the afterlife. The "eternal torture" that people experience in the afterlife is just what God feels like to people who hate God, just like how liars feel physical pain after the truth gets exposed.

Forcing people that hate God to feel good in the presence of something they hate would be metaphysical rape.

>>20476738

>The fact that it includes the possibility for it is already a sign that god is 1. incompetent 2. malevolent

It's the gnostic belief that the people who make torture porn are secretly God.

Put the blame in the right place.

>>20476742
>people who hate God
Nobody hates God. Some people do hate the petty, evil representation of god your semitic books came up with in the form of yahweh
"Bro loves feels painful to people who don't believe in my doctrine" is yet another example of ridiculous mental gymnastics. True love feels amazing to everyone, your claims are nonsensical.
>metaphysical rape
You know what's metaphysical rape? An omnipotent being making a shitty, half-assed reality with a bunch of rules that can damn you for eternity instead of putting just a bit more effort into the game to ensure that shit doesn't happen
>>20476746
>the gnostic belief
You don't know what gnosticism is, refrain from posting about subjects you are clearly very unfamiliar with. Hint: what your dumbass priest terrified of conflicting doctrines told you "gnosticism" was is not even close to what it can be said to be
>the people who make torture porn are secretly God.
Those people would actually be called hylic and said to be devoid of a spark of divinity. You lack the most fundamental knowledge on the absolute most basic principles almost all gnostic sects have in common. Embarrassing.

>>20476731

You really don't know what the difference between something actually existing, and something only potentially existing is, do you?

You have the potential to cut your own dick off every day. Do you have a drawer full of your own dicks that you have cut off? No? Then stop being a retard and pay attention to the difference.

>>20476756

>True love feels amazing to everyone

So it's true love when you're forced to love against your will?

>>20476734
>an image of torture porn
lol, even your analogies are lame.

>an image of torture porn is the same as ACTUAL TORTURE PORN

no. And besides, Notch is just a human, and yet at least his game doesn't actually torture people. Meanwhile a literal God goes way beyond just "images" of torture porn.

Here's a counter example: Fez. There's no torture porn nor images of torture porn. There's literally no way of doing anything evil in that game. You actually can't even die (you just instantly respawn if you fall off edge of platform).

>so is it Notch's fault?
well... sorta, yea, for designing a game that allows for images of torture porn to even be a possibility. And who knows, maybe there's a way to fix that (i don't play Minecraft, so i dunno desu).

What's to stop people in Heaven from rebelling against God?
>oh no, that will never happen, that's why we're being tested right now.
It happened with Satan, it could happen again. If Heaven isn't protected against the potentiality for evil, then the official teaching is wrong.

>>20476757
>nooo you don't get it yahweh has to allow for the potential of extremely evil shit existing otherwise we're not truly free!
I don't know if it's stockholm syndrome or just a complete lack of empathy due to childhood indoctrination but you're too far gone

>>20476761
Who said forced to love? If I'm feeling hateful and bitter and someone gives me a hug, they're not forcing me to do anything except allowing me the possibility to reciprocate.
Being in the presence of love cannot ever be painful for eternity. It can be painful at first, but eventually it subsides and turns into bliss.

>>20476279
> yet the Bible also states that angels don't have free will.
Lol you have no idea what you are talking about

>>20476763

> due to childhood indoctrination

I literally come from a background of atheism, occultism, and gnosticism.

>nooo you don't get it yahweh has to allow for the potential of extremely evil shit existing otherwise we're not truly free!

Yeah. Just chose to not do extremely evil shit, then there won't be extremely evil shit.

Other people have done extremely evil shit before you? Then blame them, and don't follow in their footsteps.

This really isn't difficult.

>>20476769

>If I'm feeling hateful and bitter and someone gives me a hug, they're not forcing me to do anything except allowing me the possibility to reciprocate.

So if you continue to hug them against their will, they will necessarily like it eventually?

>>20476742
>just like how liars feel physical pain after the truth gets exposed.
are you speaking from personal experience? Because in my experience when you expose a liar they don't feel physical pain, they just keep lying, and lying, and lying, and confronting them front on doesn't do anything either. Eventually you come to realize that you either have to physically stop the liar from lying (i.e. kill them) or just completely cut that person out of your life (my preferred method).

>the "eternal torture" that people experience in the afterlife is just what God feels like to people...
gee you sure know so much, one question though: Do you know all this because you've experienced it or are you just repeating what a book says? or what some person claims is the truth, but which they haven't actually demonstrated?
How do you know for sure that you're not being duped?

>>20476746
>It's the gnostic belief that the people who make torture porn are secretly God.
well, Demiurge, but yes. People tend to want to use "God" for the good deity, and then Demiurge for the evil one. They're both "gods" in the sense that they're far more powerful than humans, but there is no rule that a god has to be good. Even the old testament talks of evil gods, and it was only much later that those evil gods were demoted to "evil angels/demons"

>>20476774
>occultism, and gnosticism.
kek, no you don't, otherwise you wouldn't make such embarrassing mistakes about the latter. What you mean to say is "I was not raised religious, then I fell for the ortholarp and my priest convinced me that my previous stance was demonic and 'gnostic' (despite neither of you knowing what this word means)"
>Just chose to not do extremely evil shit
Moot point since you are condemned to eternal suffering by not being a christian.
Your stance is also extremely stupid because the world lacks potential for some higher good (such as unconditional love being easier to attain) as well as lacking potential for some extreme evil (such as furuta or funkytown-tier suffering not being very easy to inflict on others). So the available potential of the world is not infinite, therefore we are still limited in our free will. Which implies that yahweh did not design this system with free will as its center (otherwise "potential" would not be so restricted) yet purposefully included the potential for extremely vile shit because... don't ask questions goy!
>>20476779
God is perfect, yes? It wouldn't take very long for a hug from a perfect being to break through any facade of bashfulness you might've put up preemptively. Infinite goodness obliterates any petty human actions we might undertake

>>20476757
>you have the potential to cut your own dick off every day.
yea, but you also have the potential to cut off my dick every day too. So does literally every other person on the planet. That's the problem i have. I'm not worried about harming myself, i'm annoyed that people like you are allowed the opportunity to harm me, even if i did absolutely nothing wrong.
Read a newspaper, it happens quite frequently.

>>20476781

>are you speaking from personal experience?

Them feeling physical pain from being exposed doesn't mean they'll actually stop lying. If they have literally nowhere to run, and everything comes crashing down around them from their lies, then they won't be able to run from it. Most of the time my experience is the same as yours, though.

>How do you know for sure that you're not being duped?

Long story. tl;dr countless paranormal experiences, demonic experiences, occultist spells/rituals/energy work pilled me on the existence of the supernatural. Then having direct perception of those exact same entities having seizures upon them coming to contact with holy things. Getting small tastes of a direct experience of God for myself (especially when deepening my prayer life), seeing prayers being continually answered, obvious providence of God in places.

