not moving too well today
buk...@my-deja.com
a couple days, walking around and looking closely at everything.
Before I really couldn't bear to look.
Last night I went to visit my old lodge pals. It turned out that it
was their first formal asana session. The idea was the peer pressure
would promote perseverance. Instead of abandoning the position when it
got too painful, everybody would just press on. We did thirty minutes.
I did dragon. I will not be doing that again anytime soon.
There were eight of us. Everybody made it through thirty minutes.
Everybody was in serious pain after thirty minutes. I was not the last
person to get up mobile after. One poor woman did lotus and required
two people to untangle her because at the end she was stuck. I don't
want to think about what she is feeling like this morning.
Yesterday I went to UNO and visited with my advisor. I gave him my
thesis and told him I thought it was finished. We will see. I am
realistic. He seems to have fared well in the recovery; much better
than the city appears as a whole.
My favorite bar is open. My favorite restaurant is closed. My favorite
pool hall is closed. My favorite bookstore is gone. Favorite coffeshop
is history. There are a bunch of people still now living in trailers.
I am thinking about coming back here to live. I told my bosses I am
willing to move back. They probably don't want that, but you never
know.
A number of people replied when they learned I have been living in
Houston: "I am sorry". I didn't tell them how weird I found that. This
city used to be a great place to live. There are a few people doing
very well here now. I am glad I have not been here. I didn't tell
anybody that. Only my imaginary friends know the truth.
Bukvich
Mica
> Last night I went to visit my old lodge pals. It turned out that it
> was their first formal asana session. The idea was the peer pressure
> would promote perseverance. Instead of abandoning the position when it
> got too painful, everybody would just press on. We did thirty minutes.
> I did dragon. I will not be doing that again anytime soon.
I'm intrigued by this paragraph. Any chance you could decode it
for me? Lodge pals? As in the masons? Asana? As in yoga?
Dragon?? I know, I know, google is my friend. I'm lazy. Are
you channeling Layo?
I miss Layo. Layo, ignore your shrink's advice and come back! I
am way too lazy to read livejournal.
> My favorite bar is open.
And really, what else matters?
Insensitively,
M
buk...@my-deja.com
> I'm intrigued by this paragraph. Any chance you could decode it
> for me? Lodge pals? As in the masons? Asana? As in yoga?
> Dragon?? I know, I know, google is my friend. I'm lazy. Are
> you channeling Layo?
http://lib.oto-usa.org/libri/liber0009.html
And now you're on the FBI list baby. If you ask more questions it
could get even worse.
B.
mica...@sbcglobal.net
> http://lib.oto-usa.org/libri/liber0009.html
Wow. That explains why I never got all witchy. Guess I couldn't even
if I wanted to, since Newport Beach is the closest group.
> And now you're on the FBI list baby.
Didn't my union activities already take care of that?
M
Sonnenblume
> buk...@my-deja.com wrote:
> I'm intrigued by this paragraph. Any chance you could decode it for
> me? Lodge pals? As in the masons? Asana? As in yoga? Dragon??
Rotarians!
> I
> know, I know, google is my friend. I'm lazy. Are you channeling Layo?
I hope not.
> I miss Layo. Layo, ignore your shrink's advice and come back!
Nonononono.
> I am way too lazy to read livejournal.
She doesn't lock her posts, last I heard, so it can't be that hard to
read her posts. You'd have to put out more effort to read Usenet.
m, are you reading unfogged?
novas...@gmail.com
> Mica wrote:
> > I miss Layo. Layo, ignore your shrink's advice and come back!
>
> Nonononono.
I know you two have issues. I like her posts anyway. But it seems
like she's gone in any case, so, lucky you.
> > I am way too lazy to read livejournal.
>
> She doesn't lock her posts, last I heard, so it can't be that hard to
> read her posts. You'd have to put out more effort to read Usenet.
No, I'd have to put out more effort by doing more than one thing.
> m, are you reading unfogged?
Sober as the day is long.
M
Sonnenblume
> On Apr 26, 9:45 pm, Sonnenblume <sargo...@earthlink.net> wrote:
>> Mica wrote:
>>> I miss Layo. Layo, ignore your shrink's advice and come back!
>> Nonononono.
> I know you two have issues.
{snort} {snicker} {dies laughing}
> I like her posts anyway.
I know. Everybody does, baffles the fuck out of me, but hey, whatever,
de gustibus.
> But it seems like she's gone in any case, so, lucky you.
'Not actually dead YET!'
>>> I am way too lazy to read livejournal.
>> She doesn't lock her posts, last I heard, so it can't be that hard to
>> read her posts. You'd have to put out more effort to read Usenet.
> No, I'd have to put out more effort by doing more than one thing.
Fetch a copy of that, it isn't buggy, runs on all Win32 platforms, and
then you just plug any blog RSS feeds links in and viola. It goes and
gets that stuff for you and you don't have to do anything but read.
>> m, are you reading unfogged?
> Sober as the day is long.
There's all angsty and cliquey and no smileys and leftyish and frattish
and sarcastic and on medication and shit. Academics and shit.
m, that's where they all went!
Mica
> novas...@gmail.com wrote:
>
>>>> I am way too lazy to read livejournal.
>>>
>>> She doesn't lock her posts, last I heard, so it can't be that
>>> hard to
>>> read her posts. You'd have to put out more effort to read Usenet.
>>
>> No, I'd have to put out more effort by doing more than one thing.
>
> http://www.feedreader.com/
See now, you're not getting the lazy part. I'll look at it later
though, so thanks.
>>> m, are you reading unfogged?
>>
>> Sober as the day is long.
>
> www.unfogged.com
>
> There's all angsty and cliquey and no smileys and leftyish and
> frattish and sarcastic and on medication and shit. Academics and shit.
Ah. Did not know about it. Clueless as usual.
M
stevemur
Sonnenblume wrote:
> www.unfogged.com
>
> There's all angsty and cliquey and no smileys and leftyish and frattish
> and sarcastic and on medication and shit. Academics and shit.
>
> m, that's where they all went!
Not all of them. I'm posting about "International Relations" on
something called Orkut. It's like usenet+internet-dating. (You
alt.angst people weren't sleeping with me enough.)
The rest of Canada uses something similar, called Face Book. Orkut is
for people living in the Middle East or Brazil. But why would I want
to read what other North Americans think about "International
Relations"? This way I get to watch the Indians and Pakistanis
yelling about wars I didn't even know about, when they can be heard
over the Arabs and Jews.
That One
Check. Let's see if my comment stays up or if I get death threats or
something.
Mica
Which thread did you comment on? I'm too lazy to look through
all of em.
M
David The Explorer
Well, that was a total wash. First a feminazi raised a hueless croak, then the
Shining-Armored Posse got after me, then before long those nice cultured gents
started whipping out goatses. I see the Juliane Syndrome is a major cultural
phenomenon. I don't get it: why'd they try so hard to make me feel *superior*?
See, e.g., http://www.unfogged.com/archives/comments_6768.html
/* Alright Evil Wizard Max, that was a VERY FUNNY JOAK. Are you satisfied now?
Maybe I should've just strangled Layo for you when I had the chance, hmmm? */
Sighingly,
TheDavid(tm)
P.S. I still can't figure out which one used to be "Johnny Favorite."
P.P.S. Like I told Bruson, gated communities ARE for sissies.
--
"You'll find a god in every golden cloister."
...................................................................
(C) 2007 TheDavid^TM | David, P.O. Box 21403, Louisville, KY 40221
David
Said Evil Wizard Max:
[...]
> There's all angsty and cliquey and no smileys and leftyish and frattish
> and sarcastic and on medication and shit. Academics and shit.
And they think tubgirl is funny. W0W. I'm so impressed, really.
> m, that's where they all went!
And they can bloody stay there too, in their nice safe sandbox. On Usenet,
where nobody will [redact] their "wit" to save them, they'd be *spanked*.
I'm tempted to *flounce* out by asking 'em which of 'em is the BeOS developer
who likes "tutoring" little black boys. But I probably won't, I'm so 'mature'
these days.
D.
Mica
> P.S. I still can't figure out which one used to be "Johnny Favorite."
He's over there? Damn, I really don't ever have the slightest
clue what's going on.
M
Bug-Eyed Churl
Actually I have idea if he's really there, I just thought it was a good
slander. "You say bad things about ME and you harbor a known PEDOPHILE?"
Anyway, if one shares most of their basic cultural backgrounds and
assumptions and is willing to lurk long and hard enough to learn their
charming little folkways it's not that bad a blog, at least they know
the difference between "your" and you're". It does have more quality
content than lots of places on Usenet these days. (Ogged's romantic
blues made me feel a trifle sorry for him, even if he does have such
despicable friends.)
Speaking of Usenet, in the past few months the oldsters have all deserted
rec.arts.books. Not that I blame them, just that I wish I knew where they
went when I want to discuss the high-brow books I've lately to started
read: do a web search for "Against Timarcos OR Timarchus OR Timarkhos"
(various renderings of Greek to Roman letters) for an example. Actually
anybody interested can read an old-fasioned translation of it online at
classics.mit.edu/Aeschines/aeschin.1.html and there's a good background
article at en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_False_Embassy -- but Bukky's too
busy with his Anima to care much about Timarcos, a 44 year old man who
was put on trial in Athens around 364 B.C. on charges of having been a
gay prostitute when he was a pretty teenager. *Are* there any places on
the Web where one might discuss such things? (Not that this has a damn
thing to do with Unfogged, I doubt they know there WAS ancient Greece.)
Anyhow. Do we know anybody who lives in Long Beach and has a teen son?
D.
--
"I still wave at the dots on the shore..."
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
(C) 2007 by 'TheDavid^TM' | David, P.O. Box 21403, Louisville, KY 40221
Anton Vredegoor
thed...@shell.rawbw.com says...
[The David is interested in ancient ad hominem literature]
> *Are* there any places on the Web where one might discuss such things?
At least it didn't happen in a library.
A.
Kater Moggin
> Speaking of Usenet, in the past few months the oldsters have all deserted
> rec.arts.books. Not that I blame them, just that I wish I knew where they
> went when I want to discuss the high-brow books I've lately to started
> read: do a web search for "Against Timarcos OR Timarchus OR Timarkhos"
> (various renderings of Greek to Roman letters) for an example. Actually
> anybody interested can read an old-fasioned translation of it online at
> classics.mit.edu/Aeschines/aeschin.1.html and there's a good background
> article at en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_False_Embassy -- but Bukky's too
> busy with his Anima to care much about Timarcos, a 44 year old man who
> was put on trial in Athens around 364 B.C. on charges of having been a
> gay prostitute when he was a pretty teenager. *Are* there any places on
> the Web where one might discuss such things? (Not that this has a damn
> thing to do with Unfogged, I doubt they know there WAS ancient Greece.)
News:humanities.classics would probably be a good place to
try.
-- Moggin
Sonnenblume
> That One <davi...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> On Apr 27, 9:11 pm, Sonnenblume <sargo...@earthlink.net> wrote:
>>> www.unfogged.com
>> Check. Let's see if my comment stays up or if I get death threats or
>> something.
I didn't think you'd get death threats. Really.
> Well, that was a total wash. First a feminazi raised a hueless croak,
What was that about anyways?
> then the
> Shining-Armored Posse got after me,
Ben's a midget with OCD and stuff, ya know what I mean?
> then before long those nice cultured gents
> started whipping out goatses. I see the Juliane Syndrome is a major cultural
> phenomenon.
Please explain.
> I don't get it: why'd they try so hard to make me feel *superior*?
Smug buncha fuckers, huh?
> See, e.g., http://www.unfogged.com/archives/comments_6768.html
> /* Alright Evil Wizard Max, that was a VERY FUNNY JOAK. Are you satisfied now?
It wasn't a joke. I figured you'd break out the TheDavid Poisonality
and they'd eat it up and shit. Imagine! White people touching a
triracial bisexual (formerly-)homeless guy who has Voices! They're
fucking liberals! I keep thinking the one chick and her husband were
frozen in 1978 and shot into space: Buck Lizard in the 21st Century
('What happened to the world socialist state? Kumbaya?').
> Maybe I should've just strangled Layo for you when I had the chance, hmmm? */
Well, I'm against that cuz it's like immoral and shit. It wasn't a
joke. I do recall back in the day you got into with Sean Shehan's and
whatnot of a.a.
> Sighingly,
> TheDavid(tm)
> P.S. I still can't figure out which one used to be "Johnny Favorite."
None of them? I mean Johnny Fuckstick was never funny.
> P.P.S. Like I told Bruson, gated communities ARE for sissies.
I agree.
m, c'mon, you at least like Labs, eh?
David bin Bedlam
Well anyway, for wharever reason my Unfogged visit didn't go. Some chick
even accused me of being "creepy and threatening"; maybe that's her stock
knee-jerk response to a net.persona she doesn't like (like "troll" is on
Metafilter or "anti-semite" is for some Zionists).
The Juliane Syndrome: I think I meant "finding advanced degrees in a
cereal box," like she must have found her Ph.D. I.e. 'Wait, these people
have documents saying they're Smart? Then howcum it doesn't show up in
what they post to the Internet?' (Us 8th grade dropouts love doing that.)
And I was kidding about Layo. Speaking of which, I'm disappointed Moggin,
Jonah and Anton are arguing. I was hoping for a different result, though
I'm not quite sure what.
At least we still have Bukvich.
D.
mica...@sbcglobal.net
> Well anyway, for wharever reason my Unfogged visit didn't go. Some chick
> even accused me of being "creepy and threatening"; maybe that's her stock
> knee-jerk response to a net.persona she doesn't like (like "troll" is on
> Metafilter or "anti-semite" is for some Zionists).
Yeah, I must admit that that seemed a bit weak to me. I'm as paranoid
as the next chick, but you can't just assume that every weirdo is
threatening. All in all it seems a pretty closed little circle over
there, which is certainly their prerogative. Seems like getting
inside would be more effort than I'm interested in expending.
> And I was kidding about Layo. Speaking of which, I'm disappointed Moggin,
> Jonah and Anton are arguing. I was hoping for a different result, though
> I'm not quite sure what.
I've actually been enjoying it. Reminds me of the old days.
> At least we still have Bukvich.
Oh, and the rest of us are chopped liver?
M
Jonah Thomas
> Well anyway, for wharever reason my Unfogged visit didn't go. Some
> chick even accused me of being "creepy and threatening"; maybe that's
> her stock knee-jerk response to a net.persona she doesn't like (like
> "troll" is on Metafilter or "anti-semite" is for some Zionists).
Life is too short to waste freaking the mundanes after it stops being
fun.
> The Juliane Syndrome: I think I meant "finding advanced degrees in a
> cereal box," like she must have found her Ph.D. I.e. 'Wait, these
> people have documents saying they're Smart? Then howcum it doesn't
> show up in what they post to the Internet?' (Us 8th grade dropouts
> love doing that.)
Matisse has said some fun things that she hasn't bothered to defend.
Some of it unfortunately metaphorical in ways that I lack keys for. But
see, she has no obligation to defend what she says any more than you do.
> I'm disappointed Moggin,
> Jonah and Anton are arguing. I was hoping for a different result,
> though I'm not quite sure what.
I haven't seen Moggin respond any other way yet. I doubt it will last,
he's too repetitive to be a lot of fun.
Kater Moggin
> > Well anyway, for wharever reason my Unfogged visit didn't go. Some
> > chick even accused me of being "creepy and threatening"; maybe that's
> > her stock knee-jerk response to a net.persona she doesn't like (like
> > "troll" is on Metafilter or "anti-semite" is for some Zionists).
Jonah Thomas <j2th...@cavtel.net>:
> Life is too short to waste freaking the mundanes after it stops being
> fun.
Jonah found lots of time to peddle mundane nonsense on the
topic of Israel. But that was awhile ago. Could be he's
wised up some since then, though his comments on other subjects
indicate he's still the same sort of fool.
> Matisse has said some fun things that she hasn't bothered to defend.
Something Jonah could aspire to. He has the not-defending
part down.
> I haven't seen Moggin respond any other way yet. I doubt it will last,
> he's too repetitive to be a lot of fun.
I think exposing Jonah's lies is plenty fun, but I can see
why he would have another opinion. Anyway, I usually stop
when he does, so when he quits bullshitting, I'll quit pointing
out his b.s.
-- Moggin
Bug-Eyed Churl
[...]
> All in all it seems a pretty closed little circle over there,
> which is certainly their prerogative.
Yeah, that's the problem with it. Back in the '90s I "integrated"
alt.angst by just barging in and not going away for several years,
that and allying with other "newbies" like Cousin Bob, but then as
I told the Old Crowd here alt.angst is a public unmoderated newsgroup.
Whereas as of course that's some guy's private little vanity hangout
for him and his closest fans. It's not that he could ban me and send
me away, it's that I don't want to get a rep for doing such. If it's
true that Usenet's expiring and the Blogosphere is where it'll be at
for a few years more, and that I don't know and don't yet feel like
learning to start my own blog, I should be a Good Netizen more or less.
(I mean my own REAL blog, not a Google or Six Alive corporate-shill one
where I'd have to agree to follow their rules and that they can do any
damn thing they like with my content.) After 2.5 years they're getting
used to me at Metafilter....
I hate the New Millenium. It's HELL being old.
But hey, I'm still hoping for a Greasy Creek Res^H^H Angst House. With
a nice jacuzzi.
D.
--
"I still wave at the dots on the shore..."
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
(C) 2007 by 'TheDavid^TM' | David, P.O. Box 21403, Louisville, KY 40221
Sonnenblume
> Well anyway, for wharever reason my Unfogged visit didn't go.
TheDavid Poisonality: it's a marketing winner, I'm tellin' ya.
> Some chick
> even accused me of being "creepy and threatening"; maybe that's her stock
> knee-jerk response to a net.persona she doesn't like (like "troll" is on
> Metafilter or "anti-semite" is for some Zionists).
'Oh, save me, you big, strong... um, you hollow-chested nerds! Save me
from the big bad troll!'
Grad school mating call!
> The Juliane Syndrome: I think I meant "finding advanced degrees in a
> cereal box," like she must have found her Ph.D. I.e. 'Wait, these people
> have documents saying they're Smart? Then howcum it doesn't show up in
> what they post to the Internet?' (Us 8th grade dropouts love doing that.)
Oh, shit, dude; have you read the actual political content of the blogs
'experts' keep? They all went to Ivys and collectively (and frequently
separately) they're a pack of idiots who don't how to do anything. Which
is how we wind up in this place.
Shit, did you see that set of shelves, er, 'shelves', Wolfson made! BAHAHA.
> And I was kidding about Layo.
I know you were. National anthem and all that.
> Speaking of which, I'm disappointed Moggin,
> Jonah and Anton are arguing. I was hoping for a different result, though
> I'm not quite sure what.
Well, I'm not sure what they're arguing about exactly: moggin has a
notion of Gnostics, which I think is pretty close to the KNOWN Gnostics,
but he's using it to blanket far too wide an area of belief, Jonah is
opposing and has good points, but I think he's sorta wrong, or maybe
more wrong than Moggin, and Anton is clearly on drugs and has mixed up
something else completely different with Gnostics.
None of that should be surprising, since the thing Gnostics were
peddling was 'secret knowledge' (or relevation) and figuring out which
ones were peddling which secret relevations is essentially impossible.
> At least we still have Bukvich.
Who is buying ceremonial knives with swastikas on them, as recommended
by /Car & Driver/.
m, increased horsepower
Kater Moggin
> Well, I'm not sure what they're arguing about exactly: moggin has a
> notion of Gnostics, which I think is pretty close to the KNOWN Gnostics,
> but he's using it to blanket far too wide an area of belief,
Sounds as if you fell for Jonah's b.s. I'm not making any
claims about unknown gnostics. In fact I explained the
difficulty in talking about the known ones, namely the many and
varied forms of gnosticism.
