Really considering Gnosticism

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I have never totally eliminated the possibility of a God and probably no one ever will. But, as I remarked somewhere else, sensible people live in a world of various probabilities and all indications of a God are so improbable that they are not worthy of any recognizable action in that direction.

The only recurrent phenomenon that gives me a positive indication of a supernatural power is that when I need to catch a bus - and bus service is the best way to travel in this city, almost always when I approach a bus stop the bus I need pulls away before my eyes. Other buses come and go but the one I need invariably escapes me as I approach. This can only be the magical control of God himself who obviously dislikes me intensely. The feeling is mutual.

How does the Dan Barker spiritual go in making fun of his ex-theism? Ohh...ohhhhh....ohh....yes lord.....we believe in gravity.....mmmmm.....yes we believe.....because what goes up........must go down down down......mmmm....

Occasionally it just becomes clear - by watching people's actions - that to make strong metaphysical assertions is a huge leap of faith, strong theists will never see it, strong atheists never see it, anyone who doesn't belong to either of these groups can see that both not only exist within very rigorous and dogmatic paradigms but are utterly blind to their situation. There is however an outward symptom of subconscious awareness on their part as well as a sign that they're conscious mind is running from it like some might run from a closet sexuality or trying to beat it back into the cellar with a shovel, which is the need to sing hymns and keep repeating dogmatic statements in a broken record fashion. Of course the reducto ad absurdum of Dan Barker just shows he never really stopped being a priest, he simply switched churches.

Some of us do see it, and don't think it is a bad thing.

Accepting gnosticism would also require a leap faith. Why would you even bother looking into it, if you would be unwilling to do that?

Faith leaping may attain the status of an Olympic sport but jumping into the pitch black unknown usually ends in a rather severely damaging landing.

Tell me about it.

I used to jump out of airplanes for fun, and I did have a couple of bad landings; but overall I would say that the joy outweighed the pain.

When you try it in outer space where the whole universe is "down" you'll probably get that feeling of a leap of faith.

There is no fall, like a free-fall. Too bad you do not have the means of getting into orbit. Then you could have fun for months on end.

ruveyn

I guess I have nothing against leaps of faith being taken and really no disrespect toward any, just that I do find active proselytizing somewhat strange.

In my own case I have a very difficult time taking a full leap of faith, likely I'll always be agnostic just that the variance as to what end I'm closer to, atheism or theism, will always shift a little when I obtain new information or am able to see something in a light that I hadn't previously.

Well, this is certainly a fascinating conversation about Gnosticism.

Are there any Gnostic churches? If not, why not start one?

Actually, I think that I would prefer one of those Mary Madgalene churches, where orgies are a feature of the worship service. Drinking blood and eating human flesh has become boring for me, and churches don't really distribute enough to make you feel satiated anyway. I'd rather just go to a Country Buffet restaurant.

Perhaps we can try again though I am sure there will be more snide comments if we do.

The concept of an imperfect creator makes a lot of sense. It would address the argument of atheists that a perfect God would not have created the world as we know it. Of course, it would not address the argument that there is no physical evidence of anything beyond the physical.

But does that mean there is no evidence? It seems to me, that the one spirit that even Somatics can perceive is the spirit of their own selves, though they deny it. They attribute consciousness and will (such as they acknowledge it) to biological functions. If there is no higher self that can obtain knowledge (gnosis) by experience, then it can not be obtained.

Gnosticism can be seen as spiritually without religion and without dogma; the myths are acknowledged to be myths. I think it is worth looking into.

To that last bit though I have to address what many of the intellectual elites here would consider the grimey corner of the bathroom floor. That is - as far as I can tell - some faith healers, some psychics, do well enough or do things often enough to where fraud conspiracy seems as if not much more difficult to pull off than, say, the Illuminati and all its subgroups (Masons, Rothchild, Bridgebuilders, etc.) owning the world and controlling history to a T. There's actually one local guy, Issam Nemeh, who does some rather amazing things. When someone can have a medical problem that's blatant to xrays (I'm not talking cancer - these are things that aren't immune system related), as physical in nature as you can get, and can go back to the doctors and the problem is wiped out - its a bit more than placebo. Just like there are psychics out there who seem to have this sort of track record. Are there people out there dying, hoping, and waiting to be defrauded for the sake of fantasy? Is a sucker born every minute? Yes. Are these areas quite often riddled with fraud? Yes. Can fraud explain all of it? I really don't believe so.

