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Author Topic:   Do you have Questions for a Gnostic Christian?
Greatest I am
Member (Idle past 273 days)
Posts: 1676
Joined: 01-24-2007


Message 1 of 150 (890205)
12-28-2021 3:44 PM


With the mainstream religions failing, I tend to go to harm reduction topics to help the immoral right wing religions shrink.
I am not much into the myths we wrote to put against the Christian myth, when we all knew that it was foolish to believe in the supernatural.
I do like the universalist thinking and naturalistic aspect of religion that Christianity abandoned for supernatural thinking.
Garbage thinking to a Gnostic Christian.
Jesus asks in scriptures; have ye forgotten that ye are gods?
If you have forgotten your birth rite of godliness, but can think in material dualism terms, body soul term, then Gnostic Christianity has answers that I like and you might also enjoy.
I like to test my ideology/theology and show why I think it the best around, so if anyone would like to know why we are called the only good Christians, ask way on any moral issue and find out.
Regards
DL
Edited by Greatest I am, : No reason given.

Replies to this message:
 Message 3 by AZPaul3, posted 12-29-2021 3:05 PM Greatest I am has replied

  
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Message 2 of 150 (890207)
12-29-2021 2:11 PM


Thread Copied from Proposed New Topics Forum
Thread copied here from the Do you have Questions for a Gnostic Christian? thread in the Proposed New Topics forum.

  
AZPaul3
Member
Posts: 8513
From: Phoenix
Joined: 11-06-2006
Member Rating: 5.2


Message 3 of 150 (890208)
12-29-2021 3:05 PM
Reply to: Message 1 by Greatest I am
12-28-2021 3:44 PM


Gnostic What?
if anyone would like to know why we are called the only good Christians, ask way on any moral issue and find out.
Sure. I'd like that, but ...
Before getting into your gnostic views on moral issues I would like to know better your gnostic views of this “universalist thinking and naturalistic aspect of religion that Christianity abandoned for supernatural thinking.” What are you talking about? How could your religion not involve the supernatural?
Before I can listen to your views on morality I need to determine whether you are worth listening to.

Eschew obfuscation. Habituate elucidation.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 1 by Greatest I am, posted 12-28-2021 3:44 PM Greatest I am has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 4 by Greatest I am, posted 12-29-2021 3:22 PM AZPaul3 has not replied
 Message 5 by Greatest I am, posted 12-29-2021 3:31 PM AZPaul3 has replied
 Message 6 by Greatest I am, posted 12-29-2021 3:36 PM AZPaul3 has not replied

  
Greatest I am
Member (Idle past 273 days)
Posts: 1676
Joined: 01-24-2007


Message 4 of 150 (890209)
12-29-2021 3:22 PM
Reply to: Message 3 by AZPaul3
12-29-2021 3:05 PM


Re: Gnostic What?
Gnostic Christians, like all the esoteric branches of Christianity and Judaism, have never believed in the supernatural.
Most Jews, other than the right wing, like Gnostic Christians, like to point out how Jesus asked in scriptures, have ye forgotten that ye are gods?
Gnostic Christians have not.
Modern Gnostic Christians name our god "I am", and yes, we do mean ourselves.
You are your controller. I am mine. You represent and present whatever mind picture you have of your God or ideal human, and so do I.
The name "I Am" you might see as meaning something like, --- I think I have grown up thanks to having forced my apotheosis through Gnosis and meditation and “I am”, represents the best rules and laws that we have found to live by.
In Gnostic Christianity, we follow the Christian tradition that Christians have forgotten that they are to do. That is, become brethren to Jesus.
That is why some say that the only good Christian is a Gnostic Christian.
Here is the real way to salvation that Jesus taught.
Matthew 6:22 The light of the body is the eye: if therefore thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light.
John 14:23 Jesus answered and said unto him, If a man love me, he will keep my words: and my Father will love him, and we will come unto him, and make our abode with him.
Romans 8:29 For whom he did foreknow, he also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brethren.
Allan Watts explain those quotes in detail.
Alan Watts - On The Book of Eli - YouTube
Joseph Campbell shows the same esoteric ecumenist idea in this link.
On Becoming an Adult - YouTube
The bible just plainly says to put away the things of children. The supernatural and literal reading of myths.
Regards
DL

This message is a reply to:
 Message 3 by AZPaul3, posted 12-29-2021 3:05 PM AZPaul3 has not replied

  
Greatest I am
Member (Idle past 273 days)
Posts: 1676
Joined: 01-24-2007


Message 5 of 150 (890210)
12-29-2021 3:31 PM
Reply to: Message 3 by AZPaul3
12-29-2021 3:05 PM


