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Will Someone Please Explain this Rampant Hateful Aggressive “Gnostic Christianity” to Me?

My understanding of this subject is pretty limited, but from what Ive undestood, they killed Jesus cause he wasnt a murdering bigoted psychopath. Fucking hell.
 
Gnostic Bishop said:
Are homosexual natures created by nurture, nature, or God?

I think the answer is is quite important as it would show us the cause/source of homosexuality.

If God, as believers think, then why is God creating gays?

Regards DL
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Gnosticism is a little beyond me as I dont believe in the creation story , dont believe that God invented man, dont believe there is an alternative supreme being either. The Jewish God is a bit of a misogynistic arsehole , a bit violent and doesn't really care too much about anything except people worshipping him. Who would bother?



Gnostics appear to be based on heretics who didn't recognise the church's authority and were allegedly early intellectuals. Not just believing in the existence of the God that society was ruled by and questioning the edict of what is sinful punishable yet natural instincts and behaviour seems like something most would do here.

Why would people really believe in a God which created everything and have some considered sinful, punishable by death for thousands of years?

Considering the impact organised religion has had on human society based on persecutions according to the bible, its a fair to think Christians who still base their morals on an out dated God would not be worth talking to.

Im an athiest so I dont care if someone thinks my official religion is dumb because...it is dumb.


Anyway, wish I hadn't read this thread, the guy is banned, fairly gutless sledging someone who can't respond.
 
schizopath said:
Sounds like my best friend. Love that guy.

Bible has nothing to do with truth. Bible is as fabricated as fucking harry potter or some shit. Sadly, they chose whatever they wanted for the masses and here we are.
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Well normal.From fourth century A.D. The Church is part of big politic and big money.Even apostle Paul warns of that danger in his letters.
 
✿Dai₷y✿ said:
Gnosticism is a little beyond me as I dont believe in the creation story , dont believe that God invented man, dont believe there is an alternative supreme being either. The Jewish God is a bit of a misogynistic arsehole , a bit violent and doesn't really care too much about anything except people worshipping him. Who would bother?



Gnostics appear to be based on heretics who didn't recognise the church's authority and were allegedly early intellectuals. Not just believing in the existence of the God that society was ruled by and questioning the edict of what is sinful punishable yet natural instincts and behaviour seems like something most would do here.

Why would people really believe in a God which created everything and have some considered sinful, punishable by death for thousands of years?

Considering the impact organised religion has had on human society based on persecutions according to the bible, its a fair to think Christians who still base their morals on an out dated God would not be worth talking to.

Im an athiest so I dont care if someone thinks my official religion is dumb because...it is dumb.


Anyway, wish I hadn't read this thread, the guy is banned, fairly gutless sledging someone who can't respond.
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Well The Bible,just like testament cannot been read like a book.From that comes a problem and misunderpretation.Well...initially you read it like a book,but in fact its something more.Its a code.A secret knowledge,which is twisted by people over the time...and all the lost and burned gospels....what a lost. I Read the whole Bible two times from A to Z.Learn it or trying,asking monks if something not understand verywell.Yea their answers means nothingThere is not so great stories,but some are incredible-Psalms,Eklesiasts,Proverbs,Book of Jobe,Lammentations......very difficult to understand.Reading a sentence,which somehow attracts me over and over and thinking....what the hell is that?
 
@Xorkoth I am keen to continue an intelligent discussion and analysis of what Gnostic Christianity is (per OP) if you moderate (i.e. delete) all the off topic trolling or Lounge like posts - especially those that just double-down and have more of of a slag at Christians/Christianity. Otherwise I’ll just use my power as OP to delete the entire thread.

Unfortunately, that would leave this sub-forum a one-sided toxic no-go zone for people interested in intelligent discussion about the history of religions. Which I would have thought was a good topic for “Religion and Sprituality”.
 
Atomic_Decay said:
@Xorkoth I am keen to continue an intelligent discussion and analysis of what Gnostic Christianity is (per OP) if you moderate (i.e. delete) all the off topic trolling or Lounge like posts - especially those that just double-down and have more of of a slag at Christians/Christianity. Otherwise I’ll just use my power as OP to delete the entire thread.