The rest of the blanks are filled in with accounts from people who believe the same as I do, that I trust, just like how you do with everything you believe in but haven't directly experienced.

>How do you know you weren't just hallucinating it all?

Let's not go full brain-in-a-jar. I know what I experienced.

>>20476761
>your pet dog doesn't really love you, it's evil for you to have a loyal dog that can't truly love you since you never allow him the opportunity to gnaw your face off.
sounds more like your god has some insecurity issues. And once again i reiterate that we don't have free will, so already our "love" is forced.

People don't have the free will to stop other psychos from torture porning them, we don't have free will. There is no test, it's just an excuse to torture porn.

>>20476788

>God is perfect, yes? It wouldn't take very long for a hug from a perfect being to break through any facade of bashfulness you might've put up preemptively. Infinite goodness obliterates any petty human actions we might undertake

Holy shit, you are actually advocating for metaphysical rape.

>>20476805
People's personal experiences are incompatible with yours. Why should yours be the absolute truth? Any tibetan yogi would tell you you simply experienced delusions and were unable to realize the inherent emptiness of your visions. You do not hold a monopoly on truth because you made the sign of the cross while under sleep paralysis and it helped you calm down

>>20476788

>kek, no you don't, otherwise you wouldn't make such embarrassing mistakes about the latter.

Sorry, you don't get to say they're mistakes when it's admitted that it's an individual thing, where each gnostic determines their own idiosyncratic beliefs.

>What you mean to say is "I was not raised religious, then I fell for the ortholarp and my priest convinced me that my previous stance was demonic and 'gnostic' (despite neither of you knowing what this word means)"

My first priest literally made fun of that position as being "fundamentalist" and superstitious. He was incompetent as a priest. I came to those conclusions myself.

Stop projecting.

>>20476809
>you are actually advocating for metaphysical rape.
I'm literally describing what happens according to your own doctrine lmao. If you choose to call it rape then it says more about your beliefs than it says about mine.
Also, if you ever had experienced true love you would know it's impossible to recoil from. I hope you will someday (not being facetious here, I sincerely hope everyone experiences this)

>>20476774
>i come from a background of atheism and occultism
ooooohhhhh, you were torture porned yourself, that explains everything.

>Just chose to not do extremely evil shit, then there won't be extremely evil shit.
if only it were that simple. See, in the video game that Demiurge designed, when someone does evil shit to someone else (like a child, for example) then typically what happens is the victim eventually grows into a person that continues the cycle.... and eventually lands themselves in hell.

That's why a majority of people (according to official doctrine) are going to hell, because of this tendency to return evil for evil.
>oh, but that's not God's fault.
actually, yea, it sorta is. Take out the potentiality for evil, and watch as everyone makes it into Heaven.
>but God doesn't want everyone in Heaven.
Why not? More the merrier right? So what if some are more robotic in their life, puppy dog love is just as cute and endearing as adult human love (actually more so, more "free will" adults get divorces than people who give their dog away, proof that a dog's love is more desirable than a free-will love that is often lacking)

>>20476814
>it's admitted that it's an individual thing
That doesn't mean anything you say about gnosticism is true you fucking retard.
>He was incompetent
lmao
You are the archetypal overzealous fundamentalist convert. You'll probably switch to another shinier belief system when ortholarping falls out of style in a couple years
>Stop projecting
What am I projecting, faggot? I never fell for the christianity meme, neither did I fall for the atheism meme. I'm simply describing the quintessential "american spirituality experience"

>>20476810

My experiences aren't absolute truth - but I've experienced Absolute Truth Himself.

>Any tibetan yogi would tell you you simply experienced delusions and were unable to realize the inherent emptiness of your visions.

Sure. He's free to get BTFO'd by the sign of the cross if he thinks he's a bad enough dude to go toe to toe with God.

How do you think Christianity spread in the beginning, if you believe in the supernatural?

Literal spiritual brute force. The one true God drove out the demons from their places and made the pagan wizards powerless, in all the places that accepted the one true God.

I'm fine to leave it at that. If you deny absolute truth, then all that's left is might makes right -and God has all the might and all the right.

>>20476815

>I'm literally describing what happens according to your own doctrine lmao.

Only if you include "God disrespects people's free will" as a part of my doctrine, which it isn't.

>>20476805
>Let's not go full brain-in-a-jar
why not? That's basically what we are. God put us in a computer game that isn't even true reality (Heaven, where God is, is true reality, we're just a temporary reality constructed for the test, one that will be scrapped and rebuilt BETTER)

>demonic experiences
for all i know you're possessed by a demon and that's why you're so intent on defending the Demiurge

>>20476825
>I've experienced Absolute Truth Himself.
...so you think
"my visions are true because I feel like they're true" means nothing to anyone who isn't you.
>He's free to get BTFO'd by the sign of the cross
KEK
I'll take things that never happened for 200. Yogis literally do not give a flying fuck about your desert demon and your claims would be met with humorous dismissal and mild second-hand embarrassment
>How do you think Christianity spread
First by subverting the roman high class through going "you made this? I made this" with [neo]platonism, and then through military conquest since it was used as a pretext for territorial expansion
>Literal spiritual brute force
I'm cringing physically. Please stop larping as a holy warrior, you're a pasty teenager arguing with strangers about religion on an anime forum

>>20476827
>"God disrespects people's free will"
>no you see god condemns you to hell which according to my doctrine is forcing you to be in his presence forever because you didn't believe in his book, but that's not metaphysical rape because uuhh he loves you or whatever
Please be coherent at least

>>20476825
>Literal spiritual brute force.
Seems like Islam is the true faith then

>>20476839

>First by subverting the roman high class through

Stop interpreting history like a Marxist.

>>20476855
I accept your concession. Now go back to your containment thread

>>20476839
>"my visions are true because I feel like they're true"

>My experiences aren't absolute truth - but I've experienced Absolute Truth Himself.

Are you a chatbot?

>>20476825
>If you deny absolute truth, then all that's left is might makes right -and God has all the might and all the right.
Yes, I will be tortured eternally because I doubted an extremely shoddy and obviously manmade doctrine yet couldn't have known better because unlike the maker of this doctrine, I am not omniscient. Of course the doctrine's maker could've simply made the laws of logic such that eternal punishment would not be possible while still allowing for the existence of true free will (which is only impossible according to our current logical paradigm, but an omnipotent being is not constrained by such things) but I guess he was feeling moody that monday so he didn't bother and instead made it so that extreme evil could be actualized in this realm but it's totally our fault.
Whoa... So this is the power of christian apologetics...

