From Fyodor Dostoevsky and GK Chesterton to Thomas Molnar, Eric Voegelin and many other incisive, penetrating analytical thinkers, all have concluded that underlying natural science (all that exists is the natural or material dimension)and evolution are two spiritual pathologies:
1. the perennial utopian heresy (i.e., Nimrod’s Tower, communism, socialism and other new world order conceptions)
2. Gnostic dualism
Gnostic dualism holds that the material body into which divine sparks fell and are thus entombed are evil because all matter is evil. In the modern version, man is not fallen, he is not a sinner because his evil genes made him do it-—lie, cheat, swindle, murder, etc.
Gnostic dualism is a continuation of ancient pagan teachings along the same lines but with one major difference...it incorporates a paganized Bible and Christian theism. Thus it teaches that Yahweh is the evil demiurge responsible for creating matter while Lucifer is the first free thinker, the liberator of mankind, the seething energies of evolution, the angel of evolution and the Being of Light encountered by haters of Yahweh and other unbelievers during NDE’s and other OBE’s who lovingly tells them that heaven is for everyone.
Through evolution matter becomes progressively pure and perfect until the terminal point is reached: the spiritualized, divinized whole substance: Omega Point(heaven)
For the Gnostic who has willed his own emancipation because he is not fallen but rather possesses a particle of the divine, evolution is a system of self-perfecting.
Your refutation of my previous post exemplifies the peculiar dichotomy produced by Gnostic thinkers. The first three paragraphs are the work of an emancipated mind, free spirit, pure spirit, Transhumanist essence or pattern trapped within evil matter, or meat machine and it’s grey matter as expressed in the 4th and final paragraph:
“The brain’s function is determined by genetics, and since the mind is what the brain does, your instincts and personality (largely genetically determined) are based on inherited traits”
The theory of evolution by natural selection: Natural selection is the gradual natural process by which biological traits become either more or less common in a population as a function of the effect of inherited traits on the differential reproductive success of organisms interacting with their environment.
For a given environment, assuming that the living population already exists and that there is a variation of genetic traits in that population, those traits that enable making more babies than the other traits become more common. Split the population in two and put the the two groups in different environments, you'll end up with two different sets of traits being selected for.
What does the above do with "pure perfection"? That is completely irrelevant. Do I detect the Hamster in these replies?
Thank you so much for sharing your insights, dear sister in Christ!
I take it that your thesis is that “Gnostic dualism” denies free will (that is, denies personal responsibility for one’s actions), in agreement with Liberals, Moslems, and, perhaps, others. Thus the Liberals’ gentle treatment of those who “lie, cheat, swindle, murder, etc.”, because they, poor dears, just can’t help themselves (but, of course, not Conservatives and Christians, who apparently do, in this one instance, enjoy free will in their decisions about their religion and their personal philosophy).
I think you are correct.