Could some one explain Gnosticism to me?

It's the belief that established morality, rules, regulations, etc are materialistic influences of a world created by something less than divine and are tools to keep the self at a lower vibration.

It's basically an excuse for people to be edgy and shut out their conscious.

>>18982983
>gnosticism is false

Just because you wanna lick them virgin tits of mary doesn't mean that your religion was the true one.

File: 1494008574186.jpg (62KB, 600x362px) Image search: [Google]

62KB, 600x362px

It's an acceptable alternative for those who really want to reject God's only begotten son but who at the same time realize the only thing as retarded as atheism is unironically having a lifestyle that includes worshipping "lord Odin" in current year. Also, it comes across as if you've "done your research" and are informed about something.

>>18982968
The Gnostics by Andrew Phillip Smith

It's a heresy from christianity that denied the truth of the bible because of the source, man. The reason it was stamped out so hard is because the church recognized the danger to its authority, and future, that comes from questioning the sources of "divine revelations".

The early church fathers were always concerned with political, economic, and social power. Not with the truth of their faith. A belief system that challenged the foundations of their religion when it was still vulnerable to other competing faiths could not be allowed.

>>18982968
Go to /r/AcademicBiblical or /r/AskHistorians for a real answer. TL;DR version in part is that whether they even really existed as a cohesive form of Christianity is controversial, since we have so little on gnostic-labeled Christians and much of what we do have is either by their enemies or with little context to tell us how popular or representative the teachings were.

>>18982968
It is more of a different worldview and philosophy, as well as a different religion. The word itself comes from gnosis, which means knowledge. The gnostics believed knowledge brought salvation, and not faith. They believed the God of the old testament was a lesser god, called the demiurge, who wanted humanity kept in the darkness of ignorance. They believed christ to be a promethean figure, bringing the light of knowledge to the few who could receive it. They also believed that since the demiurge created the ten commandments, it was good to break them, and that living a life of hedonistic pleasure was ridding your soul of the chains of the material creator. It is said that the templars in the time of the crusades rediscovered this religion and it passed from them to masonry, and from masonry to illuminists and jacobins, as well as parts surviving in kabala and Zohar followers. Thus why the ruling classes tend to follow aspects of it, though in different ways reflecting the character of the respective cultures.