>>20471949
>/lit/ finally opens their eyes to the genius of Hans Jonas
>they still manage to make it retarded by focusing on his work on gnosticism
God fucking damn it

>>20476825
>but i've experienced Absolute Truth Himself
but religious tyrants that go on murdering rampages against heretics often claim the same thing.

druggies ALWAYS claim the same thing lol. You're basing your entire belief system on your feelings. Gnostics felt things too, they had religious experiences (often very dramatic ones too, lots of very well documented cases) just like you.

So now what? Both you and the gnostics have strong experiences of "Absolute Truth", and yet they disagree. Gotta look beyond your feefees and not base your ideology just on that. Need some logically consistent ideas to back them up.

Question for you: Guesstimate how many millions or billions of souls would have made it to heaven if they had not first been turned evil by someone else, usually when they were young and impressionable? Does it bother you at all that Heaven will be an emptier place simply because they happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong, born to wrong parents, raised in a wrong neighborhood, all through no fault of their own?

>>20476859
>I've experienced Absolute Truth Himself.
"I've experienced truth because... I just have, ok?"
Are you a literal retard?

>>20476864
>Does it bother you at all that Heaven will be an emptier place simply because they happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong, born to wrong parents, raised in a wrong neighborhood, all through no fault of their own?
Of course it doesn't bother him, trust the plan (tm). That mexican kid who got roped into working for the cartels and ended up dismembering a family man after flaying his kids alive in front of him is a necessary part of god's plan and yahweh has absolutely nothing to do with it, it's humanity's fault for actualizing evil, don't you see? If yahweh had reformulated the laws of reality so as to make something as useless and evil as torture impossible, that would've just been metaphysical rape!

>>20476865

>"I've met my neighbor yesterday because... I just have, ok?"

>>20476855
he's not entirely wrong though, but not entirely correct either.
Initially the religion was popular among the slave and servant class, in Roman Empire and in Palestine (or whatever that area was called back then). The elite initially wanted nothing to do with it.
It started spreading to the middle class and elite via the women of those subgroups. Then they'd raise their children in their new religion, and then eventually elite would sometimes spread the religion by force. Maybe not as much as the Muslims, but still more so than Taoism, Buddhism or even Confucianism.

I mean let's be real, Catholics (and i think even Eastern Roman Empire) used to literally torture (porn) and murder gnostics, take their land and any wealth they had, and justify it because "they were heretics and deserved it". Christianity was quickly politicized after Jesus died. A lot of Roman emperors (east and west) didn't even care what the official Creed was, they just wanted a united consensus on beliefs, and then brutally attacked anyone that didn't conform.

>>20476882
>a subjective mystical experience that you can provide no substantial proof of is the same as an empirically observable physical event
So you are a literal retard, thanks for confirming.
Christlarpers on here are getting dumber by the week, it's weird

>>20476864

>Often claim the same thing

I'll just leave you one last tip: "Many people claim the same thing" doesn't mean anything.

Many people can claim to have the fastest car. One person actually has the fastest car. Just because multiple people claim to have the fastest car, doesn't mean that there isn't a fastest car.

>>20476861
>christian apologetics
careful now, not all christians are the same. Gnostics considered themselves to be Christian too :P
this is more the power of dogmatism, every creed has their dogmatists who just take everyone "on Authority" (not God's, but someone who claims to be appointed by God)

>>20476888
>One person actually has the fastest car.
It's easy to measure what the fastest car is. Care to provide any kind of proof that you've experienced "the truth (tm)"?
Hint: you haven't, and you didn't even come close. But I'm curious to see how you'll mental gymnastics your way out of providing any actual evidence

>>20476886

>"I've met my neighbor yesterday because... Yeah I know that all of my experiences are inherently subjective... Yeah I know that all experiences are subjective by definition... Yeah I know that all of my experiences that I think are empirical have to be experienced by me... I still have met my neighbor yesterday because... I just have, ok? And the other people I know who have met my neighbor have met him because... they just have, ok?"

>>20476889
>every creed has their dogmatists
The interesting thing about gnosticism is that it is inherently and by design "anti-dogmatic", firstly by virtue of not being a monolithic belief system, and secondly because the essence of gnosis itself denies dogma
I liked this video, it kind of tackles this subject and the difference between nicaean and gnostic christianity in their approach towards dogma and the structure of reality https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DTBDrrHl5V0&t=5s

>>20476888
i don't doubt that Satan has a freakin fast car, maybe even the fastest car. This *is* his world afterall. The Bible even says so.

That's what i don't get, if you just read the Bible (more so the New Testament) it's so heavy on the gnostic themes, even with all the gnostic books they forcibly removed early on. It's the tradition of anti-gnosticism from Bible commentators that is what people are actually worshiping.

Jesus is straight up gnostic.

>>20476894
>the other people I know who have met my neighbor
Your analogy is absolutely retarded because there is also a large community of people claiming they saw your neighbor in a completely different place, and an even larger community claiming that they saw him in another place entirely, and so on.
The fact that you don't realize how fucking stupid your equivocation is, and that you cling to it in order to avoid confronting my point, comforts me in the idea that you haven't experienced shit and are just desperate to convince yourself you have.

>>20476894
>Hi, I'm a gnostic, i had a religious experience that shook me to my core and soul. I encountered Absolute Truth, and that's why i'm a gnostic.

>Hello, i'm a run-of-the-mill orthodox believer, i don't believe in gnosticism, you see... i encountered Absolute Truth and it shook me to my core, my very soul, and that's why I'm not a gnostic.

Who do you believe?

>>20476892

>Hint: you haven't

Why should I bother giving you an answer that you don't actually want? My post was about how that objection is false in all cases - A person can easily reject the validity of all measures of speed, like how you can reject the validity of all accounts of a direct experience of God.

The fact that you are capable of rejecting it, doesn't mean that it's not valid - otherwise, measurements of speed would also necessarily have to mean nothing.

>>20476909
>Why should I bother giving you an answer
How convenient.
As expected you're weaseling out of giving an actual answer because you forced yourself into a corner, the fact is that >>20476908 is right and your experience is inherently subjective. The fact that you believe it's the truth doesn't make it true, and I can readily dismiss it.
Your claims are self-refuting because your reasoning is circular.

>>20471949
>Were heretics right?
No.

>>20476907

>Your analogy is absolutely retarded because there is also a large community of people claiming they saw your neighbor in a completely different place, and an even larger community claiming that they saw him in another place entirely, and so on.

This isn't the knockdown argument you think it is, because this does literally happen all the time for all sorts of people - including cases of people intentionally impersonating others, or sharing fake identities.

>>20476919
>they were wrong because the book says they're wrong, and the book is obviously right because it says so in the book
Whoa...

