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The Calamity of Scientific Gnosticism
New Discourses ^ | 1 Sep, 2021 | James Lindsay

Posted on 09/01/2021 4:57:10 AM PDT by MtnClimber

f we think of the general madness of the world at the present in terms of the familiar biological taxonomical hierarchy: Kingdom, Phylum, Class, Order, Family, Genus, and Species, while something like “Critical Whiteness Studies” might be a species within the Critical Race Theory genus, which is in turn classifiable in the neo-Marxian Family, Marxian Order, and Hegelian Class, the question arises: in what the Kingdom are all these interrelated insanities to be found? I assert that it is that ancient parasitic bugbear known as Gnosticism. In fact, the systematic Hegelian project and especially Marxism, which materialized it, would therefore define the Gnostic phylum of Scientific Gnosticism (though, by definition, “scientistic” would be better) that completes the taxonomy. Whatever might be said about other branches in Kingdom Gnosticism, Scientific Gnosticism is perhaps the most calamitous ideological phylum human beings have so far managed to contrive. Within that phylum, though taxonomically placed otherwise, we would find all of the failures of Communism, Fascism, and National Socialism, for example. We will also find our present plight, the so-called “public-private partnership,” which synthesizes Communism and Fascism into one new terror to be managed technocratically, in mockery of the science it will invoke to establish yet another unnecessary tyranny upon the world and its generally innocent people.

The essence of Gnosticism can be expressed in three beliefs. These are (1) that it is not you or your theories that are wrong, but the world itself; (2) that we have been flung into this miserable and intolerable condition against our wants; but (3) are able to attain a consciousness, a knowledge—a Gnosis—that will allow us to repair the world and ourselves. In this regard, Gnosticism is a perverted impulse toward progress, which describes the circumstance in which we have improved our ability to live in the world through a better understanding of it and ourselves in it. That is, progress means better according our lives with reality as it is and thus doing better in reality. Gnosticism turns progress upside-down—inverts it—by reframing it away from the effort to prosper in the world as it is and toward remaking it into a world that is not and, because this non-reality is essential to the Gnostic project, cannot be.

In that regard, Gnosticism is the perversion—the inversion—of epistemology, which is how we might go about knowing what we know and that we know it. Philosophically speaking (which is to say loving wisdom, not mistaking ourselves for the wise), knowledge is a tricky matter. While theologies are content to assert an absolute Truth in the Deity, they also, when mature, also insist that man’s fallibility and limitation prevents him from knowing that Truth as the Deity would. In other words, while there may be some absolute Truth, it is not man’s lot to know it within the circles of this world. To capital-K (or G) Know would position us as gods ourselves—and so whispers the Serpent of Genesis—which is out of accordance with the order of Creation. God’s mind is not our mind, and our minds are not equipped to fathom the ways of the Deity. Instead, we must be content to pursue or to love knowledge, or wisdom, and, if theological, God, and to pursue it as best we may in humility and in recognition of our proneness to error.

The theistic Gnostic, often theosophists, turns this upside-down. Absolute knowledge is available and hidden from us by those who have ordered the world. God is not the Creator who put order to the world and then called it good; He is a tyrant and the warden of a universal prison locked from within, keeps that which is truly Good for Himself, and by maintaining for us a state of ignorance keeps us enslaved. Knowledge of the higher truth, that the Garden is in fact a prison, sets us free of it, at which point we can reshape the world nearer to our hearts’ desires. Religion and Truth merely have to be exposed as the limiting lies that lead us to see the chaos of our lives as ordered, but in ways beyond our knowledge, and our misery as contentment and even joy. Accordingly, Knowledge of the Absolute Truth, Gnosis, is the way to true freedom. We just have to bite into the fruit, and capital-G Knowledge is ours.


TOPICS: Business/Economy; Health/Medicine; Society
KEYWORDS: communism

1 posted on 09/01/2021 4:57:10 AM PDT by MtnClimber
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To: MtnClimber

The government seems to be full of gnostics!


2 posted on 09/01/2021 4:57:20 AM PDT by MtnClimber (For photos of Colorado scenery and wildlife, click on my screen name for my FR home page.)
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To: MtnClimber

The cure for Scientific Gnosticism is to stop government from using taxpayer money to fund it. The self-perpetuating lies would cease if the proponents of it had to pay out of their own pocket.