> Jonah is
> opposing and has good points, but I think he's sorta wrong, or maybe
> more wrong than Moggin
Jonah is very good at being wrong, but now or then he lets
a little bit of rightness slip in. And man, does he hate
having it pointed out to him. So the diplomatic thing would be
to say he's wrong, period.
> and Anton is clearly on drugs and has mixed up
> something else completely different with Gnostics.
Probably comes from inhaling a bit too much of the incense
burned at New Age gift shops.
-- Moggin
Jonah Thomas
> Sonnenblume <sarg...@earthlink.net>:
>
> > Well, I'm not sure what they're arguing about exactly: moggin
> > has a
> > notion of Gnostics, which I think is pretty close to the KNOWN
> > Gnostics, but he's using it to blanket far too wide an area of
> > belief,
>
> Sounds as if you fell for Jonah's b.s. I'm not making any
> claims about unknown gnostics. In fact I explained the
> difficulty in talking about the known ones, namely the many and
> varied forms of gnosticism.
Well see, you overgeneralise. You even appear to claim that modern
gnostics like Lash and Anton are not gnostics at all, or at least you
ignore their stands when you talk about "the known ones".
Sonnenblume
Lord. Apparently, a lot of people have gone for the idea that
'Gnosticism' represents dualism. And then classify Manicheanism as
gnosticism. Manicheanism is actually, you know, Manicheanism, Marcionism
is Marcionism and so on, and so forth.
When you say, 'gnosticism' what I understand you to be referring to
(you here is either Jet or Kater) are various early Christian writers,
and hello, Wikipedia has a perfectly nice list:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_Christianity#Significant_Early_Christian_writers
Philosophically, they're all over the map. There is more than
Christians involved, but the recovered manuscripts on which this stuff
is all based on is all over the map.
'Modern gnostics' are guys who went rooting around for a framework to
build on, but they aren't Gnostics, anymore than those silly people who
parade around Stonehenge in the spring are 'druids'. There is no direct
connection. 'Modern mystery cults' might be a more accurate term.
While I'm at it:
> Yes. You can't believe that yahway and the demiurge are the same and be
> Orthodox. I think. I'm not somebody who gets to say who's really
> Orthodox and who isn't, but I doubt the guys who get to say that would
> disagree with me. I could be wrong.
> You're supposed to believe that yahwah is the only god.
You're supposed to have YHWH as YOUR only god, not neccessarily that
YHWH is THE only God. Not in the Torah and whatnot. (Otherwise, no
Golden Calf, eh?) Only in the post-70 CE do you get YHWH as the ONLY God.
That's Marcion's argument: that the Jews basically got suckered by an
evil demi-god of some sort and then Jesus was sent by the real creator
to straighten the Jews out. Followed 18 centuries later by Anton LeVay
saying that the real God wants you to have lots of sex and kill goats or
whatever. Niche marketing at its finest!
Marcion isn't, strictly speaking, a dualist tho; Mani, on the other
hand, was very much a dualist, following after but not in the same mode
as Zoroaster.
In any event the Cathars and the Bogomils aren't Gnostics, and they
don't seem to have been Manicheans or Zoroastrians but they certainly
seem to have been dipping from the same well, with the
dualist/reincarnation thing.
m, blah
Jonah Thomas
> Jonah Thomas wrote:
> > Well see, you overgeneralise. You even appear to claim that modern
> > gnostics like Lash and Anton are not gnostics at all, or at least
> > you ignore their stands when you talk about "the known ones".
>
> Lord. Apparently, a lot of people have gone for the idea that
> 'Gnosticism' represents dualism. And then classify Manicheanism as
> gnosticism. Manicheanism is actually, you know, Manicheanism,
> Marcionism is Marcionism and so on, and so forth.
> When you say, 'gnosticism' what I understand you to be referring
> to
> (you here is either Jet or Kater) are various early Christian writers,
>
> and hello, Wikipedia has a perfectly nice list:
Kater is referring to his approved list, his particular set of ancient
writers who to him are the only true gnostics, no others need apply.
I say that you're a gnostic if you say you are, just as you're a
christian if you say you're christian. Self-definition is the only
approach that makes sense under the circumstances.
> Philosophically, they're all over the map. There is more than
> Christians involved, but the recovered manuscripts on which this stuff
>
> is all based on is all over the map.
Yes. There are some common themes.
> 'Modern gnostics' are guys who went rooting around for a
> framework to
> build on, but they aren't Gnostics, anymore than those silly people
> who parade around Stonehenge in the spring are 'druids'. There is no
> direct connection. 'Modern mystery cults' might be a more accurate
> term.
Who are you to say they aren't druids? They say they're druids. There
isn't any druid Pope to excommunicate them and tell them they can't be
druids any more. So what if there's no connection to some other people
who called themselves druids? I doubt there's any direct connection
between modern freemasons and any particular secret society in ancient
egypt, either. Though there could be. But what difference does it make?
They want to call themselves masons, it's fine with me.
> While I'm at it:
> > Yes. You can't believe that yahway and the demiurge are the same
> > and be Orthodox. I think. I'm not somebody who gets to say who's
> > really Orthodox and who isn't, but I doubt the guys who get to say
> > that would disagree with me. I could be wrong.
> > You're supposed to believe that yahwah is the only god.
>
> You're supposed to have YHWH as YOUR only god, not neccessarily
> that
> YHWH is THE only God. Not in the Torah and whatnot. (Otherwise, no
> Golden Calf, eh?) Only in the post-70 CE do you get YHWH as the ONLY
> God.
I've seen scripture in translation that I thought said that, but I may
have misunderstood. Or the translator may have misunderstood. Sure,
there's stuff in the Torah that definitely says it your way too.
> That's Marcion's argument: that the Jews basically got suckered
> by an
> evil demi-god of some sort and then Jesus was sent by the real creator
>
> to straighten the Jews out. Followed 18 centuries later by Anton LeVay
>
> saying that the real God wants you to have lots of sex and kill goats
> or whatever. Niche marketing at its finest!
Yes.
> Marcion isn't, strictly speaking, a dualist tho; Mani, on the
> other
> hand, was very much a dualist, following after but not in the same
> mode as Zoroaster.
Say there's one real God and a whole bunch of aluminum-siding salesmen
with horns. That isn't dualism. There's not enough duality between a
real god and some sort of evil demi-god.
> In any event the Cathars and the Bogomils aren't Gnostics, and
> they
> don't seem to have been Manicheans or Zoroastrians but they certainly
> seem to have been dipping from the same well, with the
> dualist/reincarnation thing.
In biological taxonomy there are lumpers and splitters. Splitters will
look at a bunch of minnows and say "This minnow has 8 teeth and this
other minnow has 10 teeth, so they're different species." Lumpers will
say "This species has some variation, some have 8 teeth and some have 10
teeth." In theory one way to tell who's right is to do mating
experiments. If the 8-tooth and the 10-tooth have fertile offspring
together then they're one species. However, when the splitters have been
busy and they claim 100 species of minnows -- one with 8 teeth and blue
spots, one with 10 teeth and blue spots, one with 8 teeth and orange
spots, one with 10 teeth and orange spots etc -- then it takes close to
5000 matings to test it that way. And who cares that much?
Why do you say the cathars aren't gnostics? Is there a gnostic catechism
that they deny? I'm a lumper, you're a splitter, Moggin is an extreme
splitter. I see no reason to make our language much more precise than
the things it describes. The ancient beliefs people now label as
gnosticism were like a ball of mud that people handed around. Parts of
it would drip off and be replaced by something new, not a lot of
agreement but the flavor tended to remain. Some of the more literary
gnostics may have molded it into precise figurines that got slopped back
into a ball of mud when they were passed on. And modern gnostics, like
modern UFO believers, are also all over the map.
Kater Moggin
> Lord. Apparently, a lot of people have gone for the idea that
> 'Gnosticism' represents dualism.
Dualism is one of the hallmarks of the gnostic perspective.
If you mean that it's a mistake to think gnosticism is
synonymous with dualism in general, applying to every shape and
size of dualistic thinking, I agree.
> And then classify Manicheanism as gnosticism.
Opinions differ, but yes, Manichaeanism can very easily be
classed as one of the gnostic schools, although the
mythological narrative runs a bit differently there than in its
predecessors.
> Manicheanism is actually, you know, Manicheanism, Marcionism
> is Marcionism and so on, and so forth.
Sure. And Valentinianism is Valentinianism, Sethianism is
Sethianism, etc. Gnosticism is the broader category they
belong to, Sethians as well as Marcionites, Naasenes as well as
Valentinians, etc.
> When you say, 'gnosticism' what I understand you to be referring to
> (you here is either Jet or Kater) are various early Christian writers
I'd better clarify, then: gnosticism is one form of early
Christianity, but early Christianity extends well beyond
gnosticism (as you probably know) and gnosticism extends beyond
Christianity.
> and hello, Wikipedia has a perfectly nice list:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_Christianity#Significant_Early_Christian_writers
Seems to be a random assortment of early Christian writers.
Some of them are gnostics, some are anti-gnostic
heresy-hunters, some belong to other heresies. Looks as if the
Jewish-Christians per se are ignored.
> Philosophically, they're all over the map. There is more than
> Christians involved, but the recovered manuscripts on which this stuff
> is all based on is all over the map.
> 'Modern gnostics' are guys who went rooting around for a framework to
> build on, but they aren't Gnostics, anymore than those silly people who
> parade around Stonehenge in the spring are 'druids'. There is no direct
> connection. 'Modern mystery cults' might be a more accurate term.
I agree some people mistakenly calling themselves gnostics
are really nothing more than New Agers with a very bad
understanding of gnosticism, but it doesn't follow that "modern
gnostic" is a nonsensical phrase.
> You're supposed to have YHWH as YOUR only god, not neccessarily that
> YHWH is THE only God. Not in the Torah and whatnot. (Otherwise, no
> Golden Calf, eh?) Only in the post-70 CE do you get YHWH as the ONLY God.
Well, yes and no. The Torah contains henotheism: various
gods, but if you're an Israelite then you're commanded to
worship only a particular one. (One who's particular about how
he's worshipped.) But over in the Prophets, Isaiah claims
there are no other gods. Just look at Isaiah 44:6-8 and Isaiah
45:21.
> That's Marcion's argument: that the Jews basically got suckered by an
> evil demi-god of some sort and then Jesus was sent by the real creator
> to straighten the Jews out.
No, no, no. To Marcion, Yahweh is the maker of this world.
The Hebrew scriptures are right about that, in Marcion's
theology, and the Jews ain't wrong. But this isn't a very good
world, and Yahweh isn't a good god. Jesus was sent by a
vastly better one, not to straighten out the Jews, but to bring
salvation to everybody.
In other words, Marcion follows the usual gnostic theology.
He demotes the creator of this world from supreme being to
inferior demiurge while dividing him from the true God, meaning
to Marcion the one Jesus preached.
I'll give you details from the sources if you want, or you
can see for yourself instead of relying on me. Next to
nothing of Marcion's writings have survived, so the main places
to look are Tertullian -- he offers the most extensive
discussion -- Irenaeus, and Hippolytus, although there are also
other contemporary reports.
> Marcion isn't, strictly speaking, a dualist tho
Marcion is definitely a dualist, far as one can judge from
the available evidence: he opposes the God of Salvation to
the God of Creation, the NT to the OT, spirit to matter, gospel
to law, etc.
> Mani, on the other hand, was very much a dualist, following after but
> not in the same mode as Zoroaster.
Agreed Mani was a dualist: not "on the other hand" but in
company with the other gnostics, allowing for the usual
variations both between and within the many gnostic schools and
scriptures.
> In any event the Cathars and the Bogomils aren't Gnostics, and they
> don't seem to have been Manicheans or Zoroastrians but they certainly
> seem to have been dipping from the same well, with the
> dualist/reincarnation thing.
The Cathars and the Bogomils are medieval gnostics, though
"neo-Manichaeans" is the traditional term. They not only
dipped from the same well as ancient gnosticism, they hauled up
many of the same ideas. Alternatively, they may have
inherited their thinking from the ancient gnostics, possibly by
way of the Paulicians. Recall that the Manichaeans, the
Valentinians, and the Marcionites were around for a pretty long
time.
-- Moggin
Kater Moggin
> Kater is referring to his approved list, his particular set of ancient
> writers who to him are the only true gnostics, no others need apply.
Jonah is full of crap again: his usual condition. I said
in so many words that in my view gnosticism extends beyond
antiquity to include other folks with the same basic outlook as
the ancient gnostics, for instance the Cathars and the
Bogomils of medieval Europe. The opposite of the position he's
assigned me. What a maroon.
> I say that you're a gnostic if you say you are, just as you're a
> christian if you say you're christian. Self-definition is the only
> approach that makes sense under the circumstances.
A nonsensical assertion Jonah himself contradicts not once
but twice. See below.
Sonnenblume:
> > In any event the Cathars and the Bogomils aren't Gnostics ...
Jonah:
> Why do you say the cathars aren't gnostics? Is there a gnostic catechism
> that they deny? I'm a lumper, you're a splitter, Moggin is an extreme
> splitter.
Heh. Jonah is an extreme dunce, as he keeps demonstrating.
Contrary to his assumption, I lump the Cathars, along with
their pals the Bogomils, under the heading of gnosticism. From
my point of view they're medieval gnostics (though the
traditional label is "neo-Manichaean") since they share ye olde
gnosticks' basic thinking.
What's more, Jonah is now arguing directly against his own
assertion above, where he insisted "self-definition is the
only approach that makes sense." The Cathars called themselves
-- one guess -- "Cathars," not "gnostics," but Jonah here
claims they're gnostics nonetheless, unless "there is a gnostic
catechism they deny."
And then he argues against himself again, in this instance
by offering a different criterion:
> I see no reason to make our language much more precise than
> the things it describes. The ancient beliefs people now label as
> gnosticism were like a ball of mud that people handed around. Parts of
> it would drip off and be replaced by something new, not a lot of
> agreement but the flavor tended to remain.
Gnosticism varied in its details, according to Jonah's own
description, but even so "the flavor tended to remain."
Therefore when the flavor disappears -- for instance when there
isn't any criticism of the Creator of this world and his
Creation and a division of the Creator from the true God -- the
name no longer fits.
-- Moggin
Kater Moggin
> > Sounds as if you fell for Jonah's b.s. I'm not making any
> > claims about unknown gnostics. In fact I explained the
> > difficulty in talking about the known ones, namely the many and
> > varied forms of gnosticism.
Jonah Thomas <j2th...@cavtel.net>:
> Well see, you overgeneralise.
Well, see, you still haven't offered more than your say-so.
Less, if anything, since you tried to pretend that I was
making claims about forms of gnosticism that aren't anywhere in
the historical record.
By contrast, I disputed the ignorant generalizations Anton
and Lash were peddling (no anti-cosmism in gnosticism, the
demiurge is never claimed to make anything there) by turning to
the sources and showing that the evidence repeatedly
contradicted them. I also gave cites so anybody could check my
work.
> You even appear to claim that modern
> gnostics like Lash and Anton are not gnostics at all, or at least you
> ignore their stands when you talk about "the known ones".
Heh. First you hide your lack of evidence by insisting my
job is to prove a negative, now you try to slip in the
assumption Anton and Lash are "modern gnostics." And of course
I didn't ignore them. I contrasted their claims with the
existing evidence on a point by point basis in the "More Gnosis
and/or Madness" thread.
-- Moggin
Kater Moggin
> Lord. Apparently, a lot of people have gone for the idea that
> 'Gnosticism' represents dualism.
Dualism is one of the hallmarks of the gnostic perspective.
If you mean that it's a mistake to think gnosticism is
synonymous with dualism in general, applying to every shape and
size of dualistic thinking, I agree.
> And then classify Manicheanism as gnosticism.
Opinions differ, but yes, Manichaeanism can very easily be
classed as one of the gnostic schools, although the
mythological narrative runs a bit differently there than in its
predecessors.
> Manicheanism is actually, you know, Manicheanism, Marcionism
> is Marcionism and so on, and so forth.
Sure. And Valentinianism is Valentinianism, Sethianism is
Sethianism, etc. Gnosticism is the broader category they
belong to, Sethians as well as Marcionites, Naasenes as well as
Valentinians, etc.
> When you say, 'gnosticism' what I understand you to be referring to
> (you here is either Jet or Kater) are various early Christian writers
I'd better clarify, then: gnosticism is one form of early
Christianity, but early Christianity extends well beyond
gnosticism (as you probably know) and gnosticism extends beyond
Christianity.
> and hello, Wikipedia has a perfectly nice list:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_Christianity#Significant_Early_Christian_writers
Seems to be a random assortment of early Christian writers.
Some of them are gnostics, some are anti-gnostic
heresy-hunters, some belong to other heresies. Looks as if the
Jewish-Christians per se are ignored.
> Philosophically, they're all over the map. There is more than
> Christians involved, but the recovered manuscripts on which this stuff
> is all based on is all over the map.
> 'Modern gnostics' are guys who went rooting around for a framework to
> build on, but they aren't Gnostics, anymore than those silly people who
> parade around Stonehenge in the spring are 'druids'. There is no direct
> connection. 'Modern mystery cults' might be a more accurate term.
I agree some people mistakenly calling themselves gnostics
are really nothing more than New Agers with a very bad
understanding of gnosticism, but it doesn't follow that "modern
gnostic" is a nonsensical phrase.
> You're supposed to have YHWH as YOUR only god, not neccessarily that
> YHWH is THE only God. Not in the Torah and whatnot. (Otherwise, no
> Golden Calf, eh?) Only in the post-70 CE do you get YHWH as the ONLY God.
Well, yes and no. The Torah contains henotheism: various
gods, but if you're an Israelite then you're commanded to
worship only a particular one. (One who's particular about how
he's worshipped.) But over in the Prophets, Isaiah claims
there are no other gods. Just look at Isaiah 44:6-8 and Isaiah
45:21.
> That's Marcion's argument: that the Jews basically got suckered by an
> evil demi-god of some sort and then Jesus was sent by the real creator
> to straighten the Jews out.
No, no, no. To Marcion, Yahweh is the maker of this world.
The Hebrew scriptures are right about that, in Marcion's
theology, and the Jews ain't wrong. But this isn't a very good
world, and Yahweh isn't a good god. Jesus was sent by a
vastly better one, not to straighten out the Jews, but to bring
salvation to everybody.
In other words, Marcion follows the usual gnostic theology.
He demotes the creator of this world from supreme being to
inferior demiurge while dividing him from the true God, meaning
to Marcion the one Jesus preached.
I'll give you details from the sources if you want, or you
can see for yourself instead of relying on me. Next to
nothing of Marcion's writings have survived, so the main places
to look are Tertullian -- he offers the most extensive
discussion -- Irenaeus, and Hippolytus, although there are also
other contemporary reports.
> Marcion isn't, strictly speaking, a dualist tho
Marcion is definitely a dualist, far as one can judge from
the available evidence: he opposes the God of Salvation to
the God of Creation, the NT to the OT, spirit to matter, gospel
to law, etc.
> Mani, on the other hand, was very much a dualist, following after but
> not in the same mode as Zoroaster.
Agreed Mani was a dualist: not "on the other hand" but in
company with the other gnostics, allowing for the usual
variations both between and within the many gnostic schools and
scriptures.
> In any event the Cathars and the Bogomils aren't Gnostics, and they
> don't seem to have been Manicheans or Zoroastrians but they certainly
> seem to have been dipping from the same well, with the
> dualist/reincarnation thing.
The Cathars and the Bogomils are medieval gnostics, though
Jonah Thomas
responses here quite interesting.
Kater Moggin <kimm...@fastmail.fm> wrote:
> Sonnenblume <sarg...@earthlink.net>:
....
> > And then classify Manicheanism as gnosticism.