Re: Gnostic What?
On our Universalist thinking.
We have tied the righteousness of god with equality and universalism.
This gets a little weird but can be understood in modern term.
Gnostic Scriptures and Fragments: Epiphanes - On Righteousness
If we, body and soul, are all indeed created by nature equal in terms of best possible end, then whatever we all become, good or evil, depends on those around us.
For instance, Hitler was not born the evil scum he became.
All who interacted with him, we would see as facilitators and as such deserve any blame or reward.
We are all in that same situation, and anything other than universalist thinking is inferior thinking, --- with a creator that creates souls that are already destined to be good or evil.
Regards
DL

This message is a reply to:
 Message 3 by AZPaul3, posted 12-29-2021 3:05 PM AZPaul3 has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 9 by AZPaul3, posted 12-29-2021 4:44 PM Greatest I am has replied

  
Greatest I am
Member (Idle past 273 days)
Posts: 1676
Joined: 01-24-2007


Message 6 of 150 (890213)
12-29-2021 3:36 PM
Reply to: Message 3 by AZPaul3
12-29-2021 3:05 PM


Re: Gnostic What?
"naturalistic aspect of religion that Christianity abandoned for supernatural thinking.”
The secret to understanding this is why Christians sing of Adam's sin being a happy fault and necessary to god's plan.
It is also necessary tp our evolution, a naturalistic view of reality.
This old O.P to a Christian will show my views.
------------
Eve was correct in eating of the tree of knowledge and rejecting God.
It was God's plan from the beginning to have Adam and Eve eat the forbidden fruit. This can be demonstrated by the fact that the bible says that Jesus "was crucified from the foundations of the Earth," that is to say, God planned to crucify Jesus as atonement for sin before he even created human beings or God damned sin.
1Peter 1:20 0 He was chosen before the creation of the world, but was revealed in these last times for your sake.
This indicates that Jesus had no choice.
If God had not intended humans to sin from the beginning, why did he build into the Creation this "solution" for sin? Why create a solution for a problem you do not anticipate?
God knew that the moment he said "don't eat from that tree," the die was cast. The eating was inevitable. Eve was merely following the plan.
This then begs the question.
What kind of God would plan and execute the murder of his own son when there was absolutely no need to?
Only an insane and immoral God. That’s who.
The cornerstone of Christianity is human sacrifice, thus showing it‘s immorality.
One of Christianity's highest form of immorality is what they have done to women. They have denied them equality and subjugated them to men.
------------------------
Christians are always trying to absolve God of moral culpability in the fall by whipping out their favorite "free will!", or “ it’s all man’s fault”.
That is "God gave us free will and it was our free willed choices that caused our fall. Hence God is not blameworthy."
But this simply avoids God's culpability as the author of Human Nature. Free will is only the ability to choose. It is not an explanation why anyone would want to choose "A" or "B" (bad or good action). An explanation for why Eve would even have the nature of "being vulnerable to being easily swayed by a serpent" and "desiring to eat a forbidden fruit" must lie in the nature God gave Eve in the first place. Hence God is culpable for deliberately making humans with a nature-inclined-to-fall, and "free will" means nothing as a response to this problem.
If all sin by nature, then the sin nature is dominant. If not, we would have at least some who would not sin. That being the case, for God to punish us for following the instincts and natures he put in us would be quite wrong.
Psalm 51:5 "Surely I was sinful at birth, sinful from the time my mother conceived me."
Having said the above for the God that I do not believe in, I am a Gnostic Christian naturalist, let me tell you that evil is all human generated. Evil is our responsibility.
Much has been written to explain what I see as a natural part of evolution.
Consider.
First, let us eliminate what some see as evil. Natural disasters. These are unthinking occurrences and are neither good nor evil. There is no intent to do evil even as victims are created.
Evil then is only human to human.
As evolving creatures, all we ever do, and ever can do, is compete or cooperate.
Cooperation we would see as good as there are no victims created. Competition would be seen as evil as it creates a victim. We all are either cooperating, doing good, or competing, doing evil at all times.
Without us doing some of both, we would likely go extinct.
This, to me, explains why there is evil in the world quite well.
Be you a believer in nature, evolution or God, we should all see that what Christians see as something to blame, evil, we should see that what we have, competition, deserves a huge thanks for being available to us.
There is no conflict between nature and God on this issue. This is how things are and should be. We all must do what some will think is evil as we compete and create losers to this competition.
Regards
DL
-----------------------
Evolutionary theology.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XXOvYn1OAL0&list=UUDXjzOeZ...