>>20476915

>>How convenient.
>>Hint: you haven't, and you didn't even come close. But I'm curious to see how you'll mental gymnastics your way out of providing any actual evidence

You have literally told me that you're not interested in taking any answer I give seriously. No point.

>>20476920
>cases of people intentionally impersonating others, or sharing fake identities.
kek
Your bias is so obvious and you are being extremely disingenuous. How about you drop the shitty analogies and actually answer what I said? What makes your experience more valuable than the experiences of tens of thousands of Buddhist monks, of Sufi mystics, of mesoamerican shamans, etc?

random thought i just had:

So you know how in the Bible God generally only talks to like one or two people at a time. He never talks to everyone, or even large groups, but "just Moses" or "just Elijah".

>it's because Moses and Elijah and the rest were so pure and good, God can't abide evil, it's like B/O being around evil for him
is usually how it was explained to me. But then if that's the case, how was he able to have conversations with SATAN about Job?
>And Satan went up into Heaven and talked with God
and this was well after Satan's rebellion, talk about B/O.

Anywho, that's it.

>>20476924
Yeah, you've got jack shit, as expected.
I accept your concession.

Dharmic religions are so obviously superior in their philosophy, phenomenology and praxis to abrahamism that it's not even funny. Just compare the level of discourse ITT to the discussions happening in the Buddhist thread that died earlier this morning. Not even comparable

>>20476923
it's actually even better than that.
>they were wrong because we removed the books that said they were right and only included the books that said they're wrong, and this edited book is obviously right because it says so in the edited book.
WOWZERS!!

>>20476927

What can I even say? I wasn't even bringing it up as an argument for why Orthodoxy is correct. Me saying that came from the context of being asked "How can you be so sure" and me giving my personal testimony.

This falls into the same realm as "I know Michael Jackson exists because I met Michael Jackson" when there are dozens of Michael Jackson impersonators rolling around. You could be a conspiracy theorist who believes that Michael Jackson doesn't exist, that every instance of him is shopped, or that he's like a mall Santa and people only meet impersonators of him anyway - but if you had that type of belief, then me saying "I met Michael Jackson, I know he exists" would not be relevant to an argument aimed at convincing you that he exists.

This isn't hard, man. If you want to try to twist it into me trying to defend it as an argument I've used to try and convince you of Orthodoxy, then you're proving your dishonesty by trying to put words in my mouth.

>>20476939
>dude they were obviously wrong, can't you see how stupid their beliefs were according to this book written by a completely impartial christian apologist who details their beliefs in a totally unbiased manner in this conveniently only surviving source?
Bless the god of israel

>>20476928

>And Satan went up into Heaven and talked with God

Where does it say this?

>>20476948
>dozens of Michael Jackson impersonators rolling around.
Jesus fucking christ will you stop with the retarded analogies that operate on the assumption that you're right to begin with?
Your retardation started with >>20476882 when you implied that your experience of "truth" was somehow obvious and unquestionable to everyone, when dozens of religions and sects would disagree with you
Your experience is not special, that's all.

>>20476963

>when you implied that your experience of "truth" was somehow obvious and unquestionable to everyone

You misunderstood my implication, but I could see how you could draw that conclusion from that. My intended implication was that, if you're sufficiently motivated, you can treat meeting your neighbor as something not obvious, and questionable - and that there's no reason to believe that meeting God is any different from meeting your neighbor, if God exists, and your neighbor also exists.

It might be more difficult to meet God than to meet your neighbor, but that's not much different to how it's more difficult to meet royalty or a high profile celebrity in person, than it is to meet your neighbor.

>will you stop with the retarded analogies that operate on the assumption that you're right to begin with?

Everyone works on the assumption that they're right. For example, you're working on the assumption that you're right about the fact I'm retarded, but there's no point in pointing that out. It's obvious that you have to assume the correctness of what you're making a case for.

>>20476958
Book of Job

>>20476923
>The material world was actually created by an ignorant Demiurge who is distinct from the Father and was created by one of the lowest in a set of circa thirty Aeons who emanate from Bythos, the Father. The Prophets of the Old Testament were relaying a mixture of messages from both the Demiurge and his creator Sophia, and Jesus Christ was an incarnation of Aeons sent to deliver the full message of gnosis. I know this because of my teacher Theudas. Theudas knows this because of Paul; these were his secret teachings he only shared with a small group. Trust me.

>>20476991

Where does it say this in the book of job?

>>20476993
which is exactly the same sorta reasoning as the opposing party.
So let's leave the "dude, just trust me" type arguments out of it and just rely on logic.
Gnostics make more sense. Sure, they have some stuff that needs working on, but it's more consistent overall.

>>20477006
it's right at the beginning of the chapter iirc, it's where Satan and God make the bet about Job.

>>20477010

>Gnostics make more sense. Sure, they have some stuff that needs working on, but it's more consistent overall.

It's easier to give an appearance of consistency, if you can just jump between various different versions of gnosticism, say they're all equally true even though they contradict each other - and say that someone doesn't understand gnosticism if they point out a problem in one of the many systems.

It's easier to attack Christianity as a monolith, since the Christian groups tend to believe similar things, but most often people aren't actually attacking beliefs that a Christian they're talking to actually hold, but attacking an invented Christainity that no Christian actually believes.

>>20477019
>if you can just jump between various different versions of gnosticism
oh right, because there aren't a hundred different versions of mainstream Christianity, Judaism, etc.

>it's easier to attack Christianity
can't speak for the other(s) but i consider gnosticism to be Christianity, true Christianity. Just because Catholics murdered gnostics and declared them heretics doesn't (to me, at least) mean that gnostics aren't Christians. They even called themselves "Good Christians", they thought of themselves as Christians, and they behaved more like Christ did too, which for is the most salient issue, actions.

Catholics built themselves palaces and basically robbed the peasants, gnostics didn't. (I admit i dunno how the Eastern Roman Empire treated gnostics, i'm more familiar with western roman empire, but i know Eastern Roman empire had their phase of declaring this and that sect heretical, i just dunno if they actually killed or tortured anyone over it)

>>20477019
even if you make the argument not about "Gnosticism" or "Christianity" (which you're kinda right, they are rather vague and nebulous words), things can a lot more concise and defined when you make it about an actual issue instead of a label.
So the main issue being discussed is why did God create the potential for evil, another big issue is "Is the creator of the physical world an evil Demiurge or a benevolent God who just allows evil to run rampant for THOUSANDS OF YEARS", issues like that.

So while Gnosticism has various flavors (like any religion/creed) on core issues like these it's pretty consistent, hence why they get grouped as "gnostic".

the different flavors come into play when they try to define obscure stuff like "Was Jesus physically incarnate in a human body, or was he 100% God the entire time, or half and half" etc.

For me, questions like that don't really matter, whether he was 100% spirit in human shape or 50% human and 50% spirit, or whatever.