Unfortunately, that would leave this sub-forum a one-sided toxic no-go zone for people interested in intelligent discussion about the history of religions. Which I would have thought was a good topic for “Religion and Sprituality”.
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fwiw, i think your OP was very insightful. most people don’t take the time to dissect the fluid nature of christianity throughout history.

i myself am drawn to early christians. e.g. the desert fathers. also thomas merton’s ideas about early christian mysticism resonate with me a lot. i was raised catholic but have always had an interest in world religions. his work really summed up a lot of thoughts i couldn’t piece together myself.

to me gnostic christianity seems analogous to reform judaism, which is something most westerners are familiar with. this view may be flawed though. it’s just my initial impression. personal spiritual knowledge (christian) and continuous revelation (jewish) seem very closely related imo.

after all that gibberish, i leave you with a quotation from the Sayings of the Desert Fathers…

“If someone does evil to you, you should do good to him, so that by your good work you may drive out his malice."
 
Atomic_Decay said:
@Xorkoth I am keen to continue an intelligent discussion and analysis of what Gnostic Christianity is (per OP) if you moderate (i.e. delete) all the off topic trolling or Lounge like posts - especially those that just double-down and have more of of a slag at Christians/Christianity. Otherwise I’ll just use my power as OP to delete the entire thread.

Unfortunately, that would leave this sub-forum a one-sided toxic no-go zone for people interested in intelligent discussion about the history of religions. Which I would have thought was a good topic for “Religion and Sprituality”.
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I will do that, I think it's a worthwhile topic. We tend get a lot of Christian bashing in here but I agree it is counterproductive to the topic. I'm going to also remove the stuff about a particular poster as it is also irrelevant (and I certainly had my part in that).

EDIT: Done. I tried to leave anything that had anything to do with the topic.

I have always been really interested in the gnostic texts. I have not read them myself. My impression is that they paint a rather psychedelic view of Jesus, one quite different from the books left in the Bible.
 
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I thought Gnostic Christians were primarily non-believers in the literal and historical existence of Jesus but believed that “the Kingdom of Heaven” was within each of us as a higher self that could be achieved while on earth.
 
Opi_Kid_Rock said:
I thought Gnostic Christians were primarily non-believers in the literal and historical existence of Jesus but believed that “the Kingdom of Heaven” was within each of us as a higher self that could be achieved while on earth.
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Its a sad that we have only survive fragments of apocryph gospels.They pictured other,very deep nature of Jesus Christ.A different things connected with life and teachings of Jesus Christ.Those books were highly persecuted and burned after foundation of the Church,like institution.
 
Opi_Kid_Rock said:
I thought Gnostic Christians were primarily non-believers in the literal and historical existence of Jesus but believed that “the Kingdom of Heaven” was within each of us as a higher self that could be achieved while on earth.
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while some may deny the existence of Jesus, most Gnostic Christians saw him as a example of a real human being who had achieve gnosis (which literally translated from greek means knowledge). whether this is means he was the “som of god” seems to be much more disputed among the early Jewish Christians though i think. but few of them would deny that he was actually was a real person who had found gnosis in some form or another.
 
Chapter Two - Backgrounding Gnosticism

It is quite difficult to understand Gnosticism without understanding the general intellectual and religious climate in both The Levant (esp. Israel/Palestine) and Rome in the period immediately prior to Jesus’ crucifixion (c. AD33) and the subsequent spread and translation of his teachings over the next 300 years or so. At this time Judaism can be understood in large part as both as an ethnicity and a legalistic religion of obedience in which God (Yahweh) was understood as both the source of all creation and the supreme lawgiver who defined the individual and community behaviours required to remain under his benevolent protection and avoid divine punishment. This reflects the several Covenants Yahweh made with different Jewish patriarchs through time including Noah, Abraham, Moses, Israel, and David - much of which is codified in the Book of Leviticus (shared by both Christians in the Bible and Jews in the Torah) - which is a book of rules, laws, customs, and practice rather than religious beliefs.

However, in the land of Israel (which had been promised to them by Yahweh in the Covenant with Moses recorded in Exodus 19:5-6) Jews had rarely enjoyed political autonomy during the classical period. They had been invaded, conquered, and occupied by the Babylonians in 586 BC. The Babylonians exiled the Jews to Babylon, which created the Jewish Diaspora. The Babylonians also destroyed the First Temple in an affront to Yahweh that the Jews perceived as going unpunished. The land of Israel then became a tributary state of the Persian Empire, known as Judea, when Cyrus the Great occupied Babylon in 538 BC. Following that there was a semi-autonomous Jewish kingdom in place known as the Hasmonean dynasty - but it was in large part a client or vassal state within the Greek-origin Seleucid Empire. Thereafter, beginning in the first century BC, the land of Israel came under increasing Roman control and was variously ruled by client kings appointed by Rome (e,g, Herod and his sons) or directly by Roman Prefects/Governors.

