Gnosis
First a brief outline of the beliefs of gnosis.
1) The world is fundamentally flawed, corrupt and evil
2) The natural world was created by a demiurge, a lesser deity, not the supreme God
3) In SOME people is a divine spark trapped in the body and it is it's goal to escape and return to the source, the divine Godhead
4) It is the recognition of the higher self, and only an elite few will realize this and and liberate themselves from the entrapment of the physical world.
Gnosticism includes, as I see it, an element of agnosticism, in that it recognizes the existence of a supreme God who is unknown and unknowable. (Agnosticism is defined as accepting the possibility of spirituality with the inability to know it, generally meaning that whether god exists or not is unknowable and one shouldn't presume to be capable of such, but may or may not take it on faith that such is the case)
Gnostic traditions have come to envelope other religious beliefs, such as Christianity (see apocrypha of John, or the Gospel of Thomas for instance) or Judaism (Apocalypse of Adam for instance). These teachings are often contradictory to the bible, and therefore will be ignored and the focus will be on gnosticism without Christian or other influences.
The first problem is that only some people have the divine spark. Gnostic teaching makes clear not every living thing has this. It is thus exclusionary and not complete (violation of rule 3)
Salvation is dependent on "secret" knowledge, not knowledge that is freely available to everyone. Further, viewing the physical world as fundamentally flawed, scientific inquiry would be dismissed as unrepresentative of reality and unable to prove or disprove anything about the world. This further violates rules 3 and 4.
Further, Gnostic cosmology like Christianity and Judaism puts the earth at the center of existence, when science has long since proven it is not at the center of anything. This means their teachings are not externally consistent (do not match reality) and therefore violate rule 1 as well.
Considering Gnosticism has been all but wiped out, and it's teachings are mostly lost it's difficult to impossible to expand on this analysis. Too much has been lost, but I believe the above arguments are enough.
Final Verdict: False Religion
1) The world is fundamentally flawed, corrupt and evil
2) The natural world was created by a demiurge, a lesser deity, not the supreme God
3) In SOME people is a divine spark trapped in the body and it is it's goal to escape and return to the source, the divine Godhead
4) It is the recognition of the higher self, and only an elite few will realize this and and liberate themselves from the entrapment of the physical world.
Gnosticism includes, as I see it, an element of agnosticism, in that it recognizes the existence of a supreme God who is unknown and unknowable. (Agnosticism is defined as accepting the possibility of spirituality with the inability to know it, generally meaning that whether god exists or not is unknowable and one shouldn't presume to be capable of such, but may or may not take it on faith that such is the case)
Gnostic traditions have come to envelope other religious beliefs, such as Christianity (see apocrypha of John, or the Gospel of Thomas for instance) or Judaism (Apocalypse of Adam for instance). These teachings are often contradictory to the bible, and therefore will be ignored and the focus will be on gnosticism without Christian or other influences.
The first problem is that only some people have the divine spark. Gnostic teaching makes clear not every living thing has this. It is thus exclusionary and not complete (violation of rule 3)
Salvation is dependent on "secret" knowledge, not knowledge that is freely available to everyone. Further, viewing the physical world as fundamentally flawed, scientific inquiry would be dismissed as unrepresentative of reality and unable to prove or disprove anything about the world. This further violates rules 3 and 4.
Further, Gnostic cosmology like Christianity and Judaism puts the earth at the center of existence, when science has long since proven it is not at the center of anything. This means their teachings are not externally consistent (do not match reality) and therefore violate rule 1 as well.
Considering Gnosticism has been all but wiped out, and it's teachings are mostly lost it's difficult to impossible to expand on this analysis. Too much has been lost, but I believe the above arguments are enough.
Final Verdict: False Religion
posted by cyber-mountain guru at 11:56 AM
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