>
> Opinions differ, but yes, Manichaeanism can very easily be
> classed as one of the gnostic schools, although the
> mythological narrative runs a bit differently there than in its
> predecessors.
I had supposed from other things you said that you would not class
manicheanism as gnostic, and I was wrong.
> > Manicheanism is actually, you know, Manicheanism, Marcionism
> > is Marcionism and so on, and so forth.
>
> Sure. And Valentinianism is Valentinianism, Sethianism is
> Sethianism, etc. Gnosticism is the broader category they
> belong to, Sethians as well as Marcionites, Naasenes as well as
> Valentinians, etc.
Yes, gnosticism is one broader category that can include those.
> > When you say, 'gnosticism' what I understand you to be referring
> > to
> > (you here is either Jet or Kater) are various early Christian
> > writers
>
> I'd better clarify, then: gnosticism is one form of early
> Christianity, but early Christianity extends well beyond
> gnosticism (as you probably know) and gnosticism extends beyond
> Christianity.
Yes, they overlap.
> > Philosophically, they're all over the map. There is more than
> > Christians involved, but the recovered manuscripts on which this
> > stuff is all based on is all over the map.
> > 'Modern gnostics' are guys who went rooting around for a
> > framework to
> > build on, but they aren't Gnostics, anymore than those silly people
> > who parade around Stonehenge in the spring are 'druids'. There is no
> > direct connection. 'Modern mystery cults' might be a more accurate
> > term.
>
> I agree some people mistakenly calling themselves gnostics
> are really nothing more than New Agers with a very bad
> understanding of gnosticism, but it doesn't follow that "modern
> gnostic" is a nonsensical phrase.
Mostly agreed. And of course a lot of people who call themselves
christians have a very bad understanding of christianity.
> > That's Marcion's argument: that the Jews basically got suckered
> > by an
> > evil demi-god of some sort and then Jesus was sent by the real
> > creator to straighten the Jews out.
>
> No, no, no. To Marcion, Yahweh is the maker of this world.
> The Hebrew scriptures are right about that, in Marcion's
> theology, and the Jews ain't wrong. But this isn't a very good
> world, and Yahweh isn't a good god. Jesus was sent by a
> vastly better one, not to straighten out the Jews, but to bring
> salvation to everybody.
But didn't the other god create yahweh and more besides this world? And
yes, to everybody.
> In other words, Marcion follows the usual gnostic theology.
> He demotes the creator of this world from supreme being to
> inferior demiurge while dividing him from the true God, meaning
> to Marcion the one Jesus preached.
>
> I'll give you details from the sources if you want, or you
> can see for yourself instead of relying on me. Next to
> nothing of Marcion's writings have survived, so the main places
> to look are Tertullian -- he offers the most extensive
> discussion -- Irenaeus, and Hippolytus, although there are also
> other contemporary reports.
This is, needless to say, extremely risky for getting what Marcion
really said. These guys may not have understood him. Imagine future
historians trying to figure out what you meant if all they had was my
responses to you....
> > Marcion isn't, strictly speaking, a dualist tho
>
> Marcion is definitely a dualist, far as one can judge from
> the available evidence: he opposes the God of Salvation to
> the God of Creation, the NT to the OT, spirit to matter, gospel
> to law, etc.
I could accept that way to say it. I think of dualism as implying the
scales are comparably balanced. Not that one side won't win in the end,
but that they're at least comparable. If you were to visit Mali and the
Mali police put you in jail, they become very important to *you*. In the
bigger scheme of things the US government is much much stronger and more
important. But they are somehow similar. They both have jails and armies
etc. So then if we compare the gnostic god versus the gnostic yahweh, to
my way of thinking the gnostic yahweh has more in common with the
government of mali than it does with the gnostic god.
> > In any event the Cathars and the Bogomils aren't Gnostics, and
> > they
> > don't seem to have been Manicheans or Zoroastrians but they
> > certainly seem to have been dipping from the same well, with the
> > dualist/reincarnation thing.
>
> The Cathars and the Bogomils are medieval gnostics, though
> "neo-Manichaeans" is the traditional term. They not only
> dipped from the same well as ancient gnosticism, they hauled up
> many of the same ideas. Alternatively, they may have
> inherited their thinking from the ancient gnostics, possibly by
> way of the Paulicians. Recall that the Manichaeans, the
> Valentinians, and the Marcionites were around for a pretty long
> time.
Again I wouldn't have predicted you'd classify them that way. You don't
split as much as I thought you did.
Jonah Thomas
> Jonah Thomas <j2th...@cavtel.net>:
>
> > Kater is referring to his approved list, his particular set of
> > ancient writers who to him are the only true gnostics, no others
> > need apply.
>
> in so many words that in my view gnosticism extends beyond
> antiquity to include other folks with the same basic outlook as
> the ancient gnostics, for instance the Cathars and the
> Bogomils of medieval Europe.
I say that previously you said this in a way that was very easy to
misunderstand. Thank you for clarifying your stand.
> Sonnenblume:
>
> > > In any event the Cathars and the Bogomils aren't Gnostics ...
>
> Jonah:
>
> > Why do you say the cathars aren't gnostics? Is there a gnostic
> > catechism that they deny? I'm a lumper, you're a splitter, Moggin is
> > an extreme splitter.
>
> Contrary to his assumption, I lump the Cathars, along with
> their pals the Bogomils, under the heading of gnosticism. From
> my point of view they're medieval gnostics (though the
> traditional label is "neo-Manichaean") since they share ye olde
> gnosticks' basic thinking.
>
> What's more, Jonah is now arguing directly against his own
> assertion above, where he insisted "self-definition is the
> only approach that makes sense." The Cathars called themselves
> -- one guess -- "Cathars," not "gnostics," but Jonah here
> claims they're gnostics nonetheless, unless "there is a gnostic
> catechism they deny."
Did the cathars reliably call themselves cathars? I have the impression
that they didn't particularly have a name for themselves until outsiders
came in to define them. Before they were persecuted, cathars quite
naturally called themselves christians. And while they were persecuted
they also called themselves christians.
But if you really want to know whether a cathar is a gnostic or not, you
should ask him. It's the only approach that really makes sense. At any
rate, you aren't splitting as much as I thought.
> > I see no reason to make our language much more precise than
> > the things it describes. The ancient beliefs people now label as
> > gnosticism were like a ball of mud that people handed around. Parts
> > of it would drip off and be replaced by something new, not a lot of
> > agreement but the flavor tended to remain.
>
> Gnosticism varied in its details, according to Jonah's own
> description, but even so "the flavor tended to remain."
> Therefore when the flavor disappears -- for instance when there
> isn't any criticism of the Creator of this world and his
> Creation and a division of the Creator from the true God -- the
> name no longer fits.
By that standard, how many christians are there today? How many people
who recite the apostles' creed even know what the words meant to
christians? Precious few. And yet if you tell a terrorist who bombs
abortion clinics that he isn't a christian on the grounds that he knows
nothing about christianity, he will be deeply offended.
Conversely, Hitler killed a number of people for being jewish, who had
no concept themselves that they were jewish.
I say that about religion (if not ethnicity or race), you are who you
say you are. If I claim I am a taoist it isn't your place or Hitler's
place to tell me I'm not. Particularly if you aren't even a taoist
yourself. And it would be pretty presumptuous of you to say "I've read
lots of taoist scriptures and I'm going to tell you what you have to
believe to be a taoist.".
Anton Vredegoor
> I say that about religion (if not ethnicity or race), you are who you
> say you are. If I claim I am a taoist it isn't your place or Hitler's
> place to tell me I'm not. Particularly if you aren't even a taoist
> yourself. And it would be pretty presumptuous of you to say "I've read
> lots of taoist scriptures and I'm going to tell you what you have to
> believe to be a taoist.".
Please calm down a bit. I feel like moggin has every right to claim that
I am not a gnostic. For that matter I don't even claim to be a gnostic .
However I have every right to claim that *moggin* is not a gnostic too,
because he seems to have no intuitive grasp of the concepts he is
writing about.
In fact anyone with some interest in knowledge (gnostic or otherwise) at
some point on his path produces the kind of fantastic speculations that
I wrote in the other thread because it is a byproduct of the creative
process. If anyone hasn't been showing some of this stuff to me he
doesn't have much credibility to me about the subject. So moggin is
probably some kind of historian or cataloger but surely not a gnostic.
Probably I could become a gnostic if I wanted to but I haven't decided
if it would fit. In order to prove my potential here's another suggestion:
Evil can never create good. Evil can't even create evil. In fact evil
can't create anything. All it can do is prey upon the good until it has
completely absorbed all its substance and then it necessarily dies
itself because of lack of food. I think this is some very widespread
meme that surely the ancient gnostics must have known about.
So how come the ancient gnostic texts describe some evil Demiurge that
is supposed to create the world? Certainly the world and everything in
it cannot be evil because that would be preposterous, it would turn all
of us into predators of the pleroma. Maybe one crazy lunatic would've
come up with the idea but not a lot of them and consistently. That means
there must be some other explanation for the texts. Here are a few:
- The creators of moggins text's were joking or mocking some brain dead
hierarchical situation they were facing or forced to live in.
- The text writers wrote something completely different from that what
has survived, possibly because of copying errors or malicious
alterations by their prosecutors who wanted to show them in a bad light.
- The writers were creatively following a line of thought and as the
impeccable explorers they were they did follow their thoughts through to
the end without actually believing in it because they knew there is
always a possibility to say: 'and yet ...'. Of course the 'and yet ...'
was cut away mercilessly by some moggin like entity.
- We are predators.
With this I don't mean to say that every gnostic would have to
automatically resemble Guiliani or some other controversial figure but
just that mere categorizing can always be undone by a single creative
act of a person who introduces an incompatible belief. Sometimes a
creator can do such a thing just to throw some sticks in the wheels of a
scripture fanatic who's categorizations he doesn't like. There is no
possible defense for the poor cataloger against that, except waiting for
a few hundred years until the dust has settled.
A.
David bin Bedlam
[...]
> Evil can never create good. Evil can't even create evil. In fact evil
> can't create anything.
Balderdash. "Good" and "evil" are human concepts, human definitions.
David bin Bedlam
It's my contention also that Gnosticism and Dualism are /not/ synonyms,
that you can have one without he other: Dualism refers to "two gods,"
while Gnosticism concerns knowing and decoding hidden "truths" -- and
relies on a division between the Initiated/Learned and Everybody Else.
Many such systems, like the Cathars and the Alawites, have a three-fold
division: the Wise ("Inner Party"), Ordinary Believers ("Outer Party")
and the Rest Of Humanity ("Proles" and "foreigners"). I see no need to
have a specific number of Deities in Gnosticism, or strictly speaking
to have any; likewise Polytheists can recognize zillions of Gods but
have no Secret Truths concerning any of them.
The essense of Gnosis is "conspiracy theory": "there is a Secret Truth
that We, the Inner Circle, are aware of and know how to use, that will
make life better for you, the Outer Party, if you help Us against Them,
the outsiders who are against Us. And maybe, if you show yourself Worthy,
you can join Us on the Inside." Something like that. Umberto Eco pretty
much got it in _Foucault's Pendulum_ in that rant against "Diabolists."
David bin Bedlam
[...]
> I see no reason to make our language much more precise than the things
> it describes.
You obscurantist infidel! You anti-intellectual heathen! Why with that
attitude there'd be no reason to have even a Wikipedia! That heresy will
put millions of mandarins out of work who are good for nothing else. Do
you want the "matisses" of the world scrubbing bathrooms and flipping
burgers forever? THEY WON'T ALL 'FIT' ON SSI!!!
Bug-Eyed Churl
> It's my contention also that Gnosticism and Dualism are /not/ synonyms,
> that you can have one without he other: Dualism refers to "two gods,"
> while Gnosticism concerns knowing and decoding hidden "truths" -- and
> relies on a division between the Initiated/Learned and Everybody Else.
Also that Dualism in this sense refers to 'Ethical Ditheism', to the idea
of Our Good True God and and Their Evil False God. It purports to solve
'The Problem of Evil', of 'why bad things happen to good people' (and of
'why sinners' ways prosper'), by describing a Curtain with a Little Man
behind it (in "lesser dualism", one form of which is Xian Satanology) or
two roughly equal Gods ("greater dualism"), with or without a Highest God
(possibly a third Deity) who might or might not have any attributes of
any kind (as in Zoroastrianism <en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zoroastrianism>).
(apparent) God ain't the One True Deity; this latter sense I believe is
close to what Moggin means by "gnosticism," though I contend that this is
not 'The One True Meaning' of the term -- or they'd use another one that
is more specific and less obfuscatory.
D.
Kater Moggin
> I say that previously you said this in a way that was very easy to
> misunderstand. Thank you for clarifying your stand.
Fuck you for lying again. I was perfectly clear in saying
I argue for extending the meaning of "gnosticism" from the
ancient gnostics to others with the same basic outlook, such as
the Cathars and Bogomils. I wrote:
[start quote]
"Gnosticism" refers to the thinking, history and practices
of the gnostics, e.g. the Sethians, the Valentinians, the
Naasenes, and the Marcionites. I argue that it also applies by
extension to others with the same basic outlook, frex the
Cathars and the Bogomils, but I realize that I'm using the word
more liberally.
[end quote]
Clear as clear can be: in my view, "gnosticism" is a word
denoting the thinking of the ancient gnostics and also
"applies by extension to others" with the same perspective, e.g.
the Cathars and Bogomils of the Middle Ages. Yet you
contended I limit it to the ancients. So either you can't read
or you don't tell the truth.
> But if you really want to know whether a cathar is a gnostic or not, you
> should ask him. It's the only approach that really makes sense.
Certainly not according to you. You already did label the
Cathars "gnostics," even though that isn't a name they're
known to have used for themselves, so you contradicted your own
foolish principle.
> By that standard, how many christians are there today?
Plenty. Lots of people consider the Creator of this world
to be God, believe his son Jesus is the Savior, view this
world as a divine Creation, etc. You can probably find numbers
somewhere on the web.
> I say that about religion (if not ethnicity or race), you are who you
> say you are.
But in practice you label the Cathars "gnostics," even tho
they didn't use that name.
> If I claim I am a taoist it isn't your place or Hitler's
> place to tell me I'm not.
Just like you and Hitler to say "It isn't your place!" and
give orders about what I can comment on.
> Particularly if you aren't even a taoist yourself.
According to you, being a Taoist is trivial: all it means
is that you say you are.
> And it would be pretty presumptuous of you to say "I've read
> lots of taoist scriptures and I'm going to tell you what you have to
> believe to be a taoist.".
If your knowledge of Taoism doesn't go beyond the fact you
label yourself one, then somebody who's well-read in the
Taoist writings is vastly better placed to judge your assertion
than you are.
-- Moggin
Kater Moggin
[re Marcion]
> But didn't the other god create yahweh and more besides this world?
No, the Alien God didn't create Yahweh or this world. The
Alien God and Yahweh both existed from eternity. Yahweh
created this world and reigns here. That's the way the picture
looks in Marcion's theology.
[the Church Dads on Marcion]
> This is, needless to say, extremely risky for getting what Marcion
> really said. These guys may not have understood him.
Agreed. There's all the usual risk of interpretation plus
the extra danger of getting the story from Marcion's
opponents. But unless something turns up in a cave -- or maybe
in the Vatican's basements -- that's the only existing
evidence. You can decide not to talk about Marcion because the
risk is too high or you can work with what's presently
available, reading critically and looking for consistency among
the sources.
> I think of dualism as implying the
> scales are comparably balanced. Not that one side won't win in the end,
> but that they're at least comparable.
Dualism doesn't require equality between principles on the
two sides of the opposition. Example: gnosticism values
spirit over matter and God over the Demiurge. No need for them
to be in balance.
-- Moggin
Kater Moggin
> It's my contention also that Gnosticism and Dualism are /not/ synonyms
Of course. Gnosticism is dualistic, but dualism is a much
broader category.
> that you can have one without he other: Dualism refers to "two gods,"
Gnostic dualism includes two gods: for instance Marcion's
God of Salvation and God of Creation. The division of the
true God from the Creator of this world -- Abba vs. Yahweh, tho
the names that they're given vary -- is basic to gnostic
theology, allowing as always for the differences separating the
many forms of gnosticism.
> while Gnosticism concerns knowing and decoding hidden "truths" -- and
Gnosticism concerns certain particular truths, such as the
one I just mentioned, that the Creator isn't God, not the
"knowing and decoding" of random truths that dropped behind the
couch.
> relies on a division between the Initiated/Learned and Everybody Else.
> Many such systems, like the Cathars and the Alawites, have a three-fold
> division: the Wise ("Inner Party"), Ordinary Believers ("Outer Party")
> and the Rest Of Humanity ("Proles" and "foreigners"). I see no need to
> have a specific number of Deities in Gnosticism, or strictly speaking
> to have any; likewise Polytheists can recognize zillions of Gods but
> have no Secret Truths concerning any of them.
Not so. Saying "I have a secret" doesn't make anyone into
a gnostic. "We have a secret," ditto. The Cathars are
gnostics, yes: they reject Creator and Creation while choosing
to worship a higher God.
> The essense of Gnosis is "conspiracy theory": "there is a Secret Truth
> that We, the Inner Circle, are aware of and know how to use, that will
> make life better for you, the Outer Party, if you help Us against Them,
> the outsiders who are against Us.
No. Gnosis is the spiritual knowledge claimed by -- guess
who? -- the gnostics, e.g. the Sethians, Marcionites, and
Valentinians, for instance that the Creator of this world is an
inferior demiurge, not a supreme being, and that the world
he's made is a prison, exile, or labyrinth rather than a divine
Creation.
-- Moggin
Kater Moggin
> > It's my contention also that Gnosticism and Dualism are /not/ synonyms
Who thinks they are? Gnosticism is dualistic, but dualism
is a much wider category.
> > that you can have one without he other: Dualism refers to "two gods,"
> > while Gnosticism concerns knowing and decoding hidden "truths" -- and
> > relies on a division between the Initiated/Learned and Everybody Else.
Gnostic dualism includes two gods: for instance Marcion's
God of Salvation and God of Creation. The division of the
true God from the Creator of this world -- Abba vs. Yahweh, tho
the names that they're given vary -- is basic to gnostic
theology, allowing as always for the differences separating the
many forms of gnosticism.
> Also that Dualism in this sense refers to 'Ethical Ditheism', to the idea
> of Our Good True God and and Their Evil False God. It purports to solve
> 'The Problem of Evil', of 'why bad things happen to good people' (and of
The claim that the Lord and Ruler of this world is an evil
God _does_ solve the problem of evil unless you assign the
Good God omniscience and omnipotence, in which case the problem
immediately pops up again.
> 'why sinners' ways prosper'), by describing a Curtain with a Little Man
> behind it (in "lesser dualism", one form of which is Xian Satanology) or
> two roughly equal Gods ("greater dualism"), with or without a Highest God
> (possibly a third Deity) who might or might not have any attributes of
> any kind (as in Zoroastrianism <en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zoroastrianism>).
> (apparent) God ain't the One True Deity; this latter sense I believe is
> close to what Moggin means by "gnosticism," though I contend that this is
> not 'The One True Meaning' of the term -- or they'd use another one that
> is more specific and less obfuscatory.
"Gnosticism" refers to the thinking, history and practices
of the gnostics -- the Sethians, the Marcionites, the
Valentinians, the Naasenes, etc. -- and I argue that it applies
by extension to others with the same outlook, e.g. the
Bogomils and Cathars. The generalized obfuscating is all yours.
-- Moggin
Bug-Eyed Churl
> Bug-Eyed Churl <thed...@shell.rawbw.com>:
>
>> > It's my contention also that Gnosticism and Dualism are /not/ synonyms
>
> Who thinks they are? Gnosticism is dualistic, but dualism
> is a much wider category.
SOME Gnosticism is dualistic. Some isn't.