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 Message 3 by AZPaul3, posted 12-29-2021 3:05 PM AZPaul3 has not replied

  
Tangle
Member
Posts: 9489
From: UK
Joined: 10-07-2011
Member Rating: 4.9


Message 7 of 150 (890214)
12-29-2021 4:04 PM


Not quite as mad as the ether stuff, but not far off.

Je suis Charlie. Je suis Ahmed. Je suis Juif. Je suis Parisien. I am Mancunian. I am Brum. I am London.I am Finland. Soy Barcelona

"Life, don't talk to me about life" - Marvin the Paranoid Android

"Science adjusts it's views based on what's observed.
Faith is the denial of observation so that Belief can be preserved."
- Tim Minchin, in his beat poem, Storm.


Replies to this message:
 Message 8 by Greatest I am, posted 12-29-2021 4:24 PM Tangle has not replied

  
Greatest I am
Member (Idle past 273 days)
Posts: 1676
Joined: 01-24-2007


Message 8 of 150 (890216)
12-29-2021 4:24 PM
Reply to: Message 7 by Tangle
12-29-2021 4:04 PM


Keep your stuff secret and just keep talking to yourself.
That is really intelligent and you never lose an argument, because you never make one.
Regards
DL

This message is a reply to:
 Message 7 by Tangle, posted 12-29-2021 4:04 PM Tangle has not replied

  
AZPaul3
Member
Posts: 8513
From: Phoenix
Joined: 11-06-2006
Member Rating: 5.2


Message 9 of 150 (890217)
12-29-2021 4:44 PM
Reply to: Message 5 by Greatest I am
12-29-2021 3:31 PM


Re: Gnostic What?
So you believe in a supernatural god.
From your citation:
quote:
The ideas of Mine and Thine crept in through the laws which cause the earth, money, and even marriage no longer to bring forth fruit of common use. For God made vines for all to use in common, since they do not refuse the sparrow or the thief; and similarly wheat and other fruits. But outlawed sharing and the vestiges of equality generated the thief of domestic animals and fruits. For man God made all things to be common property. He brought the female to be with the male in common and in the same way united all the animals. He thus showed rightousness to be a universal sharing along with equality. But those who have been born in this way have denied the sharing which is the corollary of their origin and say Let him who has taken one woman keep her, whereas all can share her, just as the other animals show us. With view to the permanence of the race, he has implanted in males a strong and ardent desire which neither law nor custom nor any other restraint is able to destroy. For it is God´s decree......
This is pure supernatural religious bullshit and morally questionable at best.
Reality is ruled by physics. If your philosophy relies on any violation of basic physical principles, such as the insistence on a supernatural being active in this universe, then your philosophy and its resultant moral doctrines are intellectually flawed.
We have tied the righteousness of god with equality and universalism.
You speak an article of faith. God is neither righteous nor existent. You have no reality from this universe upon which to justify such an aberration.
We do not live in your fantasy. We are real. If your mind is so set that thoughts of ghosts and gods are real to your mind, as gnostic as they may be, then you have lost view of reality and have fallen into fantasy. Since your personal religious fantasy informs your actions, your decisions then your morality is also based on your individual religious fantasy. Your fantasies cannot be trusted to speak to realistic human morality let alone apply such to any real human situation.
Edited by AZPaul3, : No reason given.

Edited by AZPaul3, : reword.


Eschew obfuscation. Habituate elucidation.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 5 by Greatest I am, posted 12-29-2021 3:31 PM Greatest I am has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 10 by Greatest I am, posted 12-29-2021 5:48 PM AZPaul3 has replied

  
Greatest I am
Member (Idle past 273 days)
Posts: 1676
Joined: 01-24-2007


Message 10 of 150 (890220)
12-29-2021 5:48 PM
Reply to: Message 9 by AZPaul3
12-29-2021 4:44 PM


Re: Gnostic What?
Your last is all garbage.
Message 4 shows my disdain for the supernatural.
We are the good Christians because we are not the dim ones who believe in the supernatural.
Nature shows us all we need to know. Nature is the only god type of icon man should acknowledge, as nature is what creates and sustains us.
“For it is God´s decree.....”
Read that as natures decree as it is a truth, or are you denying that men generally want a wife?
“Reality is ruled by physics. ?
Correct. Nature is physics to an esoteric ecumenist and perpetual seeker of the best rules and laws to live by.
. You are not paying attention to what I have put.
I can get your kind of arguments from brain dead believers.
That is not what I want to do in this O.P.
We, like the Jesus we quote, want to free people from organized religions and the supernatural.
We do not want to slave us to those defective thinking systems.
Atheists are agreeing and that is why they are forming atheist churches.
They will likely start calling themselves Mystery Schools again, and they and Gnostic Christianity will be the future.
Regards
DL
Edited by Greatest I am, : No reason given.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 9 by AZPaul3, posted 12-29-2021 4:44 PM AZPaul3 has replied