Another issue - on a Discovery or TLC show about Nostradamus, something was brought up about a supercomputer that was built to do a mathematical function, flip a coin - heads or tails - 100,000 times a minute, and do so for years. They found something odd with this; there is a certain statistical norm that the results fall into that fits probabilities well. During time periods where big world events - especially disasters - were imminent or occuring, the random probabilities would change from fitting an appropriate curve to being much closer to all heads/all tails. The computer was actually seizemographing human events and even psychic phenomena. People typically, a few hours before a major catastrophe, are reported to have preminitions, something hit them in their dreams or in their gut so to speak, that small spike before an event also shows up on the computer.

A lot of people look at things like this and, if they are strong materialists, ridicule the notion while refusing to even double check it - that seems like its its own form of teddy bear/security blanket - ie. clip the outliers and pretend they don't exist. I can see where its easy to do so, particularly with healings, psychic ability, etc., they don't respond to measure well and that seems to be the basis for ratifying things valid or invalid. Myself, while I take science first and foremost, I can't bring myself to ignore what seem to be flukes simply because they don't fit my equation - rather they force me to reconsider. Certain things I've seen and heard strongly point to the notion that there is something else (not 100% sure what) beyond what we call the physical or material, its because of that I can't join the atheist camp - it would be a very easy answer but; so would just going to church, remembering the ten commandments and Jesus message, and refusing all thought after that point. Typically speaking stopping short doesn't reward me or do any justice whatsoever, especially since for whatever reason I care about figuring out what's really going on, who I am, what I am, why I'm here, how it all works, etc., etc..

I have a feeling though, on the Gnosticism issue - I doubt I'll go there in any formal respect. I think I'll finish reading the Bible a few times through at least, check into the Nag Hammadi in a deeper sense, read Irenaeus's dissertation on it, and make up my own mind.

Evidence, do you speak it?

I had the chance to look at what organized Gnostic culture is and, truthfully, its pretty disheartening. They pick certain books of the Nag Hammadi, seems like they leave out what I found interesting, and then they flock around current teachers as if they have prophetic ability. To top that off one of their current 'great' teachers has a name that, for the life of me, I can't figure out why he went with it - preaching under that name is like Ford deciding to build a truck called the Inferno.

I wouldn't say that sets me back to square one - I'm iffy about organized anything and this sort of thing just shows me why. Organized gnosticism might not stink as much as it did at least on first impression but still, organized anything really I won't bother with until I really know for certain that its what I want to do - that could be years from now, that could be never.

Two theological issues as well:
1) Gnosis - process of becoming an angel? We're supposedly above the angels in the sense of how we're built, the angels are more mechanical, can't interpret God's will, they rely on us for that.
2) The accusation is made about Gnosticism that they diminish Christ's role - in reading the Tripartite Tractate its just the opposite; its a bit like looking at one of those 'scale of the universe' models where they show bigger and bigger stars - apparently the Logos is an extremely small entity compared to Christ. I don't know whether its simply the critis mouthing the notion that Christ is diminished or if organized Gnosticism does that on its own but, it quite literally clashes with what I've read.

Best post of the day. I was gonna say something else, but I came across this gem and forgot my point. Sorry.

We might have looked at the same site and I agree with you. I wouldn't trust any organized belief system; most of them seem to organize simply to tell each other that they are right and everyone else is wrong.

The idea of gnosticism seems to be very similar to Eckhart Tolle's idea of obtaining spiritual enlightenment by dis-identifying with your mind, putting away past and future and focusing on your inner being which is life itself and connected to all other life. If knowledge is to be gained by personal experience, there would be no need for preachers, and teachers would only teach the method of making the connection with the divine, not the results they received.