>> > that you can have one without he other: Dualism refers to "two gods,"
>> > while Gnosticism concerns knowing and decoding hidden "truths" -- and
>> > relies on a division between the Initiated/Learned and Everybody Else.
>
> Gnostic dualism includes two gods: for instance Marcion's
> God of Salvation and God of Creation.
And Gnostic monotheism includes one god. One god is sufficient to leave
"clues" laying around for the "initiated" and/or "illumined" to decipher.
> The division of the true God from the Creator of this world -- Abba vs.
> Yahweh, tho the names that they're given vary -- is basic to gnostic
> theology
...of the dualistic variety...
> allowing as always for the differences separating the many forms of
> gnosticism.
Such as the forms that allow for one god, or 42, or none. For a polytheist
form see Orphism <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orphism_%28religion%29> and
for a monotheist form see the Druze <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Druze>;
I don't know of an atheist Gnosticism but in a few weeks I can invent one.
>> Also that Dualism in this sense refers to 'Ethical Ditheism', to the idea
>> of Our Good True God and and Their Evil False God. It purports to solve
>> 'The Problem of Evil', of 'why bad things happen to good people' (and of
> The claim that the Lord and Ruler of this world is an evil
> God _does_ solve the problem of evil unless you assign the
> Good God omniscience and omnipotence, in which case the problem
> immediately pops up again.
Why would anyone want a good god who's both impotent and stupid? That's
what I don't get.
>> 'why sinners' ways prosper'), by describing a Curtain with a Little Man
>> behind it (in "lesser dualism", one form of which is Xian Satanology) or
>> two roughly equal Gods ("greater dualism"), with or without a Highest God
>> (possibly a third Deity) who might or might not have any attributes of
>> any kind (as in Zoroastrianism <en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zoroastrianism>).
>> (apparent) God ain't the One True Deity; this latter sense I believe is
>> close to what Moggin means by "gnosticism," though I contend that this is
>> not 'The One True Meaning' of the term -- or they'd use another one that
>> is more specific and less obfuscatory.
Have you read Stoyanov's _The Other God_?
<http://www.amazon.com/Other-God-Dualist-Religions-Antiquity/dp/0300082533>
Stoyanov goes into the many varities of dualism, including the split in
the Bogomils between what I call (above) "lesser dualism" and the "greater
dualism" that characterises (what he says is) their Cathar offshoot.
> "Gnosticism" refers to the thinking, history and practices of the
> gnostics -- the Sethians, the Marcionites, the Valentinians, the
> Naasenes, etc. --
I agree that "Gnostic" can be applied to all those groups, and I'd also
apply it to e.g., the Alawaites, Druze, and Shia batiniyya, as "communist"
can be applied to Stalinism, Tostoyism, Trotskyism and Bakuninism. But I
don't require the Alawites to "admit" they fit that over-arching category
of "Gnostic" if they say they don't; it's likely I'd also (in my arrogant
opinion) deny the label "gnostic" to some groups you'd include under that
rubric, as I disagree with the Ayn Rand Faith's doctrine that the Nazis
were communist and/or leftist.
> and I argue that it applies by extension to others with the same
> outlook, e.g. the Bogomils and Cathars.
If by "the same outlook" you mean the _dualist_ subset of the gnostic
trend I agree, if by "same" you mean "rather more similar to each other
than any are to Major League Baseball." If you read _The Other God_ you'll
find some differences between the Gnostic dualist (more or less dualist
anyway) sects you mentioned that separate many of them from one another as
much as the Russian Orthodox Church is separated from Reform Judaism; but
you've got plenty of time to find the book if you havem't read it because
I returned it to the library a few weeks ago and I'm fixing to go see my
family back "home" till mid- June so I won't have it in front of me till
then. (It's a long and complex book I wasn't planning on discussing with
anyone so do forgive me for not memorizing it by heart.)
> The generalized obfuscating is all yours.
Whatever. You're the one saying "If it ain't dualist it ain't gnostic."
I'm saying that splitting dualist from non-dualist gnostics and counting
as dualist gnostics some theologies that are not dualist or not gnostic.
I'd say offhand that the Wikipedia article on Gnosticism would tend to
agree wth your contentions than with mine, which is why I'd need to
actually get some forkin' books on the subject(s).
This unanticipated discussion could be a lot of fun if you'll let me
postpone it till I get back. And just think: you'll have two weeks to
assemble your data, so you'll be readier than ever to demontrate what I
take to be our mutual idea that you've forgotten more about Gnosticism
than I'll ever learn.
Speaking of which, I just found that my local public library lists 24
books it applies the term "gnostic" to
but there's a problem with the University of Louisville's webserver so I'm
unable to get to that library's site. I do know that the UofL has a some-
what better selection of "highbrow" titles than the "city" library; they
even had a book or two by Daftary a couple years ago.
http://www.amazon.com/s?ie=UTF8&search-type=ss&index=books&field-author=Farhad%20Daftary&page=1
I'm already prepared to admit that I'm no expert on the subject (and will
probably never be), so of course I might be wrong. This isn't a simple
matter of counting Deities like our earlier squabble over the Trinity
(which of course I was 100% correct in).
Anyway, my off-the-cuff working summation of Gnosticism is something like
"the doctrine that there is a Big Hidden Truth about the essence of this
existence that can be discerned by those who know how to read the signs."
Under that broad general rubric I include Kaballah, the Cathars, and the
doctrines spoofed in _The Da Vinci Code_.
Cheers,
Kater Moggin
[moved from below]
> Anyway, my off-the-cuff working summation of Gnosticism is something like
> "the doctrine that there is a Big Hidden Truth about the essence of this
> existence that can be discerned by those who know how to read the signs."
> Under that broad general rubric I include Kaballah, the Cathars, and the
> doctrines spoofed in _The Da Vinci Code_.
I think this is the core of your misunderstanding: you've
misdefined "gnosticism," which is a particular religious
movement, associated primarily though not exclusively with late
antiquity and early Christianity, rejecting worship of the
Creator of this world, devaluing the Creation, and positing the
existence of a higher God.
gnosticism: the thought and practice especially
of various cults of late pre-Christian and early
Christian centuries distinguished by the
conviction that matter is evil and that
emancipation comes through gnosis.
Merriam-Webster Dictionary
gnosticism: the doctrines of certain
pre-Christian pagan, Jewish, and early Christian
sects that valued the revealed knowledge of God
and of the origin and end of the human race as a
means to attain redemption for the spiritual
element in humans and that distinguished the
Demiurge from the unknowable Divine Being.
American Heritage Dictionary
The reference to pre-Christian gnosticism takes a bit much
for granted, but otherwise there you are: "gnosticism"
denotes the thinking, history, and practices of the gnostics in
particular (folks like the Sethians, Marcionites, and
Valentinians), e.g. that the maker of this world isn't the true
God and that the world he created is a place well-worth
escaping from. I think the word can be applied by extension to
others with the same basic perspective (the Cathars are an
obvious example), but it isn't a generic term for everybody who
thinks truth is big and hidden.
> And Gnostic monotheism includes one god. One god is sufficient to leave
> "clues" laying around for the "initiated" and/or "illumined" to decipher.
But "clues," "initiated," and "Easter egg hunt" don't come
close to defining gnosticism.
> Such as the forms that allow for one god, or 42, or none. For a polytheist
> form see Orphism <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orphism_%28religion%29> and
> for a monotheist form see the Druze <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Druze>;
Do you bother reading the articles you cite? I don't take
Wikipedia too seriously, but it's your source, so you
should've noticed the article on the Druze calls their theology
neo-Platonic, not gnostic.
> Why would anyone want a good god who's both impotent and stupid? That's
> what I don't get.
That's your impotent stupidity. Again, the claim that the
lord and creator of this world is an evil god solves the
problem of evil unless one posits an all-good, all-powerful and
all-knowing god over him.
> Have you read Stoyanov's _The Other God_?
Yeah, I have. Stoyanov is writing about religious dualism
since ancient Egypt, not gnosticism alone. If you want to
talk about the book I'll try to get it out of the library again.
Probably not a hot item.
> I agree that "Gnostic" can be applied to all those groups, and I'd also
> apply it to e.g., the Alawaites, Druze, and Shia batiniyya, as "communist"
> can be applied to Stalinism, Tostoyism, Trotskyism and Bakuninism. But I
Since you don't know what the word means, it's no surprise
you toss it around randomly.
> don't require the Alawites to "admit" they fit that over-arching category
> of "Gnostic" if they say they don't; it's likely I'd also (in my arrogant
> opinion) deny the label "gnostic" to some groups you'd include under that
Your ignorance, not your arrogance, is what's talking here.
> If by "the same outlook" you mean the _dualist_ subset of the gnostic
> trend I agree, if by "same" you mean "rather more similar to each other
> than any are to Major League Baseball." If you read _The Other God_ you'll
Again, _The Other God_ surveys religious dualism beginning
with ancient Egypt and running up through the Cathars.
Stoyanov doesn't limit himself to gnosticism, though that's one
of his topics.
> find some differences between the Gnostic dualist (more or less dualist
> anyway) sects you mentioned that separate many of them from one another as
> much as the Russian Orthodox Church is separated from Reform Judaism; but
As I recall, you lump Russian Orthodoxy and Reform Judaism
together under the heaing "Abrahamic religion." And y'know
what? You ain't wrong. Despite many obvious differences, they
share the basic theological assumption that the Lord and
Creator of this world, the deity reported to talk to Abe in the
Bible, is God Supreme.
Anyway, I've said who knows how many times that gnosticism
is not a monolith. There are many gnostic schools and
writings, no two entirely alike and some of them with conflicts
of their own.
> Whatever. You're the one saying "If it ain't dualist it ain't gnostic."
> I'm saying that splitting dualist from non-dualist gnostics and counting
> as dualist gnostics some theologies that are not dualist or not gnostic.
I'm the one explaining what gnosticism is. You're the one
who needs to learn. Doesn't have to be from me. Try _The
Gnostic Religion_, by Hans Jonas, or maybe _Gnosis: the Nature
and History of Gnosticism_, by Kurt Rudolph. Jonas writes
better and thinks in more depth; Rudolph gives more details and
covers more ground, but he's dusty.
> I'd say offhand that the Wikipedia article on Gnosticism would tend to
> agree wth your contentions than with mine, which is why I'd need to
> actually get some forkin' books on the subject(s).
Wikipedia is very unreliable on gnosticism. What it would
say is a matter of chance.
> I'm already prepared to admit that I'm no expert on the subject (and will
> probably never be), so of course I might be wrong.
Rignt now you're not even wrong, but you may yet get there.
> This isn't a simple
> matter of counting Deities like our earlier squabble over the Trinity
> (which of course I was 100% correct in).
You were 100% certain in insisting that Christian heresies
aren't Christian and Jewish heresies aren't Jewish. By
comparison, your nonsense about gnosticism nearly seems logical.
Or was that The Hidden Plan?
-- Moggin
Jack Campin - bogus address
> gnostics in particular (folks like the Sethians, Marcionites,
> and Valentinians), e.g. that the maker of this world isn't the
> true God and that the world he created is a place well-worth
> escaping from. I think the word can be applied by extension to
> others with the same basic perspective (the Cathars are an
> obvious example), but it isn't a generic term for everybody who
> thinks truth is big and hidden.
The word has often been applied to Sufis by people writing about them
in English. It's not some recent innovation by Wikipedophiles who
wouldn't know a book if one was shoved sideways up their bum. Sufism
has no distinction between different kinds of god.
============== j-c ====== @ ====== purr . demon . co . uk ==============
Jack Campin: 11 Third St, Newtongrange EH22 4PU, Scotland | tel 0131 660 4760
<http://www.purr.demon.co.uk/jack/> for CD-ROMs and free | fax 0870 0554 975
stuff: Scottish music, food intolerance, & Mac logic fonts | mob 07800 739 557
Jonah Thomas
> > "gnosticism" denotes the thinking, history, and practices of the
> > gnostics in particular (folks like the Sethians, Marcionites,
> > and Valentinians), e.g. that the maker of this world isn't the
> > true God and that the world he created is a place well-worth
> > escaping from. I think the word can be applied by extension to
> > others with the same basic perspective (the Cathars are an
> > obvious example), but it isn't a generic term for everybody who
> > thinks truth is big and hidden.
>
> The word has often been applied to Sufis by people writing about them
> in English. It's not some recent innovation by Wikipedophiles who
> wouldn't know a book if one was shoved sideways up their bum. Sufism
> has no distinction between different kinds of god.
Sure. Some sufis tell gnostic stories almost word-for-word, allowing for
translation.
But it's hard to be sure what sufis think because they stress that each
sufi student finds his own special sufi master who will teach him
whatever secret knowledge he needs. So it's utterly unclear to outsiders
what secret knowledge they transmit, or even how much overlap there is
among different sufi teachers.
Of course I can't say too much abut this, but here is a public example.
There is a sufi saying that "The presence of counterfeit money proves
there is real money somewhere.". This can be interpreted on various
levels, but the literal meaning is simply false. The many alchemists who
claimed to turn lead to gold were not any sort of proof that there is
really a way to turn lead to gold. And when the student points out that
the saying is false, his teacher praises him. Their tradition is for
students to make their own choices, not just to accept wisdom from
masters. And then they learn to look deeper than single interpretations
that are true or false. And at any point they can get teachings that are
intended to mislead, with the deeper intention that the student should
through his own efforts avoid being misled.
So preaching gnostic teachings does not at all mean that they are
gnostics. They could present gnostic scriptures with the intention of
transcending them.
I don't want to say any of this too firmly since I don't know much at
all about sufism. But I hope I have shown that the question whether
sufis are gnostics is not an easy one to answer with any reliability.
And the same may apply to others with secret teachings who are labeled
gnostic or not-gnostic. The concept of the cover story is very old.
Bug-Eyed Churl
[...]
This much I can do now, answer your cited dictionary definitions:
> gnosticism: the thought and practice especially
> of various cults of late pre-Christian and early
> Christian centuries distinguished by the
> conviction that matter is evil and that
> emancipation comes through gnosis.
> Merriam-Webster Dictionary
Note that this definition does NOT specify how many gods there are, or if
any god is necessary at all. (I think most definitions take some "divinity"
for granted, but *this* definition doesn't drag one in.)
> gnosticism: the doctrines of certain
> pre-Christian pagan, Jewish, and early Christian
> sects that valued the revealed knowledge of God
> and of the origin and end of the human race as a
> means to attain redemption for the spiritual
> element in humans and that distinguished the
> Demiurge from the unknowable Divine Being.
>
> American Heritage Dictionary
This one is more precise: it specifies a Demiurge and another, unknowable
Divine Being. One Big God and one little god, so to speak.
[...]
> > Have you read Stoyanov's _The Other God_?
> Yeah, I have. Stoyanov is writing about religious dualism
> since ancient Egypt, not gnosticism alone.
Right. But he spends most of his book talking about gnostic dualism of the
types exemplified by the defunct groups whose names you keep tossing around.
As for Wikipdia, I know it's not reliable. I don't think I'll find many books
on Alawite theology, but it looks like I can lay my hands on one or two of
Daftary's books on Ismailism, and books on what you call Gnosticism shouldn't
be too hard to find. It's my contention remember that Gnosticism *need* have
only one god -- who could have, say, created the world by mistake and left
*nobody* in charge (which is why it's so fucked up), or started it up "like
winding a clock" to let it go as it may *intending* that Salvation must be
searched for, to mention only two hypotheses. The key is that the Real True
God and His Ways and Truths are not plain as day and require seaching out
("gnosis"); how one explains how shit got fucked up, such as how many gods
there are and what their relation to one another and to the fucked up shit
are, determines what kind of Gnostic you are (Marcionite, Kabbalist, Druze,
etc.). Kinda like, you know, "Thou shalt have no other gods before me" does
not specify that there's only one God; the latter is gloss.
So I say the insistence in dualism is overly restrictive, regardless of how
many authorities one drags out: one can be Gnostic with one god, or two,
three, or 42.
But anyway, like I said, I can't really get into anything online seriously
for over a week. And please keep in mind that I propose to argue these ideas
for fun and futher edification, not to do a mighty battle of manly egos. I'm
getting too old for silly pissing contests.
Ta,
Da.
--
"I still wave at the dots on the shore..."
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(C) 2007 by 'TheDavid^TM' | David, P.O. Box 21403, Louisville, KY 40221
Kater Moggin
> The word has often been applied to Sufis by people writing about them
> in English.
The word "gnosticism" has often been thrown around loosely.
If there are Sufis or other Muslims who reduce Allah to a
crappy demiurge while disparaging the world he formed, it would
make good sense to call them gnostics, but I haven't come
across any. Neo-Platonism might be the closest that Islam gets.
-- Moggin
Kater Moggin
> > ... "Gnosticism"
> > denotes the thinking, history, and practices of the gnostics in
> > particular (folks like the Sethians, Marcionites, and
> > Valentinians), e.g. that the maker of this world isn't the true
> > God and that the world he created is a place well-worth
> > escaping from. I think the word can be applied by extension to
> > others with the same basic perspective (the Cathars are an
> > obvious example), but it isn't a generic term for everybody who
> > thinks truth is big and hidden.
Jack Campin <bo...@purr.demon.co.uk>:
> > The word has often been applied to Sufis by people writing about them
> > in English. It's not some recent innovation by Wikipedophiles who
> > wouldn't know a book if one was shoved sideways up their bum. Sufism
> > has no distinction between different kinds of god.
Far as I know, Sufis, like other Muslims, worship Allah as
God rather than following the gnostics in demoting the
Creator of this world from God Supreme to crappy demiurge while
dividing him from the truly divine. So applying the word
"gnosticism" to the Sufi perspective is a mistake. There could
be an Islamic form of gnosticism in which Muslims take a
critical view of Allah and his work. I don't know one, but I'd
be interested in examples.
Jonah Thomas <j2th...@cavtel.net>:
> ... I don't know much at all about sufism.
Thanks for sharing.
-- Moggin
Kater Moggin
> This much I can do now, answer your cited dictionary definitions:
Reading ahead I see you can't answer them: you merely try
to bat them away, then repeat your fantasy that the word
"gnosticism" is a generic term for beliefs in big hidden truths.
> > gnosticism: the thought and practice especially
> > of various cults of late pre-Christian and early
> > Christian centuries distinguished by the
> > conviction that matter is evil and that
> > emancipation comes through gnosis.
>
> > Merriam-Webster Dictionary
> Note that this definition does NOT specify how many gods there are, or if
> any god is necessary at all.
Note that you're dodging. The Merriam-Webster entry shows
that the word "gnosticism" refers to the thinking and
practices of a _particular_ religious movement (one linked with
early Christianity, believing matter is evil, and aiming
toward freedom through gnosis), contrary to your idea it refers
to any claim of big, hidden truth.
> > gnosticism: the doctrines of certain
> > pre-Christian pagan, Jewish, and early Christian
> > sects that valued the revealed knowledge of God
> > and of the origin and end of the human race as a
> > means to attain redemption for the spiritual
> > element in humans and that distinguished the
> > Demiurge from the unknowable Divine Being.
> > American Heritage Dictionary
> This one is more precise: it specifies a Demiurge and another, unknowable
> Divine Being. One Big God and one little god, so to speak.
False. Not a word about their sizes. And gnosticism here
again is by definition a _certain_ late-antique religious
movement (one separating the Demiurge from God), again contrary
to your idea it's a generic term for the idea truth is
big'n'hidden. These definitions aren't perfect -- e.g. they go
a bit far in asserting the existence of pre-Christian
gnosticism -- but you've just plain misunderstood what the word
"gnosticism" refers to.
> As for Wikipdia, I know it's not reliable. I don't think I'll find many books
> on Alawite theology, but it looks like I can lay my hands on one or two of
> Daftary's books on Ismailism, and books on what you call Gnosticism shouldn't
> be too hard to find. It's my contention remember that Gnosticism *need* have
...