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 Message 11 by AZPaul3, posted 12-29-2021 6:19 PM Greatest I am has not replied
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 Message 16 by Tangle, posted 12-30-2021 3:56 AM Greatest I am has replied

  
AZPaul3
Member
Posts: 8513
From: Phoenix
Joined: 11-06-2006
Member Rating: 5.2


Message 11 of 150 (890221)
12-29-2021 6:19 PM
Reply to: Message 10 by Greatest I am
12-29-2021 5:48 PM


Re: Gnostic What?
Message 4 shows my disdain for the supernatural.
We are the good Christians because we are not the dim ones who believe in the supernatural.
Then the cite you gave in your Message 5 was not indicative of Gnosticism? Why cite it?
And then in your Message 6 you go on how eve was right, and jesus did this and the bible says this and evil is good, etc.
quote:
This old O.P to a Christian will show my views.
------------
Eve was correct in eating of the tree of knowledge and rejecting God.
Do you believe Eve and the tree and god existed?
In your philosophy is there a god or not?
You can define god however you want, but if not a religious (supernatural) thing then please stop with the religious iconography in your language. It is not appropriate.
You almost sound like a secular humanist, which would be good, but then you insist on this religious overtone.
Are you religious, secular, something else?
If you want to instruct us on human morality then first identify yourself. Right now I'm confused.
And by the way, in my experience, the only good christian is one that is now atheist.
Edited by AZPaul3, : No reason given.

Eschew obfuscation. Habituate elucidation.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 10 by Greatest I am, posted 12-29-2021 5:48 PM Greatest I am has not replied

  
AZPaul3
Member
Posts: 8513
From: Phoenix
Joined: 11-06-2006
Member Rating: 5.2


Message 12 of 150 (890222)
12-29-2021 7:02 PM
Reply to: Message 10 by Greatest I am
12-29-2021 5:48 PM


Re: Gnostic What?
“For it is God´s decree.....”
Read that as natures decree as it is a truth, or are you denying that men generally want a wife?
What I deny is the misogynistic nature of this very thought. Human sexual motivations are varied and cross all humanity. Male motivations are but one small aspect. You forget there is another human being involved, one whom your gnostic philosophy says should be shared just like the animals do.
quote:
But those who have been born in this way have denied the sharing which is the corollary of their origin and say Let him who has taken one woman keep her, whereas all can share her, just as the other animals show us.
Seriously, you cannot hold to this religious garbage. Do you?
You mentioned Joseph Campbell. You should read him some time. He takes your christian misogyny (from his own Buddhist-inspired Catholicism) and rips it to shreds.
Edited by AZPaul3, : No reason given.

Eschew obfuscation. Habituate elucidation.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 10 by Greatest I am, posted 12-29-2021 5:48 PM Greatest I am has not replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 13 by jar, posted 12-29-2021 7:09 PM AZPaul3 has replied

  
jar
Member (Idle past 393 days)
Posts: 34026
From: Texas!!
Joined: 04-20-2004


(1)
Message 13 of 150 (890223)
12-29-2021 7:09 PM
Reply to: Message 12 by AZPaul3
12-29-2021 7:02 PM


Re: Gnostic What?
If someday you might want to have a somewhat less bizarre discussion about one's religious beliefs, I think we might have an interesting discussion.

My Website: My Website

This message is a reply to:
 Message 12 by AZPaul3, posted 12-29-2021 7:02 PM AZPaul3 has replied

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 Message 14 by AZPaul3, posted 12-29-2021 7:18 PM jar has replied

  
AZPaul3
Member
Posts: 8513
From: Phoenix
Joined: 11-06-2006
Member Rating: 5.2


(1)
Message 14 of 150 (890224)
12-29-2021 7:18 PM
Reply to: Message 13 by jar
12-29-2021 7:09 PM


Re: Gnostic What?
We could do that. Just remember that anything I say here is context dependant and may change as my mood and drug level change.

Eschew obfuscation. Habituate elucidation.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 13 by jar, posted 12-29-2021 7:09 PM jar has replied

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jar
Member (Idle past 393 days)
Posts: 34026
From: Texas!!
Joined: 04-20-2004


Message 15 of 150 (890225)
12-29-2021 7:21 PM
Reply to: Message 14 by AZPaul3
12-29-2021 7:18 PM


Re: Gnostic What?
This is not the proper place though; this is a thread for the mysteries.

My Website: My Website

This message is a reply to:
 Message 14 by AZPaul3, posted 12-29-2021 7:18 PM AZPaul3 has seen this message but not replied

  
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