It is useful then to think of the land of Israel as something of a political plaything at the mercy of various other imperial forces that moved through and across the general area of first the Middle East and then the Mediterranean for most of the Classical Period up to the time of Jesus. Given their self-understanding as the Chosen People of an all powerful creator-God many Jews struggled to comprehend their seemingly endless subject status in this period despite rigid adherence to the Laws of God given in their covenants and recorded in the Torah. The combination of several hundred years of subjection, frustration, exile, return, in turn led to the fracturing of Judaism into several major sects. These sects included rabbinical sects such as the aristocratic Sadducees (who wanted to uphold the supreme authority of the Rabbinical Court - effectively making the land of Israel a theocracy. They also rejected the idea of life after death), the Pharisees (who believed in the resurrection of the dead), the Essenes (who preached selfless unworldly asceticism), and the Zealots (who preached violent revolution against any non-Jews oppressing Jews in the land of Israel). Most modern Judaism evolved from the Pharisees and the other sects gradually disappeared after the destruction of the Second Temple by the Romans.

So, at the time Jesus emerged, the Jews are a fairly diverse group of people with an aristocracy (the Sadducees) who often worked in conjunction with different foreign occupiers/powers to exert political control over the larger Jewish population in return for that power respecting their religious authority and giving them political offices that mediated power between occupier and occupied. At the same time there are a lot of regular Jews struggling to understand why Yahweh did not seem willing or able to fulfil the Covenants he had made with his supposedly Chosen People. Many of these disaffected young Jews were well educated and exposed to diverse teachings in philosophy and religion from elsewhere in the Classical world. Certainly from Greece and Persia and quite possibly from India (which had been reached by the Greek/Macedonian Alexander the Great in 326 BC).

The bottom line: the land of Israel was an intellectually and religiously vibrant place but riven by significant rivalries that merged religious and political concerns amongst the Jews.
 
thegreenhand said:
while some may deny the existence of Jesus, most Gnostic Christians saw him as a example of a real human being who had achieve gnosis (which literally translated from greek means knowledge). whether this is means he was the “som of god” seems to be much more disputed among the early Jewish Christians though i think. but few of them would deny that he was actually was a real person who had found gnosis in some form or another.
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Yes probably real person,a messiah,prophet.Well we are all sons and daughters of God.For muslim he was a real human and God's prophet.Catholics and Orthodox name it ipostasis of God,like a Son and third-The Holy Spirit.-Theres a Holy Trinity.When you read Genesis you will find many sentences,in which God talk for Him self like We,not I....Thats a two thousand years....a lot of time
 
Atomic_Decay said:
While the poor fellow is on yet another temporary ban I thought I’d contribute to @gnostic Bishop’s evangelical one-man war on the world’s billion or so Christians by starting a thread to explain what he describes as the best religion ever invented - Gnosticism or Gnostic Christianity as it is sometimes called, although its links to Jesus Christ are not necessarily integral to it’s beliefs and practices. I’m kind of writing this out to get the facts straight in my own head, so I can argue better with old GB if/when they let him back in.

I am not a Christian myself and I do not go to church - so this isn’t personal justification. I just get irritated by people who use fake history, outright bullshit, and ideology to slander groups they hate on the internet. Feel free to add anything you additional information you like and correct any errors I make (there will likely be a few)

For the purposes of clarity, when I refer to ‘Christians’ in what follows I am talking about mainstream organised religions - not small independent non-denominational or evangelical churches/sects/missions such as you often find in the US. Christians here means essentially:

1. Early Christians - who were also often also Jews or Greeks of various religious and philosophical sects/groups - who began to form the proto-Catholic Church. This is the period of AD 33-AD 313 (when with the Edict of Milan, Emperor Constantine made Christianity officially legal and thereafter the de facto official religion of Rome.

2. The Catholic Church. Many people today forget or never knew that the ONLY Christians from the 2nd to 11th centuries were effectively ‘Roman’ Catholics. In the 11th Century the Great Schism occurred and the Eastern Orthodox Church split from the Roman Church. It is during this long period that the Roman Church debated doctrine and dogma and determined what was official and what was heresy. Consequently there were groups from to time time - sometimes backed by political power/kings etc - who called themselves Catholics/Christians but who held views that the offical Church did not endorse. These groups were either brought into the Church, expelled from Catholic regions, or occasionally imprisoned or executed.

3. Catholics Vs Protestants (beginning with Lutherans): in the Reformation during the 16th Century in Europe many groups abandoned Catholicism due to longstanding doctrinal and political concerns and denied Catholicism was the only legitimate form of Christianity. These groups eventually coalesced into the main Protestant churches (Presbyterian, Episcopal, Lutheran, Baptist, Methodist and Wesleyan). This is effectively who I mean by modern-day Protestant Christians.