3 posted on 09/01/2021 5:07:08 AM PDT by T.B. Yoits
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To: MtnClimber

You are treating Gnosticism as a straw man. First you make up your own definition to identify it, then you tear it down.

This is a very common fallacy in logical arguments.

I am not gnostic, but I have studied it. Translated, the term means “knowledge or knowing”

If you understood it better, you would understand Jesus’s teachings better. It is evident that you don’t want to “Know” what Jesus taught, but to preach what you think and feel about Jesus’s teachings.

The Bible teaches that Jesus shared knowledge with His disciples that he told them not to share with other people as they would devour them. You are one of those people Jesus warned His disciples about.


4 posted on 09/01/2021 5:22:27 AM PDT by tired&retired (Blessings )
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To: MtnClimber

I am a Christian and have accepted Jesus as my Savior. I accept the Bible as the truth and the inspired word of God.

You call God your Father and that you were created in His image, but then claim a huge distance between you and God. That’s why the huge distance exists.

Jesus taught us in John 14 that if He is in us, we too shall do the things that He does and even more.

Is Jesus really in you?


5 posted on 09/01/2021 5:30:13 AM PDT by tired&retired (Blessings )
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To: tired&retired
One of the difficulties of learning a lot about Gnostics is that a lot of them were "loved to death" and their writings were burned in the Middle Ages, ya know in that non-violent sort of way...

Kill them all, the Lord will recognize his own.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catharism

;-)
6 posted on 09/01/2021 5:56:32 AM PDT by cgbg (A kleptocracy--if they can keep it. Think of it as the Cantillon Effect in action.)
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To: MtnClimber

Gnostics and one gnome, Fazi.


7 posted on 09/01/2021 5:57:22 AM PDT by glennaro (Dennis Prager: "Until it's safe" means "Never")
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To: tired&retired

The article is about “scientific gnosticism” or I think it could be called “personal intuitive science”.

You seem to be saying things about me and my religious beliefs where you may intend to say it about the author.


8 posted on 09/01/2021 6:10:40 AM PDT by MtnClimber (For photos of Colorado scenery and wildlife, click on my screen name for my FR home page.)
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To: MtnClimber

That is very true and for that I sincerely apologize.

The words touched a frustration in myself and the reason I stopped most of my own sharing. My identity is not based upon others agreeing with me. I am not a minister. I am not a healer. I am simply a child of God drawing nearer my Father to be His Servant, no matter what that might be.

Dying of self daily is sometimes painful, until I remember the feeling of God’s Love, at which time the pain falls away.

Again, my apologies and

May the Lord Bless You in your sharing that it might help others to find Him.

🙏🙏🙏


9 posted on 09/01/2021 6:20:36 AM PDT by tired&retired (Blessings )
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To: MtnClimber

I went back and reread this. It was helpful.

MATTHEW 13:

10 The disciples came to him and asked, “Why do you speak to the people in parables?”

11 He replied, “Because the knowledge of the secrets of the kingdom of heaven has been given to you, but not to them. 12 Whoever has will be given more, and they will have an abundance. Whoever does not have, even what they have will be taken from them. 13 This is why I speak to them in parables:

“Though seeing, they do not see;
though hearing, they do not hear or understand.

14 In them is fulfilled the prophecy of Isaiah:

“‘You will be ever hearing but never understanding;
you will be ever seeing but never perceiving.
15 For this people’s heart has become calloused;
they hardly hear with their ears,
and they have closed their eyes.
Otherwise they might see with their eyes,
hear with their ears,
understand with their hearts
and turn, and I would heal them.’

16 But blessed are your eyes because they see, and your ears because they hear. 17 For truly I tell you, many prophets and righteous people longed to see what you see but did not see it, and to hear what you hear but did not hear it.

18 “Listen then to what the parable of the sower means: 19 When anyone hears the message about the kingdom and does not understand it, the evil one comes and snatches away what was sown in their heart. This is the seed sown along the path.


10 posted on 09/01/2021 6:23:19 AM PDT by tired&retired (Blessings )
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