>>20477034

>oh right, because there aren't a hundred different versions of mainstream Christianity, Judaism, etc.

There are, but my point is that people within their groups, except the most liberal and limpwristed, make the case that only their own group is exclusively correct, and will actively refute contrary interpretations. But earlier in this thread, it was said that Gnosticism is inherently a "personal, individual thing", which means that actually pinning it down into a consistent doctrine is by definition impossible, since the individual gnostic has the ability to arbitrarily believe contrary things depending on their whims. They're not beholden to any orthodoxy at all unless they chose to self-impose one.

>Just because Catholics murdered gnostics and declared them heretics doesn't (to me, at least) mean that gnostics aren't Christians.

You'd have to make the case for how the Old Testament and the New Testament, and what is revealed in them, are fully consistent with Gnostic teachings, that is, also fully consistent with the so-called gnostic gospels, which directly contradict the OT and NT. This isn't particularly possible without type of allegorising that give atheists fuel to say that no-one actually believes the bible.

>>20477072

>For me, questions like that don't really matter, whether he was 100% spirit in human shape or 50% human and 50% spirit, or whatever.

That's a pretty fundamental thing, since the question of whether matter is inherently evil or not is a key delimiter of gnostic belief - Orthodox Christianity says that matter is not inherently evil, since it has been corrupted, but is not inherently corrupt by design. Gnostic belief tends to believe that matter is in fact inherently corrupt, and so Christ did not in fact incarnate or become a man in reality, because that would mean that God became united with evil, which is unthinkable in the gnostic view.

>>20477075
>it was said that Gnosticism is inherently a "personal, individual thing
hmmm, i dunno, i didn't say that comment. Maybe it's true, or more true of gnosticism than of other religions.
I'm more inclined to think that there are certain issues that really determine whether it's gnosticism or not. Physical world being evil created by an evil Demiurge, being the core issue (for me).
I've had people argue that Gnosticism doesn't mean that at all (!), which is actually a reverse case of what you're describing (where you said that gnostics will bounce around between various flavors to suit their need at the moment). Because the vast majority of gnostic flavors all believe that core issue of Demiurge and world being evil, i was only able to find one that had a slightly less pessimistic outlook (i can't remember how it was worded, but it was still somewhat "gnostic" in feel, just had a slightly less negative outlook.)

So, while this thread is ostensibly about Gnosticism in general, the discussion itself has been more about why God allows evil, or created the potential for evil, and "gnosticism" gets used as shorthand to mean the same thing. And at least in this discussion in this thread, the "gnostics" have been pretty consistent with that issue of the potentiality for evil that God created, and haven't been jumping around willy nilly.

>you'd have to make the case
Well, Old Testament the gnostics thought was talking about the evil demiurge. They followed Jesus and the New Testament.
so, 1. They recognized Jesus Christ.
2. They practiced Jesus' teachings on ascetism and turning away from wealth, etc.
3. Jesus said the world is ruled by the devil. The devil tried to seduce Jesus into joining the elites and "ruling the world" with Satan's permission. The gnostics didn't join the elite or get into gov't like the phony Christians did who just wanted political power and wealth.
4. Jesus said he was not of this world. Gnosticism teaches of the Pleroma, and which is where Jesus came from to try to free souls trapped here in Earth-prison.

There's more, but it sorta doesn't matter. The gnostics originally tried to "make their case" in the early ecumenical councils and were declared heretics by those with more POLITICAL POWER. And then when that didn't work, they just went and murdered the gnostics and burned all the books they could find, then made up excuses about how gnosticism was wrong and they deserved it, and no one was left who could defend it.

Gnostics aren't the ones that need to justify their beliefs, the Catholics and other mainstream sects are the ones that need to justify and prove that they're Christian (as in: actually following what Christ taught, and not just using Church as a place to socialize or for political purposes)

>>20476984
When discussing such things as metaphysics, it's customary to not operate from the assumption that your specific belief system is right and build your entire argument on top of that
>>20476993
>t. doesn't understand gnosticism
You are of hylê
>>20477019
Sects of gnosticism are varied, the basic gnostic temperament is singular and eternal.

OP, I think you're wasting your time debating the nicaean dogma and that it might be a better idea to double down on the sudy of gnosticism since you seem to have the right mindset to approach gnostic ideas

>>20477099
yea, i can see that now that you point that out. But it still is a derivative issue that comes AFTER the core issue that i mentioned earlier (about whether the physical world and Demiurge are evil).

And while i see your point now that you explained it, it still (for me) wouldn't matter whether Jesus incarnated into a physical (evil) body in order to have the opportunity to teach people about the Pleroma Spirit world, or whether he was a pure 100% spirit from the Pleroma Spirit world who only looked like he had a physical form.
I can see why some gnostics would want to be "consistent", but the fact is that it really *doesn't* matter. For all we know, maybe Jesus had to physically incarnate, but was able to resist the temptations of the evil physical body because he's from Pleroma and all. And maybe he didn't, and was able to directly beam himself down here as spirit. I don't see how it matters one way or the other. His teachings were still Pleroma-Spirit centered, and taught people to deny the physical flesh and deny the world so they could return to the Pleroma.

>>20477148

>Old Testament the gnostics thought was talking about the evil demiurge. They followed Jesus and the New Testament.

The problem is that the New Testament makes it clear, with the prophecies fulfilled, with the gospel of John, with the titles Christ applies to Himself, with Christ forgiving sins, with the Jews accusing Christ of Blasphemy, that Christ is identified *as* the God of the Old Testament, the eternal Son of the eternal Father.

>The gnostics didn't join the elite or get into gov't like the phony Christians did who just wanted political power and wealth.

Sounds like you believe in a very simplified version of ancient roman history, that just wipes out the existence of both gnostics/pagans in political power (which buys Roman Catholic exaggerations of early Church power), and frankly just ignores things like non-Orthodox Christianity being the majority faith in Rome in many periods of time. This view also completely ignores the monastic element, like the desert Fathers, who escaped the world to pursue monasticism - and there have been continued monastic lineages in Orthodox Christianity to this day.

>The gnostics originally tried to "make their case" in the early ecumenical councils and were declared heretics by those with more POLITICAL POWER

If you look into Orthodox Christian history, there were many times where Orthodox Christianity was in fact the *minority* faith in Ancient Rome, especially in the times of the early ecumenical councils - like the time of Arianism, where Arianism was the majority confession of faith of people calling themselves Christians, and all of the bishops that wanted Christianity to be popular because of the opportunities for politically power fell to Arianism. We commemorate those who stuck to Orthodoxy despite the mass apostasy to Arianism.

The other time that heresy was the majority in Rome was the time of monothelitism. St Maximus the Confessor, who writes some of the most exalted tracts on Orthodox metaphysics, was one of the few who kept the Orthodox Faith at that time as well, when the other apostate Bishops were more interested in syncretising their faith with foreign beliefs.