It is vitally important to recognise that making totalising claims about ‘Christians’ - such as GB does when he (endlessly) says “the Christian God is a genocidal homophobic misogynistic monster” is really pointless and intellectual barren. Christianity has ALWAYS been in a state of flux as it faces diverse ideas and either incorporates them or itself fractures along doctrinal lines forming new churches/factions/sects etc.

It is also vitally important to recognise that “Church” and “Christians” are not the same thing. The “Church” is the institutional body that controls doctrine and dogma. “Christians” are people who identify as being members of a Church but who accept and practice the rules of that Church to varying degrees. For example: the Catholic Church says contraception is a mortal sin, yet every Catholic woman I’ve ever fucked (and there are many) was on the pill. Similarly, Methodists are required to tithe 10 % of their income to their Church - but many do not and cheat on their tithing just like they do on their taxes.

Next Issue: Defining Gnosticism

Stay Tuned.
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True that I am, assertive, not aggressive, although the less astute will only see aggression.

Why do I take this path.

Because uninformed people are always quoting lies about Gnostic Christianity, --- that the inquisitors who murdered us put out, --- and uneducated people are believing the murderers lies instead of the truth.

Christianity is a fascist regime. They venerate a genocidal moral monster.

This is my society, basically, and my shame forces me to try to correct their really poor moral thinking.

To venerate any genocidal entity is quite wrong, and that is what my fucked up society is doing.

Even in Canada, where we are generally brighter and more moral than Americans.

So to your definition of Gnosticism, add way more moral than those who venerate a genocidal, homophobic and misogynous Yahweh/Jesus.

We are the Christians that love all their children equally. Not just the non-gay males.

Regards
DL
 
Nas47 said:
Christianity means Love,Forgivness,Faith,Hope....but the Love came first.
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Not to everybody.

Your God is shown to destroy the vast majority of us and to save the few after his final judgement.

He does not have a good record for saving.

Would you feel as comfy being judged by Hitler?

Why not, given that he too has a genocidal character that many Christians favor.

Regards
DL
 
Goin to church man.or to whore if you want.Don't teach me about christianity.I was live in monastery.In orthodox.....in protestant(some kind)also.Have a nice day
 
Atomic_Decay said:
I just want to set the record straight on what Gnostic Christianity actually is and people can make up their own mind whether he is an exemplary representative of that faith system.
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I am all in for being judged against the evil Christians.

Unfortunately, most Christians just run away because they cannot argue intelligently and morally for their vile God.

Regards
DL
 
Nas47 said:
Goin to church man.or to whore if you want.Don't teach me about christianity.I was live in monastery.In orthodox.....in protestant(some kind)also.Have a nice day
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I see not difference in the choices you give.

I would teach you of the evils of Christianity, as well as the few good parts remaining.

Start by knowing that supernatural thinking is poor thinking.

Regards
DL
 
thegreenhand said:
while some may deny the existence of Jesus, most Gnostic Christians saw him as a example of a real human being who had achieve gnosis (which literally translated from greek means knowledge). whether this is means he was the “som of god” seems to be much more disputed among the early Jewish Christians though i think. but few of them would deny that he was actually was a real person who had found gnosis in some form or another.
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This is not true as we hold no supernatural beliefs.

That is why we judged Yahweh to be a vile and immoral God. Not that he ever existed.

Here is how we think of Jesus.

I hope you can see how intelligent the ancients were as compared to the mental efforts that modern preachers and theists are using with the literal reading of myths.

https://bigthink.com/videos/what-is-god-2-2

Further.
http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/03132009/watch.html

Rabbi Hillel, the older contemporary of Jesus, said that when asked to sum up the whole of Jewish teaching, while he stood on one leg, said, "The Golden Rule. That which is hateful to you, do not do to your neighbor. That is the Torah. And everything else is only commentary. Now, go and study it."

Please listen as to what is said about the literal reading of myths.

"Origen, the great second or third century Greek commentator on the Bible said that it is absolutely impossible to take these texts literally. You simply cannot do so. And he said, "God has put these sort of conundrums and paradoxes in so that we are forced to seek a deeper meaning."

Matt 7;12 So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets.

This is how early Gnostic Christians view the transition from reading myths properly to destructive literal reading and idol worship.



Regards
DL
 
Enlighten me oh you Master....me poor....can donate some money for bread,cause we poor silly people....you know"Hungry bear don't dance"Paypall is ok.
 
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