You haven't read any books about gnosticism, you obviously
misunderstand the meaning of the word, and yet you keep
offering contentions as if they were verified by your authority.
> But anyway, like I said, I can't really get into anything online seriously
> for over a week. And please keep in mind that I propose to argue these ideas
> for fun and futher edification, not to do a mighty battle of manly egos. I'm
> getting too old for silly pissing contests.
So far you're just pissing on yourself by arguing that the
meaning you manufactured for "gnosticism" is the standard
sense of the term. But dry off, put on fresh pants, and we can
start again.
-- Moggin
Kater Moggin
> So I say the insistence in dualism is overly restrictive, regardless of how
> many authorities one drags out: one can be Gnostic with one god, or two,
> three, or 42.
You don't know what gnosticism is -- you have the mistaken
idea that it refers to any thinking where truth is big and
hidden -- so what you say is an irrelevancy. But it's probably
worth mentioning that you also have an overly restrictive
understanding of religious dualism, which isn't confined to two
equally-weighted gods.
-- Moggin
Sonnenblume
> Sonnenblume <sarg...@earthlink.net> wrote:
>> Jonah Thomas wrote:
>>> Well see, you overgeneralise. You even appear to claim that modern
>>> gnostics like Lash and Anton are not gnostics at all, or at least
>>> you ignore their stands when you talk about "the known ones".
>> Lord. Apparently, a lot of people have gone for the idea that
>> 'Gnosticism' represents dualism. And then classify Manicheanism as
>> gnosticism. Manicheanism is actually, you know, Manicheanism,
>> Marcionism is Marcionism and so on, and so forth.
>> When you say, 'gnosticism' what I understand you to be referring
>> to (you here is either Jet or Kater) are various early Christian writers,
>> and hello, Wikipedia has a perfectly nice list:
> Kater is referring to his approved list, his particular set of ancient
> writers who to him are the only true gnostics, no others need apply.
> I say that you're a gnostic if you say you are, just as you're a
> christian if you say you're christian. Self-definition is the only
> approach that makes sense under the circumstances.
I am willing to go with that inasmuch as there isn't someone around to
dispute the name. I believe the Cathars considered themselves Christians
(NOT Gnostics) but the Pope had something to say about that.
Modern Gnostics have no direct connection with ancient Gnostics, unlike
say, Catholics. In fact, modern Gnostics may be more truly Gnostic than
actual ancient gnostics, simply because most of the ancient texts were
toasted, which conceals the degree of variation amoungst ancient Gnostics.
>> Philosophically, they're all over the map. There is more than
>> Christians involved, but the recovered manuscripts on which this stuff
>> is all based on is all over the map.
> Yes. There are some common themes.
Check.
>> 'Modern gnostics' are guys who went rooting around for a
>> framework to
>> build on, but they aren't Gnostics, anymore than those silly people
>> who parade around Stonehenge in the spring are 'druids'. There is no
>> direct connection. 'Modern mystery cults' might be a more accurate
>> term.
> Who are you to say they aren't druids? They say they're druids. There
> isn't any druid Pope to excommunicate them and tell them they can't be
> druids any more. So what if there's no connection to some other people
> who called themselves druids? I doubt there's any direct connection
> between modern freemasons and any particular secret society in ancient
> egypt, either. Though there could be. But what difference does it make?
> They want to call themselves masons, it's fine with me.
Hrmm. But they SAY (or imply) they have a direct connection, which they
just don't. They can call themselves modern Druids, with the caveat that
they may not have anything at all in common with the Druids of fable.
>> While I'm at it:
>> > Yes. You can't believe that yahway and the demiurge are the same
>> > and be Orthodox. I think. I'm not somebody who gets to say who's
>> > really Orthodox and who isn't, but I doubt the guys who get to say
>> > that would disagree with me. I could be wrong.
>> > You're supposed to believe that yahwah is the only god.
>> You're supposed to have YHWH as YOUR only god, not neccessarily
>> that
>> YHWH is THE only God. Not in the Torah and whatnot. (Otherwise, no
>> Golden Calf, eh?) Only in the post-70 CE do you get YHWH as the ONLY
>> God.
> I've seen scripture in translation that I thought said that, but I may
> have misunderstood. Or the translator may have misunderstood. Sure,
> there's stuff in the Torah that definitely says it your way too.
There's enough Canaanite influence to strongly suggest anything
monothiesm (as in THE only God) of the older texts was edited in.
>> Marcion isn't, strictly speaking, a dualist tho; Mani, on the
>> other
>> hand, was very much a dualist, following after but not in the same
>> mode as Zoroaster.
> Say there's one real God and a whole bunch of aluminum-siding salesmen
> with horns. That isn't dualism. There's not enough duality between a
> real god and some sort of evil demi-god.
Ayup. Mani thought that there was evil matter and good matter; good
matter was light-colored (like semen) and bad matter was dark-colored
(like shit).
>> In any event the Cathars and the Bogomils aren't Gnostics, and
>> they
>> don't seem to have been Manicheans or Zoroastrians but they certainly
>> seem to have been dipping from the same well, with the
>> dualist/reincarnation thing.
> In biological taxonomy there are lumpers and splitters. Splitters will
> look at a bunch of minnows and say "This minnow has 8 teeth and this
> other minnow has 10 teeth, so they're different species." Lumpers will
> say "This species has some variation, some have 8 teeth and some have 10
> teeth." In theory one way to tell who's right is to do mating
> experiments. If the 8-tooth and the 10-tooth have fertile offspring
> together then they're one species. However, when the splitters have been
> busy and they claim 100 species of minnows -- one with 8 teeth and blue
> spots, one with 10 teeth and blue spots, one with 8 teeth and orange
> spots, one with 10 teeth and orange spots etc -- then it takes close to
> 5000 matings to test it that way. And who cares that much?
Sure.
> Why do you say the cathars aren't gnostics?
Gnostic is really a modern classification, if anything. I'm splitting
because the Cathars thought of themselves as Christians of some sort,
they were much later and not connected to ancient Gnostics, and just
generally weren't part of that crowd. I'm not actually splitting, I'm
disputing where things are being lumped.
> Is there a gnostic catechism
> that they deny? I'm a lumper, you're a splitter, Moggin is an extreme
> splitter. I see no reason to make our language much more precise than
> the things it describes. The ancient beliefs people now label as
> gnosticism were like a ball of mud that people handed around. Parts of
> it would drip off and be replaced by something new, not a lot of
> agreement but the flavor tended to remain. Some of the more literary
> gnostics may have molded it into precise figurines that got slopped back
> into a ball of mud when they were passed on. And modern gnostics, like
> modern UFO believers, are also all over the map.
I agree with that for the most part, and TD's argument (where ever that
was) was pretty good too.
m, wading
Sonnenblume
> On Sun, 27 May 2007, Jonah Thomas wrote:
> [...]
>
>> I see no reason to make our language much more precise than the things
>> it describes.
>
> You obscurantist infidel! You anti-intellectual heathen! Why with that
> attitude there'd be no reason to have even a Wikipedia! That heresy will
> put millions of mandarins out of work who are good for nothing else. Do
> you want the "matisses" of the world scrubbing bathrooms and flipping
> burgers forever? THEY WON'T ALL 'FIT' ON SSI!!!
What? Have you given up on the great world anarcho-socialist revolution
where everyone quits their jobs and goes on SSI?
m, shocked
Sonnenblume
Wouldn't that be 'that alchemists were trying to turn lead into gold is
not proof that gold existed'?
m, or am I misreading?
Sonnenblume
> me away, it's that I don't want to get a rep for doing such. If it's
> true that Usenet's expiring and the Blogosphere is where it'll be at
> for a few years more, and that I don't know and don't yet feel like
> learning to start my own blog, I should be a Good Netizen more or less.
I almost forgot; current title-holder funniest mutherfucker around:
What Heaven Will Be Like
"There would be a troupe of Red Indians, a fire-eater, a woman with a
very large snake, a formidable singer called Ida Barr, a Polish boxer
who would take on members of the audience, Demetrius the Gladiator whose
act involved blowing up hot-water bottles, a man called Bob who hit
himself on the head with a tin tray while singing Mule Train, and, most
notorious of all, a drag act called Miss Shufflewick, famous for her
outrageous routine and for her alcoholism. 'See this?' she would say,
stroking a fur coat that she was wearing. 'It's made of untouched pussy.
You don't get much of that in the West End.' ... During the act with the
snake, Mrs Shufflewick muttered loudly, 'Make a nice handbag that.'"
From: You Cannot Live As I Have Lived And Not End Up Like This, a
biography of William Donaldson, written by Terence Blacker.
How Can We Best Educate Our Kids?
My own rewarding story: I had the good fortune to be educated at home.
Sure, it may have been the Old Scrotum Home For The Criminally Insane,
but so what? I still received a better grounding in calculus and English
literature there than I would've done in any normal classroom. I
particularly enjoyed my biology lessons with Napoleon ... well, at least
the teacher thought he was Napoleon, but he was in fact just plain old
Mr Arthur Wellesley.
Old Scrotonian pupils also benefited from special "modules" that
certainly would not have been taught at the local High: /You And Your
Diminished Responsibilities In 1987/ was one I remember with fond
affection. /So, You've Sawn Somebody's Head Off, Now What?/ was another.
At Luddite Tech I majored in Atahualpan Studies, and here my scholastic
luck evaporated. After eight semesters of returning from class
registration empty-handed I finally realised that the college didn't
actually offer any Atahualpan Studies at all. Apparently I had confused
Atahualpan Studies with Spanish As A Second Language in the college
brochure.
And seventy-nine years later, I am still paying back my student loans :-(
The Extraordinary Prune
I spent the weekend nursing my grievances. They caught a slight chill
while marauding about in the rain on Friday night and have since be
confined to the sanatorium wing of Castle Frown.
The poor things. Naturally, I have taken great pains to hasten my
grievances' recuperation by administering to them twice daily a
medicinal tincture of my own devising: a sulfuric yet improving mixture
of mandrake root and iron tonic steeped in turtle soup. I also attempt
to soothe their fevered slumbers by reading aloud from their favorite
book, Missionary Position: Mother Theresa in Theory and Practice by
Christopher Hitchens.
m, w00t
Kater Moggin
> I believe the Cathars considered themselves Christians
> (NOT Gnostics) but the Pope had something to say about that.
Yes, the Cathars saw themselves as Christians. The Pope's
something-to-say took the form of the Inquisition and the
Albigensian Crusade, whence comes the famous saying, "Kill them
all, let God sort them out," a t-shirt translation of the
command reportedly given by the Papal Legate before the Beziers
massacre. The statement attributed to the Legate, Arnaud
Amalric, is actually "Kill them all, God will know his own," an
allusion to 2 Tim. 2:19.
Classing the Cathars as medieval gnostics makes good sense
if you consider the basic similarity of their religious
outlook to the thinking found in ancient gnosticism. It's also
possible there was a link through the Bogomils to the
Paulicians and back to the Manichaeans, the Valentinians or the
Marcionites, but that's speculation. The parallels, both
broad and fine, linking the Cathars to the ancient gnostics are
hard to miss.
The wide similarity is plain: the Cathars divide God from
the Creator of this world and take a critical view of the
Creation in keeping with their ancient counterparts' philosophy.
There are also some highly detailed correspondences. Take
the reading of John 1:3-4 that's shared, according to the
historical sources, by the ancient gnostics called Naasenes and
a certain piece of Cathar writing known as the "Manichaean
Treatise." Hippolytus says the Naasenes used those verses from
John in distiguishing between the true God (my phrase) who
made "all things" and the demiurge who made the world here, the
nothing that John explains was created apart from God.
_Refutation Of All Heresies_ 5.3. Same goes in the "Manichaean
Treatise," which brings in Paul, too, claiming evil spirits
and evil men are nothing (being without charity -- that's where
Paul serves) and consequently weren't made by God, since
"without him was made nothing" (MT 13). I call that a striking
similarity.
> Gnostic is really a modern classification, if anything.
Not at all. "Gnostic" is an ancient classification. It's
used e.g. by Irenaeus when referring to certain of the
heretics he's disputing, though he prefers the phrase "gnostics
so-called," presumably because it lets him avoid crediting
his theological enemies with anything that he'd label knowledge.
The Jowett of his day.
> I'm splitting
> because the Cathars thought of themselves as Christians of some sort,
> they were much later and not connected to ancient Gnostics, and just
> generally weren't part of that crowd.
With all due respect, only one of those reasons makes much
sense. If you limit gnosticism to antiquity, then it's
obvious the Cathars don't fit in. I realize I'm using the word
more liberally.
But it's ridiculous to split the Cathars from the gnostics
because the Cathars called themselves Christian, since the
same holds for many of their ancient predecessors, for instance
the Marcionites and Valentinians.
The historical connection is speculative, though plausible.
The theological connection is plain as day and puts the
Cathars in the same crowd as the Sethians, the Marcionites, the
Naasenes, the Valentinians, etc.
-- Moggin
Kater Moggin
> There is a sufi saying that "The presence of counterfeit money proves
> there is real money somewhere.". This can be interpreted on various
> levels, but the literal meaning is simply false.
No, the literal meaning is simply true. Fake dollars copy
real dollars, thereby implying real dollars are floating
around somewhere. Otherwise nothing to copy. The Sufis are on
the money.
-- Moggin
Jack Campin - bogus address
> if you consider the basic similarity of their religious
> outlook to the thinking found in ancient gnosticism. It's also
> possible there was a link through the Bogomils to the
> Paulicians and back to the Manichaeans, the Valentinians or the
> Marcionites, but that's speculation. The parallels, both
> broad and fine, linking the Cathars to the ancient gnostics are
> hard to miss.
But also makes sense to link the Bogomils and Cathars forward in
time to the Alevi/Bektashi dervish order - the organizational
structures are very similar (the Bektashi have a celibate elite
unparalleled anywhere else in Islam) and the Bektashi came to
predominate in the Balkans, where the Bogomils had been at their
strongest. (The other survival strategy for the Bogomils was to
assimilate to Sunni Islam, as the Pomaks, but I don't know much
about Pomak culture).
Doctrine is not the only reason for applying a label like "gnostic",
historical connection and similarity of practice also counts.
*Anarcissie*
> Sonnenblume <sargo...@earthlink.net>:
> ...
> The historical connection is speculative, though plausible.
> The theological connection is plain as day and puts the
> Cathars in the same crowd as the Sethians, the Marcionites, the
> Naasenes, the Valentinians, etc.
As I recall there was a large quasi-Gnostic religious
community in Bulgaria in the Middle Ages, to which
the Cathars were at least theologically related. I
don't find it unlikely that religious communities
could persist out of sight for many centuries. It
was only in the 18th century that witches and
paganism in general were extirpated in Lithuania.
And now they're back....
*Anarcissie*
> Jonah Thomas <j2tho...@cavtel.net>:
Depends what you mean by _counterfeit_. If you
mean fake money that imitates real money, then what
you say is correct, but there is also fake money that
that doesn't imitate real money -- free-standing fake
money, you might say. The money in a Monopoly
game, for example.
Jonah Thomas
> Jonah Thomas wrote:
> > Sonnenblume <sarg...@earthlink.net> wrote:
> >> Jonah Thomas wrote:
> >>> Well see, you overgeneralise. You even appear to claim that modern
> >>> gnostics like Lash and Anton are not gnostics at all, or at least
> >>> you ignore their stands when you talk about "the known ones".
> >> Lord. Apparently, a lot of people have gone for the idea that
> >> 'Gnosticism' represents dualism. And then classify Manicheanism as
> >> gnosticism. Manicheanism is actually, you know, Manicheanism,
> >> Marcionism is Marcionism and so on, and so forth.
> >> When you say, 'gnosticism' what I understand you to be referring
> >> to (you here is either Jet or Kater) are various early Christian
> >writers,> and hello, Wikipedia has a perfectly nice list:
> > Kater is referring to his approved list, his particular set of
> > ancient writers who to him are the only true gnostics, no others
> > need apply. I say that you're a gnostic if you say you are, just as
> > you're a christian if you say you're christian. Self-definition is
> > the only approach that makes sense under the circumstances.
> I am willing to go with that inasmuch as there isn't someone
> around to
> dispute the name. I believe the Cathars considered themselves
> Christians (NOT Gnostics) but the Pope had something to say about
> that.
Yes. Still, if you want a definitive answer then you should ask a
cathar.
This might be about the best you can do.
http://www.cathar.net/
"Good Christians have often been called "dualists" or "gnostics" by
their critics. Simply put, believing in two Gods, one good, one bad. Is
that what good Christians really believe?
"No.
"Good Christians believe in one GOD, wholly good and two Kingdoms; the
Kingdom of GOD and the Kingdom of Satan, which is the world. You belong
to one or the other, plain and simple.
"If that makes us dualists, then so be it."
> Modern Gnostics have no direct connection with ancient Gnostics,
> unlike
> say, Catholics.
How would you know? I tend to figure that if they claim there's no
connection then I might as well take them at their word. It seems like
the way to bet -- anybody can start a modern group, but to join an
ancient group you have to find them.
But if they claim a distant past, how could you possibly disprove it?
You could look for evidence that they don't match up with the public
information about the ancient groups. That's a snare and a delusion --
the public information about ancient secret societies cannot be
definitive. If they match the available data too precisely that's a
warning flag -- they probably read the same sources you did, and it's
rare for a religious organisation to go hundreds of years with no
doctrinal changes.
My own preference is to take them at their word again, particularly
while nothing very important is riding on it. It's only polite to talk
as if they have ancient roots. If somehow thousands of dollars of my own
money would wind up riding on a bet that they do (or that they're only
modern, either way) then I quickly become an agnostic about it. But what
evidence could prove that there is no direct connection?
> In fact, modern Gnostics may be more truly Gnostic than
> actual ancient gnostics, simply because most of the ancient texts were
>
> toasted, which conceals the degree of variation amoungst ancient
> Gnostics.
I don't see how that makes modern gnostics more gnostic than ancient
gnostics. I see how it might likely make them more gnostic than our
reconstruction of gnosticism from inadequate ancient texts.
> >> 'Modern gnostics' are guys who went rooting around for a
> >> framework to
> >> build on, but they aren't Gnostics, anymore than those silly people
> >> who parade around Stonehenge in the spring are 'druids'. There is
> >no> direct connection. 'Modern mystery cults' might be a more
> >accurate> term.
> > Who are you to say they aren't druids? They say they're druids.
> > There isn't any druid Pope to excommunicate them and tell them they
> > can't be druids any more. So what if there's no connection to some
> > other people who called themselves druids? I doubt there's any
> > direct connection between modern freemasons and any particular
> > secret society in ancient egypt, either. Though there could be. But
> > what difference does it make? They want to call themselves masons,
> > it's fine with me.
>
> Hrmm. But they SAY (or imply) they have a direct connection,
> which they
> just don't. They can call themselves modern Druids, with the caveat
> that they may not have anything at all in common with the Druids of
> fable.
How do you know there's no direct connection? What do you mean by a
direct connection? Practically everybody of italian ancestry I've ever
had extended conversation with has at some point claimed a direct
connection to the mafia. Usually through an uncle or something like
that. Given the "six degrees of separation" stuff I'd guess that they
mostly all have a connection within at most 4 links. But then, what do
we mean by the mafia? If somebody works for a real estate company that's
owned by a legitimate corporation that started out as a mafia money
laundry, does that count? Back in the old days the mafia was a loose
association of competing organisations, who had a few doctrines in
common and some methodology in common. A direct connection with one
mafia might still leave you two links away from another mafia.
And nowadays -- somebody told me that Bank of America is owned by the
mafia, but somebody else told me the jesuits own them. And there's a
claim that the Yakuza bought into BoA. Who really owns Bank of America?