Here's the point: The Orthodox understanding of history is a history of a minority preserving the true faith in the face of mass apostasy and false Christianity. It's miraculously exhonerated and commemorated in the ecumenical councils, and in the lineage of the Saints over time. Sometimes, the true faith is understood at a popular, mass level, and those times are blessed, but relatively rare. Times of mass apostasy and commitment to heterodoxy are expected, like now. Political power and dogmatically accurate Orthodox Christianity are generally not connected.

>>20477172

It matters when it comes down to the eucharist, since he commanded his followers to eat his flesh and body. That's one line that separates LARP/intellectualism from actual practise - participation in ritual sacraments.

is Christ commanding them to eat pure spirit? Is it even metaphysically possible to divine and eat pure spirit? Are they turning evil matter into pure spirit? Are they eating evil matter? What spiritual benefit could they get from eating evil matter, if the whole point of fasting and asceticism is to remove yourself from matter?

>>20477222
>the New Testament makes it clear
your church's interpretation of the nicaean canon makes it clear*

>>20477222
A true teaching would be able to be syncretized with local beliefs while remaining true
This is why christianity will always be false and spiritually barren

>>20476697
Yet videogames where you can lose and be hurt are the most popular ... mmm.

>>20477292
what's your point dumbass

>>20476863
What books do you recommend then?

>>20477307
What tantric deity is this

>>20477165
>Carlos Castaneda
>Phillip K dick
Not even midwit.

>>20477222
>Orthodox Christianity was the minority faith in Ancient Rome
eh... do you mean Orthodox as in Eastern Roman Empire Orthodox? or orthodox in a more casual manner, as in "mainstream"?
Because yes, Orthodox was never mainstream in the West, it was an eastern empire thing. And lots of all this had to do with politics. The different sects are okay, but the enforcing it at the sword part was largely political.

>you're ignoring the desert monks
meh, not really. I've read about them in J.B. Bury's Roman history books, and about the early church in general. And i distinctly recall the desert monks turning into a mob in the streets of Alexandria and terrorizing the political opponents of the local bishop (forgot his name, but he was a right scoundrel).

>...Christ is identified *as* the God of the Old Testament
meh, there's that, yes, but at the same time there's a lot of differing opinions on a lot of stuff in both Old and New Testament, and above all lots of CONFUSION, which also explains why there are soooo many different sects. And we'd be arguing for a long time if we delved into each and every confusing point.

I guess the way i approach it all is based on actions. I don't care who Jesus was or wasn't, i honestly don't care whether he was God, an angel, a regular human soul that attained enlightenment, a bodhisattva who achieved enlightenment in a prior life and agreed to return to help free others, or whatever. Why don't i care, you might ask? I don't care because all sorts of people claim all sorts of things, and i've learned to just ignore claims and focus on actions.
Jesus said "you shall know them by their fruits", and that's how i approach him and others. The gnostics behaved in a far more christlike manner than Catholics, or eastern orthodox, or whatever other sects. Yes, there are always exceptions to the rule, but in general i'm focusing on the spiritual leaders of each sect and not the common laypeople.

And from a different angle, the entire conception of the world as evil (which Christ says too) coincides and makes more sense from a gnostic approach than from a mainstream approach of mere "the world was originally perfect but then it got corrupted by something God created that was also originally perfect, but even though things were perfect and good they still became corrupted and God allowed that because reasons (see the above arguments earlier in thread where we duked this whole topic out in greater detail)"

Even Revelation talks about destroying the world and remaking it anew, making it better, and it's like "well why not make it that way the first time since you're omniscient?"

I guess another point is that i'm also of the opinion that the Bible was written by humans and it was humans that determined which books to remove (for instance Catholics have more books than protestants), and it's a known fact that the Jews during the Captivity (or shortly thereafter) edited the Old Testament and tried to edit their history

>>20477327
How predictable, unequivocally filtered lmao

>>20477338
(con't)
...edit their history.
My point being that i 100% believe in God, i think Jesus was preaching the truth, was from the Pleroma, but i don't automatically believe everything from the Bible simply because "it's in the Bible". Because as i said, things were removed from the Bible, edited in the Bible at various points in history (mainly Old Testament days), some parts are clearly derivative of earlier Sumerian and Babylonian myths and were then adapted by the Jews and names changed around etc., there's been censorship of gnostic books (so now gnostics can't say "see, it's in the Bible so it must be true"), and finally, even if took a "the Bible is 100% the truth" approach, even then people still disagree on issues even when quoting the Bible.


So again, i don't really go by the "it's in the Bible", i go more with a philosophical approach i suppose. Rationally it makes perfect sense that there is a God, and i don't need a Bible to know that. The Bible could never have been written and i'd still know there's a God. And from my own studying it seems more like the Jews after the Captivity edited the Old Testament to be more Jew-centric than was originally intended. So all the stuff you said about "it fulfills Old Testament prophecy" doesn't really convince me of anything, because i don't really care what the post-Captivity Jews do or did think. They're synagogue of satan and who cares what they think.

>>20477371
based marcionist

>>20477292
>video games where you can be hurt
um... what? lol, give me ONE example of a video game where you can be hurt.

>>20477238
>unless you participate in the eucharist, you're not a true Christian
and what, do those people go to hell then? Does an aborted baby go to hell because it's never partaken in the sacrament? (and don't scoff, because there was a famous tv pastor that used to say stuff like this, because they took SUCH A LITERALIST APPROACH to things that they ignored the spirit of the Word, instead focusing on the letter).

And besides, this whole "eat my flesh and drink my blood" motif due to the sacrificial traditions of humankind positively REEKS of Demiurge.
>we have to sacrifice animals because God enjoys the smell of innocent animal roasting
Demiurge. Big time. And anyone who has studied ancient myths/religions knows that originally it was all human sacrifice to begin with. And that is Demiurge all the way, no way a good God would enjoy human sacrifice, but we're told a good God enjoys animal sacrifice? No, that's Demiurge. All sacrifice is Demiurge. Even a mock sacrifice like eating bread ("My body" and water/wine ("My blood.") And who knows, what with all the other editing of the Bible by absolutely unscrupulous Jews, i wouldn't put it past demiurge worshipers to slip that story in too. Catholicism is rife with ancient Sumerian/Babylonian/Egyptian motifs, and yes i'm familiar with the reasoning that they did to convert new people to Christ, but when you have to lie just to get converts you're clearly only interested in political power, not the Truth.

long story short, i don't think people will go to Hell just for not participating in the sacrament. God wants a good heart, not vain prayers in public settings for all to see.