You could look it up. You could look at their SEC filing, and if the top
15 stockholers are individuals and not the catholic church or the mafia
or pension funds then that proves the stories are wrong, hmm? And if you
believe that, I have a campaign finance law to sell you.... It isn't a
trivial question who really owns BoA. And if that isn't trivial, what
can we possibly say about the pedigree of secret societies from 400 AD
to now?
> There's enough Canaanite influence to strongly suggest anything
> monothiesm (as in THE only God) of the older texts was edited in.
Sure. But so what? Does it matter if it was edited in around 600 BC or
400 BC or 200 BC? I'd say it mattered if it was edited in around 1700
CE. Somewhere in there is a date where I'd be uneasy saying it mattered
and uneasy saying it didn't.
> >> Marcion isn't, strictly speaking, a dualist tho; Mani, on the
> >> other
> >> hand, was very much a dualist, following after but not in the same
> >> mode as Zoroaster.
> > Say there's one real God and a whole bunch of aluminum-siding
> > salesmen with horns. That isn't dualism. There's not enough duality
> > between a real god and some sort of evil demi-god.
>
> Ayup. Mani thought that there was evil matter and good matter;
> good
> matter was light-colored (like semen) and bad matter was dark-colored
> (like shit).
Moggin disagrees. Again, I say if on one side you have the One True God
and on the other side you have ten thousand imps each working toward his
own personal advantage, that isn't what I call dualism. I won't
characterise Moggin's position since I may have misunderstood it, but he
plainly said he disagreed with me.
> >> In any event the Cathars and the Bogomils aren't Gnostics, and
> >> they
> >> don't seem to have been Manicheans or Zoroastrians but they
> >certainly > seem to have been dipping from the same well, with the
> >> dualist/reincarnation thing.
> > In biological taxonomy there are lumpers and splitters. [....]
> > [ Sometimes it's extremely hard to test who's right. ]
> > And who cares that much?
>
> Sure.
Is it better to leave the question open, or is it better to make a firm
choice based on the inadequate evidence?
> > Why do you say the cathars aren't gnostics?
>
> Gnostic is really a modern classification, if anything. I'm
> splitting
> because the Cathars thought of themselves as Christians of some sort,
> they were much later and not connected to ancient Gnostics, and just
> generally weren't part of that crowd. I'm not actually splitting, I'm
> disputing where things are being lumped.
Didn't some people who're now considered gnostics think they were
christians? I think that's why we had gnostic heresies and not just
heathen gnostics. We've agreed that gnostics were all over the map. My
thought is that if somebody claims that Satan has full control of this
world then I'll call him a gnostic unless he prefers I don't. Unless he
has some other belief that's so far out that I figure that's more
important. Like, if he says that union with OneTrue is so awful we're
better off with Satan, that would leave me reconsidering a bit.
But let's back off a little -- how important is it how we classify
people as gnostic or not-gnostic? What does it really matter, so long as
we don't plan to *do something* about it? (And these people claim to
have kept secret for hundreds or many hundreds of years, precisely
because of those who *did* want to do something about it....) What
difference does it really make if we disagree about who's a gnostic and
who isn't?
Why should we argue about who has the one true way to decide who's
gnostic and who isn't? I tend to follow Chaung Tzu's idea. Words are
like footprints in the sand. You can follow them to get some sense where
the other guy went, but to get there you have to walk it yourself. And
there's no obligation to keep following him, it's something you might
choose to do.
bob
wrote:
Monopoly money is counterfiet currency. I suppose it could be argued
that monopoly money is currency that has a very limited usage.
Monopoly money imitates broader units of exchange.
Egg.
Jonah Thomas
> Jonah Thomas wrote:
> > Of course I can't say too much abut this, but here is a public
> > example. There is a sufi saying that "The presence of counterfeit
> > money proves there is real money somewhere.". This can be
> > interpreted on various levels, but the literal meaning is simply
> > false. The many alchemists who claimed to turn lead to gold were not
> > any sort of proof that there is really a way to turn lead to gold.
>
> Wouldn't that be 'that alchemists were trying to turn lead into
> gold is
> not proof that gold existed'?
>
> m, or am I misreading?
Good literal reading! So, people believed in gold or they wouldn't try
to turn lead into gold. And people believed in money -- a medium of
exchange -- or counterfeit money would be useless. In both cases what's
important is that people believe in the value.
When the USA went off the gold standard, and then when we stopped using
silver coins, we proved that it fundamentally didn't matter whether the
money was counterfeit or not. All that mattered was that people believe
in the money. Money becomes real because people believe in it. Like
TinkerBelle. It becomes less real when people who believe in it find
that others won't trade for it.
The definition of reality I like best is "Reality is what doesn't go
away if you stop believing in it." By that definition money is not real.
Money is a shared illusion. Of course you can choose to decide what's
real some other way.
Does this come closer to meeting your approval?
J Seymour MacNicely
> Depends what you mean by _counterfeit_. If you
> mean fake money that imitates real money, then what
> you say is correct, but there is also fake money that
> that doesn't imitate real money -- free-standing fake
> money, you might say. The money in a Monopoly
> game, for example.
And by this, he thinks to have picked his "Chance" card directing him
to "Go" to collect his "$200.00"?
Within context of a Monopoly game, Monopoly money *is* the real money.
It's that little slip of yellow or peach colored paper that your
naughty little sister or brother tries to slip into the game that is
the counterfeit.
Because international commerce is no less a game of Monopoly than
what's in that box by Parker Bros, the 'money' inside (within its own
context of being instrumental 'legal tender' to the game) is no more
the 'fake money' than what's in the First National Bank--and the five
bucks that went for that box down at the toy department is the "gold
standard" that backs the dough in the box: it is real in its context,
the bonafide, Parker Bros. printed currency.
And to say that Monopoly money does not "imitate" real money is
absurd, for if that were not it's purpose, there would be no Monopoly
game. Monopoly money simply cannot be passed for real money outside
its context, so it cannot even approach being "fake"; it is not fake
or 'counterfeit' because it was not printed to that purpose. In every
way, in it's context it does imitate "real money".
Neither is there anything "free standing" about it, as it is tied
strictly to its context--it must go back into the Monopoly box or be
eaten by the dog.
With such reasoning such as this from Anarcissie, I should think he is
well on his way toward being a Gnostic.
You get to think things almost as if by magic, by neat little tricks!
--
Mackie
http://whosenose.blogspot.com
http://doo-dads.blogspot.com/
http://www.mackiemesser.zoomshare.com/0.html
John W. Kennedy
> ["Gnosticism"] isn't a generic term for everybody who
> thinks truth is big and hidden.
Actually, like it or not, it has been used with that meaning (among
others) at least since the 2nd century.
--
John W. Kennedy
"The pathetic hope that the White House will turn a Caligula into a
Marcus Aurelius is as naīve as the fear that ultimate power inevitably
corrupts."
-- James D. Barber (1930-2004)
* TagZilla 0.066 * http://tagzilla.mozdev.org
John W. Kennedy
> As I recall there was a large quasi-Gnostic religious
> community in Bulgaria in the Middle Ages,
Yes. They are responsible for the unfortunate fact that the verb "to
bugger" derives from "Bulgarian".
--
John W. Kennedy
"Never try to take over the international economy based on a radical
feminist agenda if you're not sure your leader isn't a transvestite."
-- David Misch: "She-Spies", "While You Were Out"
Kater Moggin
["Gnosticism"]
> Actually, like it or not, it has been used with that meaning (among
> others) at least since the 2nd century.
Actually, like it or not, you don't have any inkling. The
word "gnosticism" didn't even _exist_ in the 2nd century.
It's a modern coinage. The earliest cites I've come across are
Henry More's _Antidote Against Idolatry_, 1653, and Thomas
Tenison's _Idolatry, A Discourse_, 1678. More compares certain
features of his time to what he calls "the old abhorred
Gnosticism." Tenison is just as critical, but he provides more
discussion, arguing that Colossians 1:15-16 opposes the
gnostic view by identifying the Creator with God and commenting
that Ignatius battled the gnostics by "affirming that there
was one God of the Old and New Testament...for the creating and
governing of all things." Tenison also invokes Irenaeus'
authority in stating God "did make all things," contrary to the
gnostic view. He names Simon Magus and Valentinus, in
particular: Simon Magus assigns the Creation to a gang of evil
angels (Irenaeus, Adv. Haer. 1:23.2-3), and of course the
Valentinians lower the creator of this world from supreme being
to inferior demiurge.
-- Moggin
Kater Moggin
> > ... Fake dollars copy
> > real dollars, thereby implying real dollars are floating
> > around somewhere. Otherwise nothing to copy. The Sufis are on
> > the money.
Anarcissie <anarc...@gmail.com>:
> Depends what you mean by _counterfeit_. If you
> mean fake money that imitates real money, then what
> you say is correct, but there is also fake money that
> that doesn't imitate real money -- free-standing fake
> money, you might say. The money in a Monopoly
> game, for example.
Sure. But Monopoly dollars aren't much like what I'd call
counterfeits precisely _because_ they're not seriously
imitating the ones the Treasury prints. They're play money, so
you don't go to a real jail. Or do it the other way: say
they're counterfeits patterned on dollars. There are also real
dollars, so the Sufis win again.
--- Moggin
Kater Moggin
> As I recall there was a large quasi-Gnostic religious
> community in Bulgaria in the Middle Ages, to which
> the Cathars were at least theologically related.
Of course: the Bogomils. They have an historical link to
the Cathars, too.
> I don't find it unlikely that religious communities
> could persist out of sight for many centuries. It
> was only in the 18th century that witches and
> paganism in general were extirpated in Lithuania.
> And now they're back....
Fido once told me that Patrick O'Brian's _Letter of Marque_
has gnostics in rural 19th c. England. I haven't found
another mention of them, but O'Brian prides himself on accurate
history.
-- Moggin
J Seymour MacNicely
in "Sufi Aphorism" long before him.
You see what these envious guttersnipes have against Mackie, they want
to be first, smartest, wisest. And so long as I'm around, sad as it
seems, that just ain't about to happen. :-)
On May 31, 7:18 am, Kater Moggin <kimmer...@fastmail.fm> wrote:
> Kater Moggin <kimmer...@fastmail.fm>:
>
> > > ... Fake dollars copy
> > > real dollars, thereby implying real dollars are floating
> > > around somewhere. Otherwise nothing to copy. The Sufis are on
> > > the money.
>
> Anarcissie <anarcis...@gmail.com>:
Logo Zed
Pine.LNX.4.58.07...@troll.weezl.org, "David bin Bedlam"
<thed...@shell.rawbw.com> wrote:
> The essense of Gnosis is "conspiracy theory": "there is a Secret Truth
> that We, the Inner Circle, are aware of and know how to use, that will
> make life better for you, the Outer Party, if you help Us against Them,
> the outsiders who are against Us. And maybe, if you show yourself Worthy,
> you can join Us on the Inside." Something like that. Umberto Eco pretty
> much got it in _Foucault's Pendulum_ in that rant against "Diabolists."
Peter said to Mary, "Sister, we know that the savior loved you more than
other women. Tell us the words of the savior that you remember, which you
know and we do not. We have not heard them."
Mary answered, saying, "What is hidden from you I will reveal to you."
...
If a blind man and a man with site are in a dark room they see the same
things. If a candle or lamp is brought in to the room; only one will see
more.
Sonnenblume
> Sonnenblume <sarg...@earthlink.net> wrote:
>> Jonah Thomas wrote:
>
>>> Of course I can't say too much abut this, but here is a public
>>> example. There is a sufi saying that "The presence of counterfeit
>>> money proves there is real money somewhere.". This can be
>>> interpreted on various levels, but the literal meaning is simply
>>> false. The many alchemists who claimed to turn lead to gold were not
>>> any sort of proof that there is really a way to turn lead to gold.
>> Wouldn't that be 'that alchemists were trying to turn lead into
>> gold is
>> not proof that gold existed'?
>>
>> m, or am I misreading?
>
> Good literal reading!
Uh-huh.
> So, people believed in gold or they wouldn't try
> to turn lead into gold. And people believed in money -- a medium of
> exchange -- or counterfeit money would be useless. In both cases what's
> important is that people believe in the value.
> When the USA went off the gold standard, and then when we stopped using
> silver coins, we proved that it fundamentally didn't matter whether the
> money was counterfeit or not. All that mattered was that people believe
> in the money. Money becomes real because people believe in it. Like
> TinkerBelle. It becomes less real when people who believe in it find
> that others won't trade for it.
Yup.
> The definition of reality I like best is "Reality is what doesn't go
> away if you stop believing in it."
PKD.
> By that definition money is not real.
> Money is a shared illusion.
Or abstraction. Yep. 'No intrinsic value'.
> Of course you can choose to decide what's
> real some other way.
And most people usually do.
> Does this come closer to meeting your approval?
Cranky?
m, bad week?
Sonnenblume
> Sonnenblume <sarg...@earthlink.net> wrote:
>> I am willing to go with that inasmuch as there isn't someone
>> around to
>> dispute the name. I believe the Cathars considered themselves
>> Christians (NOT Gnostics) but the Pope had something to say about
>> that.
> Yes. Still, if you want a definitive answer then you should ask a
> cathar.
Who were all apparently wiped out.
> This might be about the best you can do.
> http://www.cathar.net/
>
> "Good Christians have often been called "dualists" or "gnostics" by
> their critics. Simply put, believing in two Gods, one good, one bad. Is
> that what good Christians really believe?
>
> "No.
>
> "Good Christians believe in one GOD, wholly good and two Kingdoms; the
> Kingdom of GOD and the Kingdom of Satan, which is the world. You belong
> to one or the other, plain and simple.
>
> "If that makes us dualists, then so be it."
Ok.
>> Modern Gnostics have no direct connection with ancient Gnostics,
>> unlike
>> say, Catholics.
> How would you know? I tend to figure that if they claim there's no
> connection then I might as well take them at their word. It seems like
> the way to bet -- anybody can start a modern group, but to join an
> ancient group you have to find them.
>
> But if they claim a distant past, how could you possibly disprove it?
I can't disprove it, Jonah, I simply am not obligated to accept the
claim without evidence for it. On a spiritual basis, I can let any such
claim lie, since faith would demand the believer accept it, and it would
have no impact on the unbeliever.
As a historical claim, I would simply evaluate on the same basis on I
evaluate any other historical claim: is there any evidence?
> You could look for evidence that they don't match up with the public
> information about the ancient groups. That's a snare and a delusion --
> the public information about ancient secret societies cannot be
> definitive. If they match the available data too precisely that's a
> warning flag -- they probably read the same sources you did, and it's
> rare for a religious organisation to go hundreds of years with no
> doctrinal changes.
> My own preference is to take them at their word again, particularly
> while nothing very important is riding on it. It's only polite to talk
> as if they have ancient roots. If somehow thousands of dollars of my own
> money would wind up riding on a bet that they do (or that they're only
> modern, either way) then I quickly become an agnostic about it. But what
> evidence could prove that there is no direct connection?
Again, there's no disproof (of anything), and you know that. I simply
have no reason to accept the claim.
>> In fact, modern Gnostics may be more truly Gnostic than
>> actual ancient gnostics, simply because most of the ancient texts were
>> toasted, which conceals the degree of variation amoungst ancient
>> Gnostics.
> I don't see how that makes modern gnostics more gnostic than ancient
> gnostics. I see how it might likely make them more gnostic than our
> reconstruction of gnosticism from inadequate ancient texts.
Modern Gnostics, knowing the taxonomy probably can comply with it
better than ancient Gnostics, who usually didn't call themselves that
and had no idea of modern classifications.
>> Hrmm. But they SAY (or imply) they have a direct connection,
>> which they
>> just don't. They can call themselves modern Druids, with the caveat
>> that they may not have anything at all in common with the Druids of
>> fable.
> How do you know there's no direct connection? What do you mean by a
> direct connection? Practically everybody of italian ancestry I've ever
> had extended conversation with has at some point claimed a direct
> connection to the mafia.
That's more likely to be true than a direct connection to ancient druids.
> Usually through an uncle or something like
> that. Given the "six degrees of separation" stuff I'd guess that they
> mostly all have a connection within at most 4 links. But then, what do
> we mean by the mafia? If somebody works for a real estate company that's
> owned by a legitimate corporation that started out as a mafia money
> laundry, does that count? Back in the old days the mafia was a loose
> association of competing organisations, who had a few doctrines in
> common and some methodology in common. A direct connection with one
> mafia might still leave you two links away from another mafia.
> And nowadays -- somebody told me that Bank of America is owned by the
> mafia, but somebody else told me the jesuits own them. And there's a
> claim that the Yakuza bought into BoA. Who really owns Bank of America?
> You could look it up. You could look at their SEC filing, and if the top
> 15 stockholers are individuals and not the catholic church or the mafia
> or pension funds then that proves the stories are wrong, hmm? And if you
> believe that, I have a campaign finance law to sell you.... It isn't a
> trivial question who really owns BoA. And if that isn't trivial, what
> can we possibly say about the pedigree of secret societies from 400 AD
> to now?
Well, then, you're arguing that taxonomic definition of Gnostic is
person who claims to be, and as such, most people who have been
classified Gnostic on the system most commonly used don't qualify as
Gnostics. Further, since you say we can say nothing to address the
issue, then, there's no point in further discussion about it.
The end.
m, that was enough of that anyways
Jonah Thomas
> Jonah Thomas wrote:
> > Sonnenblume <sarg...@earthlink.net> wrote:
> >> I am willing to go with that inasmuch as there isn't someone
> >> around to
> >> dispute the name. I believe the Cathars considered themselves
> >> Christians (NOT Gnostics) but the Pope had something to say about
> >> that.
> > Yes. Still, if you want a definitive answer then you should ask a
> > cathar.
>
> Who were all apparently wiped out.
Their churces were burned and those who admitted to it were killed.
Yhat's close enough for government work. I see no particular reason to
think they were wiped out. The question is, would the survivors get
discouraged enough to quit? They'd tend to proselytise very cautiously,
so their numbers wouldn't grow fast. Would they dwindle away? I can
imagine it either way. They weren't like the Shakers, who depended
entirely on converts.
> > This might be about the best you can do.
> > http://www.cathar.net/
These people claim to be directly descended from the cathars.
Superficially they look like a normal new england fringe protestant
group.
Once in atlanta I attended a service with a group that claimed they
split off from catholicism before Luther, that then -- 30 years ago --
did their level best to reproduce catholic rites. I got the impression
from some of the priest's side remarks that a lot of their current
members were excommunicated catholics. I wasn't clear on the details at
the time but now I see that many such groups base their authorityi on a
connection to Utrecht.
Maybe a closer look at this modern cathar group would make me think they
probably are recent. I'm not sure how to judge it, though. Like their
kooky idea of alternating 10 years announcing their presence and 10
years hiding ... this is the sort of compromise you'd expect from
independent new england religous groups.
The same year I visited that catholic group I went to the only Atlanta
pentecostal church that was listed in the phone book. It was a large and
wealthy church, the largest and wealthiest pentecostal church I've ever
seen. The sermon explained that being wealthy did not mean you couldn't
be a good christian. I was surprised that during the sermon the pastor
took out a hip flask and drank from it in front of the whole
congregation. Nobody seemed to notice except me. I didn't know whether
they all understood that it wasn't alcohol, or whether they approved of
him drinking on the job. I didn't have the nerve to ask. During the
sunday school service one of the members told me that his grandfather
went to a pentecostal church where they said it was singful to wear a
necktie. They were almost all poor farmers, and keeping their religion
meant they couldn't get white-collar jobs. Clearly, he had found a
compromise.
> >> Modern Gnostics have no direct connection with ancient Gnostics,
> >> unlike say, Catholics.
> > But if they claim a distant past, how could you possibly disprove
> > it?
>
> I can't disprove it, Jonah, I simply am not obligated to accept
> the
> claim without evidence for it. On a spiritual basis, I can let any
> such claim lie, since faith would demand the believer accept it, and
> it would have no impact on the unbeliever.
> As a historical claim, I would simply evaluate on the same basis
> on I
> evaluate any other historical claim: is there any evidence?
I tend to simply not care. But I would split them on a different
criteria. If they seem to be trying hard to stay consistent with ancient
doctrines, that's one sort. And if they seem to have their doctrines
integrated into their beliefs and they're following them wherever they
lead, that's a different sort. The second are far more interesting and
to my mind are more likely to actually be connected to old roots.
> >> In fact, modern Gnostics may be more truly Gnostic than
> >> actual ancient gnostics, simply because most of the ancient texts
> >were> toasted, which conceals the degree of variation amoungst
> >ancient> Gnostics.
> > I don't see how that makes modern gnostics more gnostic than ancient
> > gnostics. I see how it might likely make them more gnostic than our
> > reconstruction of gnosticism from inadequate ancient texts.
>
> Modern Gnostics, knowing the taxonomy probably can comply with
> it
> better than ancient Gnostics, who usually didn't call themselves that
> and had no idea of modern classifications.
Yes, and so they would tend to be derivative and uninteresting. If you
want to revive something 2000 years old, why not join a re-enactors'
group and pretend you're a roman legionaire? Get some exercise.
> > Practically everybody of italian ancestry I've ever
> > had extended conversation with has at some point claimed a direct
> > connection to the mafia.
>
> That's more likely to be true than a direct connection to
> ancient druids.
If they say they're druids, I want to know what oral tradition they can
recite. If they have some stuff that hasn't already been found, then
it's interesting and possibly useful. You'd want to tag everything you
get from them as maybe fake, but you could transcribe it and look it
over and see where it leads. I don't know how far you could get with
that approach. The guys who thought they found the rules for the old
aztec ball game from watching mazatec children play are probably right.
But how much can be preserved, really?
> Well, then, you're arguing that taxonomic definition of Gnostic is
> person who claims to be, and as such, most people who have been
> classified Gnostic on the system most commonly used don't qualify as
> Gnostics. Further, since you say we can say nothing to address the
> issue, then, there's no point in further discussion about it.
> The end.
It might be interesting to consider what they actually say, and what it
might mean to them, and what it might mean to us. And if some ideas came
in that somebody says shouldn't be called gnostic, I don't mind.
Imagine you were studying a martial art. And for each move, instead of
practicing the move they explained its history. "This attack was
developed at Shaolin temple in 983 AD. It was kept completely secret
until the destruction of the temple, and at that time it became a secret
move practiced by the Chiang family, who kept it secret by killing
everybody they used it against and all witnesses. After 315 years the
Chiang family taught it to their trusted soldiers, and within 10 years a
defector taught it to the Ssu family. After the whole Chiang family was
exterminated three of their former lieutenants taught it in their
competing schools, ki acut go, song ti ki, and gong ki. A gong ki
teacher brought it to japan, where...." And then the whole dojo debates
whether it should really be called a shaolin move or not. Wouldn't it be
more interesting to consider whether you want to learn the move, and/or
learn a defense against it, and maybe practice? And later if a
martial-arts historian watches you and decides that you aren't authentic
shaolin, you can smile at him. Why would you care?
Kater Moggin
> martial-arts historian watches you and decides that you aren't authentic
> shaolin, you can smile at him. Why would you care?
If you didn't care, why would you write thousands of words
on the topic? 'I don't care' sounds like sour grapes, as
though you're trying to make yourself feel better after getting
put in your place.
-- Moggin
Kater Moggin
> *Anarcissie* wrote:
> > As I recall there was a large quasi-Gnostic religious
> > community in Bulgaria in the Middle Ages,
> Yes. They are responsible for the unfortunate fact that the verb "to
> bugger" derives from "Bulgarian".
The folks who made "Bulgarian" into "bougre" belong to the
crowd that was responsible for the Inquisition and the
Crusades: adherents of Christianity in its Creator-worshipping
form.
-- Moggin
Jonah Thomas
Ah, Moggin the testosterone-crazed pedant who writes to put his chosen
enemies in their places.
You're welcome to feel like you won all your arguments. I have been
discussing matters at cross-purposes to you, but that's OK. You defined
what the rules of your game were, and you defined the topic to argue,
and you defined what it meant to win, and you decided who won according
to your criteria.
I had some hope you'd see the emptiness of your online life and try
something different, but by this point it doesn't look likely that my
responses will lead you in that direction.
Jonah Thomas
> *Anarcissie* wrote:
> > As I recall there was a large quasi-Gnostic religious
> > community in Bulgaria in the Middle Ages,
>
> Yes. They are responsible for the unfortunate fact that the verb "to
> bugger" derives from "Bulgarian".
It appears christians ran a propaganda campaign against them using that
soundbite. Was that how it started? Did the "greek" association come
from a political or religious slur? Catholics against greek orthodox
maybe? How about ogre-uighur? Slav-slave? Bohemian-bohemian?
Even in the most benighted times, mercenaries and prostitutes diffused
across eurasia, spreading stories. Could the bugger thing have already
spread, and the church opportunisticly pasted it to cathars? In those
days there was so little written down, particularly by or about the
lower classes, who could tell?
The conventional wisdom is that the catholics started it about the
bulgarian cathars. I don't see strong reason to claim some particular
other story is true instead, but still I want to point out that this one
is only weakly supported.
Paul Ilechko
> Even in the most benighted times, mercenaries and prostitutes diffused
> across eurasia, spreading stories. Could the bugger thing have already
> spread, and the church opportunisticly pasted it to cathars? In those
> days there was so little written down, particularly by or about the
> lower classes, who could tell?
>
> The conventional wisdom is that the catholics started it about the
> bulgarian cathars. I don't see strong reason to claim some particular
> other story is true instead, but still I want to point out that this one
> is only weakly supported.
Anti-homosexual slurring is always strongly correlated with closeted
fags and paedophiles on the religious right. It was probably no
different then.
Kater Moggin
> > If you didn't care, why would you write thousands of words
> > on the topic? 'I don't care' sounds like sour grapes, as
> > though you're trying to make yourself feel better after getting
> > put in your place.
Jonah Thomas <j2th...@cavtel.net>:
> Ah, Moggin the testosterone-crazed pedant who writes to put his chosen
> enemies in their places.
I can see you're not going to answer my question, but then
there wasn't much you could say.
> You're welcome to feel like you won all your arguments. I have been
> discussing matters at cross-purposes to you, but that's OK. You defined
You've been contradicting yourself, arguing "If you really
want to know whether a cathar is a gnostic or not, you
should ask him. It's the only approach that really makes sense"
at the same time you label the Cathars "gnostics" (a name
there's no sign they used), ignoring your own foolish principle.
> what the rules of your game were, and you defined the topic to argue,
> and you defined what it meant to win, and you decided who won according
> to your criteria.
I offered a case about gnosticism, disputing the amazingly
ignorant assertions that anti-cosmism is missing from the
gnostic perspective and that the demiurge is never said to make
anything in gnostic mythology. I gave evidence from the
sources, provided cites to the material I'd quoted, and invited
criticism of my reading.
You answered with name-calling, unable to come up with any
better reply aside from an art-history analogy you simply
refused to talk about after I showed that it argued against you.
-- Moggin
Jonah Thomas
> I offered a case about gnosticism, disputing the amazingly
> ignorant assertions that anti-cosmism is missing from the
> gnostic perspective and that the demiurge is never said to make
> anything in gnostic mythology.
Is *that* all you're on about? I strongly doubt that the guy you were
responding to claimed that no gnostic ever believed the demiurge ever
made anything. And I'm sure they didn't mean to say that no gnostic was
ever anti-cosmic. I thought they were saying that they were willing to
accept somebody who thought the demi-urge wasn't creative or that wasn't
anti-cosmic as gnostic. The second when the original non-anti-cosmic guy
himself claimed to be gnostic.
Well! I'mk glad we finally got that cleared up. What a long and strange
journey you've led us on, from such a simple misunderstanding!
> You answered with name-calling, unable to come up with any
> better reply aside from an art-history analogy you simply
> refused to talk about after I showed that it argued against you.
You ignored my other arguments, and you changed that one into something
I didn't say. Then you responded to your own analogy. It led me to
wonder whether you picked up your style in argumentation from the church
members who argued against gnostics! ;)
So I suggested we might try discussing things with a third-party
referee, since you ignored or distorted what I said. But you ignored
that too. You are playing your own game by yourself, but you pretend
you're scoring points off kibitzers.
My advice to you: Get a life.
Kater Moggin
> > I offered a case about gnosticism, disputing the amazingly
> > ignorant assertions that anti-cosmism is missing from the
> > gnostic perspective and that the demiurge is never said to make
> > anything in gnostic mythology.
Jonah Thomas <j2th...@cavtel.net>:
> Is *that* all you're on about?
Is _that_ the best you can come up with? Well, apparently
so.
> I strongly doubt that the guy you were
> responding to claimed that no gnostic ever believed the demiurge ever
> made anything. And I'm sure they didn't mean to say that no gnostic was
> ever anti-cosmic.
Nice to hear about your doubts and certainties. Seems you
arrive at them randomly, though. John Lash repeatedly and
ridiculously denies any anti-cosmism in the gnostic perspective:
Scholars use the term anti-cosmic to describe
"religious pessimism" and the world-hating attitude
ascribed to Gnostics. But these attributions are
manifestly wrong. They cannot possibly reflect what
Gnostics believed...First, the claim that Gnostics
regarded the material world as "a deterioriation
of spirit" and a place of enslavement for the
"divine sparks" cannot be true...Second, the claim
that "the whole universe a depravation of the
Deity," or to put it otherwise, that the material
world is a creation of the Demiurge, who is a false
deity, also cannot be true.
Citing Lash as an authority, Anton said, "...in gnosticism
YWWH is believed to be an impostor who cannot really create
anything." According to these two, the gnostics didn't have an
anti-cosmic outlook, the demiurge isn't said to make this
world in gnostic mythology, etc. I showed that the evidence is
plainly against them.
> I thought they were saying that they were willing to
> accept somebody who thought the demi-urge wasn't creative or that wasn't
> anti-cosmic as gnostic. The second when the original non-anti-cosmic guy
> himself claimed to be gnostic.
Wrong again. Anton said the very opposite: "I don't even
claim to be a gnostic." His words.
> Well! I'mk glad we finally got that cleared up. What a long and strange
> journey you've led us on, from such a simple misunderstanding!
Agreed you had a simple-minded misunderstanding, or anyway
I'll go along with that story. If you realize your strong
doubts and certainties were based on a stupid mistake, then you
may have learned something.
> You ignored my other arguments, and you changed that one into something
More unsupported accusations: the only kind that you make.
Truth be told, you erased your own words when I showed how
they contradicted you. In fact you've done the same thing here.
I reminded you that while you said, "If you really want to
know whether a cathar is a gnostic or not, you should ask
him. It's the only approach that really makes sense," you also
called the Cathars "gnostics," a name there's no sign they
applied to themselves, contradicting your own foolish principle.
You answered by hitting the delete key, same thing you did
before.
-- Moggin
Jonah Thomas
> > I strongly doubt that the guy you were
> > responding to claimed that no gnostic ever believed the demiurge
> > ever made anything. And I'm sure they didn't mean to say that no
> > gnostic was ever anti-cosmic.
>
> Nice to hear about your doubts and certainties. Seems you
> arrive at them randomly, though. John Lash repeatedly and
> ridiculously denies any anti-cosmism in the gnostic perspective:
>
> Scholars use the term anti-cosmic to describe
> "religious pessimism" and the world-hating attitude
> ascribed to Gnostics. But these attributions are
> manifestly wrong. They cannot possibly reflect what
> Gnostics believed...First, the claim that Gnostics
> regarded the material world as "a deterioriation
> of spirit" and a place of enslavement for the
> "divine sparks" cannot be true...Second, the claim
> that "the whole universe a depravation of the
> Deity," or to put it otherwise, that the material
> world is a creation of the Demiurge, who is a false
> deity, also cannot be true.
I believe Lash is wrong about that. Some people who are commonly labeled
as gnostics are widely reported as saying just the opposite of what you
quote, in the first claim. The second may be more a matter of how to
interpret what the claimed gnostics are reported to have said, but for
the first claim a superficial reading of the texts implies that you're
right and Lash is wrong, if Lash actually said this. Lash is re-creating
gnostic thinking in ways that make sense to him. He can claim that the
christian writings about gnostics must misrepresent them, and that's
likely true. And he can claim that actual gnostic writings that appear
to contradict his stand do not actually say what they appear to, and he
could be right about that too. It's risky for Lash or anyone to
interpret other people's theology from logic. This approach utterly
fails with christians and zen buddhists, who both reject logic. Both say
things that do not make logical sense. That could be just as true of
gnostics.
> Citing Lash as an authority, Anton said, "...in gnosticism
> YWWH is believed to be an impostor who cannot really create
> anything." According to these two, the gnostics didn't have an
> anti-cosmic outlook, the demiurge isn't said to make this
> world in gnostic mythology, etc. I showed that the evidence is
> plainly against them.
This second point you have not established at all, but I believe your
interpretation is fairly plausible, as is Anton's.
> > I thought they were saying that they were willing to
> > accept somebody who thought the demi-urge wasn't creative or that
> > wasn't anti-cosmic as gnostic. The second when the original
> > non-anti-cosmic guy himself claimed to be gnostic.
>
> Wrong again. Anton said the very opposite: "I don't even
> claim to be a gnostic." His words.
Lash claims to be ecognostic. He doesn't like the term "gnostic", but he
claims the tradition.
"I have problems with the word Gnostic, as the Gnostics themselves did.
In fact, the teachers in the Mysteries did not call themselves
gnostokoi. This term implies 'know it alls, smart-asses,' and was used
to insult them. They called themselves telestai, 'those who are aimed,
or directed.'"
It's only Lash's claim to the tradition that makes him an authority. If
he isn't one of them himself then he's no more an authority than you
are. Ah, I forgot to ask. You aren't a gnostic, are you?
> > You ignored my other arguments, and you changed that one into
> > something
>
> More unsupported accusations: the only kind that you make.
You utterly ignored my arguments, and now you continue to claim I didn't
make them. The only charitable interpretation I can make from this is
that you simply didn't notice them.
And you continue to ignore my suggestion for a referee. Apparently you
don't trust an impartial referee to support you, you'd rather go on
claiming that you're right and everybody else is wrong.
What I'm fascinated by here is your capacity to repeat yourself. You
picked on one point where you decided you were right and Anton was
wrong, and you've repeated it over and over and over. What do you get
out of this? I imagine the little glow of satisfaction you must get
every time you repeat once again that you're right and somebody else is
wrong. Haven't you gotten bored yet?
Just how easily trolled are you? Would you do this if it was something
where you were obviously right? What if I said the sun hasn't come up
and it never will, that it's dark, always dark, and there will never
ever be a sunrise. And no matter what authorities you quoted in response
I kept saying that the sun has never risen and it never will. Would you
keep repeating your authorities for weeks and months?
Would you argue like this about *anything*? Or only about topics where
the other guy has a strong point that you can't actually refute
effectively?
Kater Moggin
> I believe
I didn't ask what you believe. I showed that the evidence
in the sources clearly and repeatedly contradicts the
assertions anti-cosmism is missing from the gnostic outlook and
that in gnosticism the demiurge is never said to make
anything: the falsehoods presented by Anton and John Lash, his
supposed authority.
> Some people who are commonly labeled as gnostics
Ah, "some people." I suppose you think that you're making
an argument of some kind.
> Lash is re-creating
> gnostic thinking in ways that make sense to him. He can claim that the
> christian writings about gnostics must misrepresent them, and that's
> likely true.
Lash is badly misrepresenting gnostic thinking, judging by
the evidence in the sources, and arguing that the Church
Fathers support him. I showed that they do the opposite. Keep
up or shut up. Thanks.
John Lash:
> "I have problems with the word Gnostic, as the Gnostics themselves did.
> In fact, the teachers in the Mysteries did not call themselves
> gnostokoi. This term implies 'know it alls, smart-asses,' and was used
> to insult them. They called themselves telestai, 'those who are aimed,
> or directed.'"
Lash's "facts" are falsehoods. Some, tho not all gnostics
did use that that name for themselves, according to the
available evidence. The list includes the Naasenes (Hippolytus
RH 5.1.1 and 5.6), the Justinians (RH 5.18), possibly the
Sethians and the Peratae (RH 5.18), Prodicus and followers (see
Clement of Alexandria, _Strom_. 3.30), the Marcellians, a
group of Carpocratians following Marcellina (that's in Irenaeus
AH 1.25.6), the Valentinians or possibly other Christian
gnostics (Origen, _Contra Celsus_ 5.61), etc. Lash couldn't be
more obviously wrong.
His claim that the name was insulting is also contradicted
by the historical evidence. Instead of using "gnostic" as
though it was a put-down, the heresy-hunter Irenaeus refuses to
grant the gnostics the credit that it implies, repeatedly
referring to them as "gnostics falsely so-called," the opposite
of what Lash insists.
> You utterly ignored my arguments, and now you continue to claim
I demonstrated that you argued against yourself: you made
an analogy that was far more accurate than you might have
intended it to be, and just lately you insisted self-definition
is the only sensible criterion at the same time that you
defined the Cathars as "gnostics," a name that they didn't take
for themselves. In both case you replied in the same way:
first you erased your own words, then you deleted any reference
to them.
In fact you just did it again. Kinda funny: you kick and
fuss about always-unspecified arguments that I supposedly
ignored, but I pay attention to your comments while you keep on
running from what you say.
-- Moggin
Jonah Thomas
> John Lash:
>
> > "I have problems with the word Gnostic, as the Gnostics themselves
> > did. In fact, the teachers in the Mysteries did not call themselves
> > gnostokoi. This term implies 'know it alls, smart-asses,' and was
> > used to insult them. They called themselves telestai, 'those who are
> > aimed, or directed.'"
>
> Lash's "facts" are falsehoods. Some, tho not all gnostics
> did use that that name for themselves, according to the
> available evidence. The list includes the Naasenes (Hippolytus
> RH 5.1.1 and 5.6), the Justinians (RH 5.18), possibly the
> Sethians and the Peratae (RH 5.18), Prodicus and followers (see
> Clement of Alexandria, _Strom_. 3.30), the Marcellians, a
> group of Carpocratians following Marcellina (that's in Irenaeus
> AH 1.25.6), the Valentinians or possibly other Christian
> gnostics (Origen, _Contra Celsus_ 5.61), etc. Lash couldn't be
> more obviously wrong.
> Actually, like it or not, you don't have any inkling. The
Kater Moggin
> Kater Moggin <kimm...@fastmail.fm> wrote:
Nice of Jonah to quote me. He didn't respond, so I'll add
some brief comments.
> > Lash's "facts" are falsehoods. Some, tho not all gnostics
> > did use that that name for themselves, according to the
> > available evidence. The list includes the Naasenes (Hippolytus
> > RH 5.1.1 and 5.6), the Justinians (RH 5.18), possibly the
> > Sethians and the Peratae (RH 5.18), Prodicus and followers (see
> > Clement of Alexandria, _Strom_. 3.30), the Marcellians, a
> > group of Carpocratians following Marcellina (that's in Irenaeus
> > AH 1.25.6), the Valentinians or possibly other Christian
> > gnostics (Origen, _Contra Celsus_ 5.61), etc. Lash couldn't be
> > more obviously wrong.
Lash's assertion that the gnostics didn't label themselves
_gnostikoi_ is, like his ignorant claim anti-cosmism is
missing from the gnostic point of view, repeatedly contradicted
by the existing evidence. Not all of the gnostics adopted
that name, but there are enough to notice in the sources. Lash
is just making shit up.