>>20477222
>Here's the point: The Orthodox understanding of history is a history of a minority preserving the true faith in the face of mass apostasy and false Christianity.
or it was just one minor sect among many who politically maneuvered their way into power and squelched all rivals through various means.
>but that's just proof that it was a miracle! the overcame all odds!
hmm,,, but that's how Muslims view things too. That victory automatically indicates Truth. That Mohamed took over so much land because God was with him, and not because Roman empire was corrupt and falling apart and that many romans chose to aid the muslims in their conquest and convert to islam for the chance of spoils and rape.

I'm more impressed by philosophically sound arguments and actions and less by victory through politics, force, or authority. That's just me though :P

I’m sorry but if there’s a Demiurge versus le true god when the former created this world and the latter can’t do shit and instead is defended by a bunch of thinskinned resentful spiritual incels, then I side with the Demiurge easily. Hallowed be thy crafts O Our Lord Demiurge, also please torture these gnostishits more.

>>20477480
cringe

>>20477380
>marcionist
so i'm reading the wiki page on him, and here's an interesting tidbit.
>A primary difference between Marcionites and Gnostics was that the Gnostics based their theology on secret wisdom (as, for example, Valentinius who claimed to receive the secret wisdom from Theudas who received it direct from Paul) of which they claimed to be in possession,
so this person here >>20476993 is poking fun at this idea of "secret wisdom" that only Theudas received and passed on, etc.
But how is this any different than "secret wisdom" that Moses, or Elijah, or any of the other prophets received? They all said "trust me".

Which is another reason why i lean more towards philosophically sound ideas that make sense, and not just "trust me" arguments, because anyone (even evil people) can say "just trust me bro".

>>20477480
>i side with Satan because at least he's strong enough to torture political opponents
>that's proof that Satan is good
thanks for proving my point that Demiurge worshipers are insane evil and that gnosticism is the Truth.

>>20477485
Marcion wasn't an esotericist actually. He didn't even believe in the traditional gnostic conception of the inner spark i.e. humanity being originally from the Pleroma.
Have you read the Jonas book in the OP? There's a chapter on Marcion that explains his interpretation of Christianity. In a nutshell, it's not about secret teachings, he simply believed that the "alien God" (the true Father, from which the Aeon Christ proceeds)'s ultimate benevolence prompted Him to attempt to save humanity despite humanity itself being a "kenomic" existence. Marcion believed humanity was not divine, that it was indeed a creation of a legalistic but not necessarily evil Demiurge, and that the Father's benevolence (in contrast to the stark legalism of Yahweh) and grace was the sole factor in the salvation of beings that inherently are not "entitled" to entering the Pleroma

>>20477503
>proceeds with the same resentful and sentimental replies wont of a miserable weakling
You are proving my point. Who’s gonna help you? Huh? Do you think the fictional products of a weak disposition matters to me? To the world?

>>20477528
Stop larping, underageb&

>>20477528
>you are proving my point.
>Jesus deserved to be tortured and crucified since he was too weak to defend Himself.
oh sure i'm proving your point, but also mine at the same time, that this world is evil and a satanic creation.
you're content with living in such a hell world, i'm not. To each their own.

>>20477508
oh, interesting. That must be what i was talking about in this post here >>20477148 where i said:
>Ive had people argue that Gnosticism doesn't mean that at all
But like i remember, it still has a gnostic feel to it, the Legalistic Yahweh and the benevolent Supreme Being.

>have you read...
nah. I had a really wonky approach to learning about gnosticism, learned about from reading Tolkien and then commentary about his works that suggested he was gnostic or at least introduced gnostic themes into Silmarillion (short version: Melkor is Demiurge, Eru is benevolent Supreme Being, the tale of Frodo and of the Elves in general is of renouncing the material world and going to spirit world of Valinor)

I've read some Plotinus and Nag Hammadi though, and lots of internet articles

>>20477638
Do like Christ and bear it with your mouth shut.

>>20477738
except he didn't he, he deliberately incarnated into Hell-world and then blabbed so much about it that they finally had to execute Him just to shut him up.

anon BTFO :)

>>20477407
>all sacrifice is Demiurge
i always wondered why a benevolent deity would require animal sacrifice, let alone why it smelled good to him.
Like God couldn't just magically create sweet smelling incense without having to slaughter thousands of animals a year.

>>20477869
Yahweh is a literal demon

>>20477869
I've heard that the reason behind animal is because it's a substitute for human sin, which leads me to think that human sacrifice may have originally been required and only later were animals (and then bread and water) switch in.
But if human sin is worthy of death, then Adam and Eve deserved to die (and Satan as well), but didn't. Could have just started over fresh with a brand new set of humans, instead let them live and started a 6000+ year tradition of human and animal sacrifice, and enjoys the smell blood too.

Even if you accept the official version it still sounds really creepy.

>God is good
>God is evil
Personally I feel God is akin to a force of nature, beyond good or evil. The Sun might sustain life on Earth while at the same time causing droughts and heat waves, but the Sun is not good or evil, it just is. So it goes with God.

>>20477991
>God is akin to a force of nature, beyond good or evil.
That's the Saturnian/Chronos conception, the Titans, forces of nature, and then eventually replaced by more humanlike deities led and represented by Zeus and the Olympians gods, who introduced (at least to some degree) human conceptions of morality.

And all this sorta ties back into the thread topic of gnosticism, since i've read elsewhere that Saturn and Yahweh are *both* the Demiurge (one the greek/roman name of the Demiurge, the other the early Hebrew name).

And the Old Testament fits in with this idea because in it God talks about how he creates good and evil (like what you said about the Sun being life giving and also life destroying), and resembles more a force of nature that is much less tolerant of humans than Zeus or Jesus were.

>>20477991
This was already addressed here >>20471957

>>20477270

>A true teaching would be able to be syncretized with local beliefs while remaining true

Then, by that logic, this statement should be able to be syncretised with my local belief that true teachings can't be syncretised. If it's impossible to syncretise your belief with mine, then it must mean it's false.

bum

>>20477933
Tolkien had some interesting things to say about any religion that sacrificed human/animal life. Granted, he may have been speaking only of human sacrifice, but as Joseph Campbell and others have written about animal sacrifice was a later evolution of human sacrifice, so basically all sacrifice of human or animal life is related.

but anyways, he said that Melkor is who started the practice of human sacrifice, continued on by Sauron. That they built pyramid temples and sacrificed people in a small temple at the summit.
And there's another interesting tidbit in relation to Sauron and the pyramid temples; Sauron didn't actually refer to himself as "Sauron", that was more the nickname that the Elves and free peoples of the west had for him. Sorta like how liberals call Trump "Orange Man", was meant more as an insult. Iirc it translated to something like "foul wind" (which makes me wonder if they were calling Sauron a stinky fart? lol). So Sauron referred to himself by Tar-Mairon i think, but the Haradrim (think Arabia/Iraq region of Middle Earth) referred to him as "Zigur", which in their tongue meant Wizard.