> > Actually, like it or not, you don't have any inkling. The
> > word "gnosticism" didn't even _exist_ in the 2nd century.
> > It's a modern coinage. The earliest cites I've come across are
> > Henry More's _Antidote Against Idolatry_,1653, and Thomas
> > Tenison's _Idolatry, A Discourse_, 1678. More compares certain
> > features of his time to what he calls "the old abhorred
> > Gnosticism." Tenison is just as critical, but he provides more
> > discussion, arguing that Colossians 1:15-16 opposes the
> > gnostic view by identifying the Creator with God and commenting
> > that Ignatius battled the gnostics by "affirming that there
> > was one God of the Old and New Testament...for the creating and
> > governing of all things." Tenison also invokes Irenaeus'
> > authority in stating God "did make all things," contrary to the
> > gnostic view. He names Simon Magus and Valentinus, in
> > particular: Simon Magus assigns the Creation to a gang of evil
> > angels (Irenaeus, Adv. Haer. 1:23.2-3), and of course the
> > Valentinians lower the creator of this world from supreme being
> > to inferior demiurge.
A response to John Kennedy, who had the idea that the word
"gnosticism" dates from the 2nd century. Not so. As I
explained, it's a modern term, going back only to the 1600's so
far as I know. If anyone has cites earlier than More's
_Antitode_, I'd be very interested. That's the oldest one I've
seen.
Now, I'm gonna take a wild guess and say Jonah thinks he's
caught me in a contradiction. If so, he's sufficiently
moronic to have missed the difference between "gnostic," a word
from antiquity (same goes for "gnosis") and the word
"gnosticism," by comparison a late arrival dating only from the
17th century.
-- Moggin
Jonah Thomas
>
> > > Some, tho not all gnostics
> > > did use that that name for themselves, according to the
> > > available evidence. The list includes the Naasenes (Hippolytus
> > > RH 5.1.1 and 5.6), the Justinians (RH 5.18), possibly the
> > > Sethians and the Peratae (RH 5.18), Prodicus and followers (see
> > > Clement of Alexandria, _Strom_. 3.30), the Marcellians, a
> > > group of Carpocratians following Marcellina (that's in Irenaeus
> > > AH 1.25.6), the Valentinians or possibly other Christian
> > > gnostics (Origen, _Contra Celsus_ 5.61), etc.
>
> _gnostikoi_ is, like his ignorant claim anti-cosmism is
> missing from the gnostic point of view, repeatedly contradicted
> by the existing evidence.
>
> > > It's a modern coinage.
> A response to John Kennedy, who had the idea that the word
> "gnosticism" dates from the 2nd century. Not so. As I
> explained, it's a modern term, going back only to the 1600's so
> far as I know.
> Now, I'm gonna take a wild guess and say Jonah thinks he's
> caught me in a contradiction. If so, he's sufficiently
> moronic to have missed the difference between "gnostic," a word
> from antiquity (same goes for "gnosis") and the word
> "gnosticism," by comparison a late arrival dating only from the
> 17th century.
If you consider this a *defense*, you have no business discussing the
matter in public.
Sheesh. I'm not saying you contradicted yourself. I'm saying you're
utterly clueless.
I mean, you probably don't even understand why this destroys any
credibility you might have had posing as a human being.
John W. Kennedy
> John W. Kennedy <jwk...@attglobal.net>:
>
> ["Gnosticism"]
>
>> Actually, like it or not, it has been used with that meaning (among
>> others) at least since the 2nd century.
>
> Actually, like it or not, you don't have any inkling. The
> word "gnosticism" didn't even _exist_ in the 2nd century.
Sorry. I momentarily thought I was addressing an adult.
See Clement of Alexandria on γνωσις.
--
John W. Kennedy
"The bright critics assembled in this volume will doubtless show, in
their sophisticated and ingenious new ways, that, just as /Pooh/ is
suffused with humanism, our humanism itself, at this late date, has
become full of /Pooh./"
-- Frederick Crews. "Postmodern Pooh", Preface
John W. Kennedy
> adherents of Christianity in its Creator-worshipping
> form.
Except among a few insane anti-Semites, that's the only form
Christianity has ever had.
--
John W. Kennedy
"The grand art mastered the thudding hammer of Thor
And the heart of our lord Taliessin determined the war."
-- Charles Williams. "Mount Badon"
Kater Moggin
> Kater Moggin wrote:
It's interesting what John took the trouble to remove from
my one-sentence response.
He had blamed the Bogomils for the fact that "the verb 'to
bugger" derives from 'Bulgarian.'"
I reminded him "Bulgarian" was turned into "bougre" by the
the same crowd responsible for the Inquisition and the
Crusades: adherents of Christianity in its Creator-worshipping
form.
The Inquisition, the Crusades and their link with orthodox
Christianity vanished from his reply.
> Except among a few insane anti-Semites, that's the only form
> Christianity has ever had.
False, of course. Ancient Christian gnostics rejected the
worship of either Creator or Creation. Same again in the
Middle Ages with the Cathars and Bogomils. Christian orthodoxy
replied with fire and sword.
Anti-semitism in Christianity is associated primarily with
the Creator-worshipping branch of the religion.* There are
only traces in the evidence on Christian gnosticism (Bonacursus'
assertion that "no Jew can be saved" according to certain
Cathars, for instance). By contrast, orthodox Christianity has
an infamous history of anti-Semitism dating all way back to
antiquity. The oldest examples come from the canonical NT (e.g.
Matthew 27:25 and 1 Thess. 2:14-16), and the Church Dads
continue the theme. Ignatius labels the Jews "murderers of the
Lord" (Trallians 11), Origen claims the Jews are a "wicked
nation" deservedly suffering (in Contra Celsus 2.8), Tertullian
compares the Jew to a snake (Adv. Marc. 3.7), Chrysostom
claims "the Jews themselves are demons" (in Homilies 1.6.3), so
on and so forth.
*Or the Christian religions, since its two basic types are
so divided.
-- Moggin
Kater Moggin
> If you consider this
I consider John Lash wrong to blindly contend the gnostics
never used that name for themselves, since as usual he's
contradicted by the historical evidence, which says some though
not all of them did what he denies.
I consider John Kennedy mistaken in claiming that the word
"gnosticism" existed in the 2nd c. While "gnosis" and
"gnostic" are ancient terms, "gnosticism" dates from the 1600's.
> a *defense*, you have no business discussing the
> matter in public.
More of your empty name-calling, obviously the best you're
able to do.
-- Moggin
Kater Moggin
> > You don't have any inkling. The
> > word "gnosticism" didn't even _exist_ in the 2nd century.
John W. Kennedy <jwk...@attglobal.net>:
> Sorry.
You've piled up alot to apologize for, but I'm unconvinced
of your sincerity.
> I momentarily thought
You thought that the word "gnosticism" dates at least from
the 2nd century. You were mistaken. Again, "gnosis" and
"gnostic" are both ancient terms, going back to Plato or before.
But "gnosticism" is a modern coinage. No cites I've come
across earlier than the mid-1600's, though I'd be interested to
hear about some.
> thought I was addressing an adult.
Whosoever shall not receive the kingdom of God as a little
child shall in no wise enter therein. Luke 18:17. 1
Corinthians 13:11, on putting away childish things, seems to be
headed in the opposite direction, but this is one of the
places where a scriptural conflict clears up on inspection. In
context 1 Corinthians' "childish things" are actually the
things of the here and now, said to be no more than a dim image
of the world to come. 1 Cor. 13:12: "Now we see through a
glass, darkly; but then face to face." Cf. the Phaedrus 250a-b.
So the epistle is disparaging ordinary adult concerns in
keeping with similar ideas in the Gospels. Same thing going on
in 1 Corinthians 3:1-3: the rhetoric seems to valorize
adulthood, but the argument is _rejecting_ the world, the flesh
and the supposed wisdom of men, the concerns of ordinary
adults, contrasting them to the unnatural, other-worldly wisdom
of God, consistent with the Gospel teachings in which
childhood signifies a spiritual condition closer to the kingdom
than later life.
> See Clement of Alexandria on 伞衫慎森色.
You're confused. Clement of Alexandria talks about gnosis
and gnostics. So do others like Irenaeus, who disputes the
gnostics and their claims to knowledge, labeling them "gnostics
falsely so-called" and declaring they trace back to Simon
Magus, where he says "knowledge falsely so called [_pseudonumos
gnosis_] received its beginning." (See Adv. Haer. 1.23.4.)
But none of them uses the word "gnosticism," despite your claim
about its 2nd c. meaning.
-- Moggin
Jonah Thomas
> Jonah Thomas <j2th...@cavtel.net>:
>
> > If you consider this
>
> I consider John Lash wrong to blindly contend the gnostics
>
> I consider John Kennedy mistaken in claiming that the word
> "gnosticism" existed in the 2nd c. While "gnosis" and
> "gnostic" are ancient terms, "gnosticism" dates from the 1600's.
>
> > a *defense*, you have no business discussing the
> > matter in public.
>
> More of your empty name-calling, obviously the best you're
> able to do.
I will step up and defend Moggin, since he won't defend himself.
It is not true that Moggin has no sense of humor. Note for example:
> > (I can't abadon all hope, like all the oldsters abandoned
> > rec.arts.books; I've seen no evidence of a blogosphere for the
> > soul.)
> Gnosticism has its own sort of hopefulness, e.g. about the
> end of this world.
Humor.
Or consider this exchange:
> > Can't you see it is the same thing with different words?
> I can see that you've moved from excusable ignorance on an
> obscure topic to lying and dodging.
With a favorable reading you can't help but think he's chuckling inside
as he refuses others all flexibility in language.
> > In fact the more I read about gnosticism the more
> > it becomes obvious that there is no clear definition of it. Also a
> > lot of the information that we have about it comes from sources that
> > opposed it. Further, the term seems to have been coined long after
> > the original philosophers had disappeared so that even they
> > themselves would not have used the name gnosticism.
> No sense saying "further" when you haven't gotten anywhere.
"More? More? I ain't had *some* yet!"
> > Well, see, you think you're the referee
> Well, see, you're just making shit up again. Referees are
> neutral third parties, a role I never claimed. I've been
> defending my position, refuting Anton's, and showing your words
> make a mockery of you.
You just know he had to be laughing out loud at this point.
> > when in reality I'm the referee
> Ah. You were projecting your claim to be the referee, the
> "reality" in your view, onto me.
> > You have certainly repeated that enough. You have not shown that the
> > gnostics failed to distinguish between creation and assembly.
> In other words, you've totally failed to find any evidence
> of the distinction you're insisting on in the gnostic
> source-material, so you claim it's my job to prove the negative.
And here, where he accuses me of demanding he prove the negative, when
his claim is precisely the negative I asked him to prove.
> > and Anton is clearly on drugs and has mixed up
> > something else completely different with Gnostics.
> Probably comes from inhaling a bit too much of the incense
> burned at New Age gift shops.
This is weaker than the others but it does at least show he's capable of
metaphor.
I contend that with a liberal reading, Moggin passes the Turing test.
bob
wrote:
>Kater Moggin <kimm...@fastmail.fm>:
>
>> > You don't have any inkling. The
>> > word "gnosticism" didn't even _exist_ in the 2nd century.
>
>John W. Kennedy <jwk...@attglobal.net>:
>
>> Sorry.
>
> You've piled up alot to apologize for, but I'm unconvinced
>of your sincerity.
>
>> I momentarily thought
>
> You thought that the word "gnosticism" dates at least from
>the 2nd century. You were mistaken. Again, "gnosis" and
>"gnostic" are both ancient terms, going back to Plato or before.
>But "gnosticism" is a modern coinage. No cites I've come
>across earlier than the mid-1600's, though I'd be interested to
>hear about some.
Didn't you mention this a couple of days ago? Yes, you did.
"The earliest cites I've come across are
Henry More's _Antidote Against Idolatry_, 1653, and Thomas
Tenison's _Idolatry, A Discourse_, 1678. "
Your posts are highly repetitive. Give it a break.
Kater Moggin
> > I can see that you've moved from excusable ignorance on an
> > obscure topic to lying and dodging.
Jonah Thomas <j2th...@cavtel.net>:
> With a favorable reading you can't help but think he's chuckling inside
> as he refuses others all flexibility in language.
I'm laughing at the dishonesty Jonah is reduced to, worthy
of a dirty politician's PR firm. Barely needs saying he
edited-out the specifics, viz. the opposition between the claim
that in gnosticism the demiurge never really makes anything
and the evidence in the sources, where the demiurge is depicted
as the maker of this world.
> You just know he had to be laughing out loud at this point.
I sure had reason to laugh, as Jonah proved by erasing his
own words. Example: he said, "If you really want to know
whether a cathar is a gnostic or not, you should ask him," then
insisted that's "the only approach that really makes sense."
But he had already labeled the Cathars "gnostics," a name there
isn't any sign they applied to themselves. Faced with the
fact he'd contradicted his own foolish principle, Jonah replied
by hitting the delete key.
Or take his attempted mind-reading. "Well, see, you think
you're the referee." A thought that never crossed my mind.
As I told him, referees are neutral third parties: a role I've
never played. I've defended my position, refuted certain
others, and showed that Jonah's own comments make a fool of him.
> And here, where he accuses me of demanding he prove the negative, when
Exactly what Jonah did. After he failed to offer evidence
showing the gnostics distinguished between "creation and
assembly," he pretended it was my job to prove that distinction
was missing from the sources.
-- Moggin
Kater Moggin
> > Again, "gnosis" and
> > "gnostic" are both ancient terms, going back to Plato or before.
> > But "gnosticism" is a modern coinage. No cites I've come
> > across earlier than the mid-1600's, though I'd be interested to
> > hear about some.
bob <than...@coldmail.nu>:
> Didn't you mention this a couple of days ago? Yes, you did.
Thus my use of the word "again." It's nice that you agree
I chose the right one.
-- Moggin
vf...@aol.com
Jonah Thomas <j2tho...@cavtel.net>:
Kater is referring to his approved list, his particular set of
ancient
writers who to him are the only true gnostics, no others need apply.
Moggin
*********** REPLY SEPARATOR ***********
V:
Hi Kater.
Don't know if you remeber me. I had some correspondence with you a
while back.
I never got around to asking you, what is your religion if any?
What was your religious background in the past?
BTW, I know you like philosophy. A good group for you may be:
http://www.ilovephilosophy.com/phpbb/index.php
Check it out.
They don't like profanity, but as far as topics go it is the most
open, moderated forum I've been on.
Take care,
V (Male)
Agnostic Freethinker
Practical Philosopher
bob
> Kater Moggin <kimmer...@fastmail.fm>:
>
> > > Again, "gnosis" and
> > > "gnostic" are both ancient terms, going back to Plato or before.
> > > But "gnosticism" is a modern coinage. No cites I've come
> > > across earlier than the mid-1600's, though I'd be interested to
> > > hear about some.
>
>
> > Didn't you mention this a couple of days ago? Yes, you did.
>
> Thus my use of the word "again." It's nice that you agree
> I chose the right one.
Ah, I thought you were referring to the post you'd submitted before
the post I referenced.
http://groups.google.com/group/alt.angst/msg/279d68ff1a6fee6e?dmode=source
My mistake.
The discussion has started to interest me though, I have to admit, I'm
not sure why.
Jonah Thomas
> Jonah Thomas <j2th...@cavtel.net>:
>
> > With a favorable reading you can't help but think he's chuckling
> > inside as he refuses others all flexibility in language.
>
> I'm laughing at the dishonesty Jonah is reduced to, worthy
> of a dirty politician's PR firm. Barely needs saying he
> edited-out the specifics, viz. the opposition between the claim
> that in gnosticism the demiurge never really makes anything
> and the evidence in the sources, where the demiurge is depicted
> as the maker of this world.
I *tried* to defend you. It looks hopeless.
> > You just know he had to be laughing out loud at this point.
>
> I sure had reason to laugh, as Jonah proved by erasing his
> own words. Example: he said, "If you really want to know
> whether a cathar is a gnostic or not, you should ask him," then
> insisted that's "the only approach that really makes sense."
> But he had already labeled the Cathars "gnostics," a name there
> isn't any sign they applied to themselves. Faced with the
> fact he'd contradicted his own foolish principle, Jonah replied
> by hitting the delete key.
> Or take his attempted mind-reading. "Well, see, you think
> you're the referee." A thought that never crossed my mind.
> As I told him, referees are neutral third parties: a role I've
> never played. I've defended my position, refuted certain
> others, and showed that Jonah's own comments make a fool of him.
Moggin, as usual, you have decided what the words mean and then you act
like everybody agrees. But finding out how people use the language is a
whole lot of what communication is about. It's futile to attempt
discussion with you but I suppose I have nothing better to do at the
moment, I've got a bit of writer's block on my novel, the children are
in bed, and the design specs are still confounded.
You decided for yourself that referees are neutral. But of course there
are lots of biased referees like you. You "defend" your position with no
one to say whether your defense is valid but you. You attack others by
the same rule. If you were fighting with swords or grenades or something
then there would be no need for a referee -- the laws of physics would
establish whether the people you attack are punctured, sliced, diced,
splattered, etc. But when it's you deciding what your words mean and
what their words mean and what somebody-who-wrote-in-greek-in-100-AD
meant, and you insist that you have shown the truth about all that, you
are taking the position of a crooked referee. At least the way I use the
language. You of course say that I'm mind-reading, that the word
*really* means what you think it means.
I'm surprised that you could read texts in aramaic, and see the same
text translated into greek and latin and english and talk as you do
about the real meanings. Oh well. My futile internet good deed for the
day.
> > And here, where he accuses me of demanding he prove the negative,
> > when
>
> Exactly what Jonah did. After he failed to offer evidence
> showing the gnostics distinguished between "creation and
> assembly," he pretended it was my job to prove that distinction
> was missing from the sources.
Moggin, let me tell you another story. The first time I ever attended a
Mensa meeting, I didn't at all know what to expect. I liked the idea of
meeting smart people, and they were having a party, and the Mensa
contact-person I called said they didn't mind if I showed up.
So there were about 30 or so people at somebody's house, sort of milling
together, and somebody started up a game of chinese checkers and I
joined in. I'd never played chinese checkers with 6 people before, much
less 6 smart people. So I paid very careful attention to the game and
thought hard about what might work. I started to get a feel for how the
other people played, and predicted patterns in their moves, and I won
the game. They politely congratulated me and everybody got up and went
off to do something else. All the time I was thinking about how to win
the chinese checkers game I hadn't thought about what would happen after
I won. And -- nothing happened. I looked for another game to play and
before I found one I started noticing the other people. A lot of them
were just standing around having casual conversations. What they did at
work, that kind of thing. Nothing at all profound. They weren't acting
like I expected a Mensa organization to act. (But then I didn't have
much idea what to expect, either.) So I watched some more. And after
awhile I started seeing patterns. A lot of the guys were paying close
attention to some of the women. They looked relaxed and friendly, but
they were carefully remembering what happened and I could see that each
of them was crafting his responses, attempting to guide the
conversations to his particular goals. And a while later something
jumped out at me -- the women who were just talking when they felt like
it and getting treated normally all wore shiny rings on their left
hands, while the women that were getting the unblinking attention (not
literally, the guys were blinking and looking relaxed and all) wore no
rings at all.
And I noticed that when they played bridge or monopoly or trivial
pursuit, they weren't putting all that much attention into the game.
They were putting most of their attention into the *other* game. Trying
too hard to win at chinese checkers, or bridge, or monopoly etc, was to
monumentally miss the point.
Of course, this isn't a bunch of people meeting face-to-face. This is
Usenet, where you can choose whatever game you want and play by your own
rules, and if a bunch of soccer players start playing soccer on your
football field you can yell at them, or if their tiddlywinks land on
your chessboard likewise. But consider whether you're having enough fun,
playing your own game by your own rules all alone. The lone debater
among people who're playing charades and such....