But "Zigur" is awfully close to "ziggurat", which are the ... that's right, the pyramid temples of Sumeria Babylon region, which roughly coincides with where Mordor and Haradrim are on the map. So was it a coincidence that Tolkien used Zigur, or was he deliberately trying to link the ziggurats and the Babylonian religion with Sauron and Melkor?

And as other scholars of noted (for example, Houston Stewart Chamberlain in "Foundations of the 19th Century") the ancient Hebrews adopted a lot of their beliefs from larger, more culturally advanced neighbors with richer cultures and philosophies, and ancient Canaan, where the Hebrews eventually settled is next door neighbors with Babylonia, and Abraham the Hebrew forefather got his start in Ur, which is to say Babylonia region itself. So it's highly probable they inherited a lot of their stories from Babylonians and Sumerians.

Going back to "Melkor is Demiurge" part i mentioned., and theory of Demiurge is where the sacrifice cults began, and Hebrews continued that practice, perhaps in a modified lesser form, which seems to have been the trend throughout all the ancient world in Mediterranean region, a trend of initially practicing human sacrifice-- usually of kings and their entourage at first, but then gradually down to just slaves, and then evolving into animal sacrifice, until finally it becomes more a symbolic sacrifice like bread and water --
if the Melkor as Demiurge theory is true (and there's lots of evidence that Tolkien did intend this gnostic theme for his works), then it seems to be a clear indictment of any religion that practices sacrifices of any kind, considering what Tolkien has written about Melkor (pure evil, etc.) So while Marcion may have thought the Demiurge was a middle deity, more neutral than "evil", it seems more like Tolkien viewed the Demiurge as evil.

>>20480339
(con't) although it could also be that the gradual evolution of sacrificial religions from human sacrifices, then transitioning into animal sacrifices, and then finally into merely symbolic sacrifices (e.g. bread and water of the Christian sacrament) could maybe be an outside influence from the Pleroma to lessen the harm of the Demiurge's evil. But it could also be just another form of sacrificial (call it an astral sacrifice) offering, and something to be condemned as Tolkien seems to suggest. I'll think about that some more.
Or maybe Marcion is right and Tolkien is wrong, and the Demiurge is just a neutral warden, and sacrifice was a fit punishment (per his strict rulebook) for whatever crimes were committed, and the transition from human to animal to symbol was him giving humans some slack due to being good little prisoners for x amount of centuries. Points for good behavior.

What with all the weird stuff in the news, maybe the human sacrifices never actually went away, they just went underground (either literally or metaphorically) and the animal and symbolic sacrifices were done in public while the REAL sacrifices took place at secret temples (like Bohemian Grove type stuff); that even symbolic sacrifices are still linked to human sacrifices to the Demiurge via this public-private sacrifice subterfuge. Implying that Demiurge is either still extremely mad at us or else that the gnostics are right and we're just living in a hell-matrix video game and there's a way out to the Pleroma if you follow these 10 simple gnostic tricks (#10 may shock you).

>>20476687
Satan was not the patriarch of humanity

>>20471949
>Were the Valentinian Gnostics right?
No
otherwise they wouldn't be a lone strain of a schizophrenic vaguely-defined suicidal sectarian nightmare which brutally nosedived and is only now reawakening as a parody of itself in the fried brains of terminally-online failures at the twilight of our times

>>20476757
the potential to cut your own dick off requires having a dick attached to you
dicks don't regrow, so there's no drawer-full-of-your-own-dicks item in the game
you can't keep your dick forever regardless
dicks and torture porn are unique bosses

>>20473710
>that romanian guy who got killed by the securitate whose name I can't remember
Culianu

If you're a gnostic that doesn't believe in free will, maybe you should just kill yourself?
How else will you escape the Kenoma? By staying alive? Shut the fuck up

>>20481144
>>20481449
The hylic seethe is definitely palpable here

>>20472107
I held this position for a long time

>ctrl + f
>no mentions of Basilides

>>20481493
>hylic! hylic! le hylic!
again a tired variation of the sheeple / npc meme as unilaterally applied by midwits who have a bone to pick with the world and no means to resolve it
you're a completely helpless impotent sad cunt distinguished by slightly-above-average literacy in your youth, and now you've resorted to pseud mysticism to cope. you are a new ager fraud and you should just go on a dmt voyage like all the others, you'd find it easier to lie to yourself about the ideas you get that way
Gnosis? I don't believe that you have any gnosis. That doesn't fly when you are all obviously obsessed doomscrollers who act in incredibly profane and banal ways befitting characteristics of your putative demiurge. all the other larp religious and ideology threads get called out this way, like I said, terminally-online

>>20481582
Do you honestly expect me to read all this shit? Are you really this delusional? Lmao

>>20481582
He's larping as an adhearent of a long dead religion on 4chan. If he was serious (as serious as you possibly could be about this sort of thing) he wouldn't be here. He'll move on to something else once this lit fad ends. There's no use.

>>20481594
>Do you honestly expect me to read all this shit?
>posted alongside [tired variation of npc meme]
(you)

>>20481598
good advice, leaving this thread

>>20474035
You ever play a video game after you beat it and you get cheat codes along with all your best weapons. Its novel at first but then you realize the game isnt worth playing without a challenge.
The reason evil exists in this realm is because of polarity.

terminally-online helpless impotent sad cum of a long dead cringe

Old Testament and the New Testament Gnostic Demiurge

Absolute Truth: Jesus physically of a gnostic hylê or whatever.

the basic gnostic temperament is self-refuting because is inherently subjective. doesn't mean that it's not valid because... It just is, ok?

cringing physically like a Marxist. absolutely retarded

and so on.

>>20481582
>heretic! heretic! le heretic!
again a tired variation of the sheeple / npc meme as unilaterally applied by midwits who have a bone to pick with the world and no means to resolve it

>>20476825
enjoy worshipping your desert blood demon then

>>20480063
>intellectual dishonesty: the post
Why are christians obsessed with winning internet arguments instead of actually furthering their understanding

>>20481582
>t.
seethe harder lmao

>>20483103
It's just the ortho larpers really.

>>20481756
>Demiurge or God created torture porn to keep the game interesting.
oh, well in that case...!

not really addressing this to anyone in particular, but i have yet to see any response (strong or weak) about the idea that Heaven will have no evil (thus at the same time getting rid of free will and torture porn), and will just be an unchanging eternity of pure goodness and love.
If God can do that already, then why wait? If Heaven isn't gonna be that way, then what's the point of Heaven if it's just gonna have potential for torture porn like mundane Earth?

anyone got wanna take a shot at answering?

For sure

bump