Amos

No mystic, no meditation, no drugs, no Gnostic church which is a contradiction in terms because "gnosis" is the end of religion.

Starboy I am easy but most people are preoccupied with hearsay.

Amos

</strong>

Slow down galiel, there is no Bill Clinton here but my kind of Freethinker and Freeman is commonly spelled with a capital F. It is very esoteric and I am just telling you about it and what I said remains true. I am not sure if dictionary writers can use the term Freethinker because that would end the protestant religions because Freethinkers have the mind of God (they are Gnostic) and according to protestants we must die first to obtain that while Catholics have Saints in heaven know and always did have a Triumphant element in the Church. Do you see the problem that would arise here? Don't look at me because I get my ideas from philosophy. </strong>

Females make great mystics but not gnostics (except when they have a few too many and I would never argue with them then). Well there is no such thing as a Gnostic religion and if there is it is just another protestant church because the Gnostic mind is the mind of God and the end of NT Catholicism ("I saw no temple there" Rev.21:22).

Somewhere I think that I made my position clear but you may not have observed it so my apology is due if I failed you here.

Please accept and never forget that a Gnostic knows (if only by definition) and that a mystic may or may not have correct opinion (or he would be Gnostic--and she can never know with certainty, as you may recall). A mystic is just an enriched believer in the same way as an atheist is an impoverished believer. An agnostic admids that he does not know.

Also understand that on these boards people have a number of variations to describe their beliefs which in the end just means that most of them don't really know what they believe today
as it may change tomorrow.

Thanks, but I know English well enough to make myself clear. I wish I had a better vocabulary but that is not really a problem and I use a dictionary often enough.

Stephen T-B

(The criss-crossing of discussions here has become very confusing, but I suppose it’s bound to happen on a medium which spans many time zones...)
Agapeo asked if I never consider the possibility of there being gods or gods. Answer: no more than I consider the possibility of there being an invisible three-headed monster in my garden (back yard, for Americans.)
He asked why I even discuss the topic “unless you have an agenda to dissuade others?”
A. I’m intrigued by the fact that some people can believe and some people can’t. In my personal life I don’t come across believers (unless I’m with my relatives) but here I meet believers and rationalists so I can explore stuff that I cannot do so anywhere else.
He thinks that prior to my concluding that god had no interest in me, I must have been thinking about my beliefs.
A. I certainly hadn’t questioned them. It was the case that some people whom I knew did speak of having a personal knowledge of god, which I didn’t have. I suppose it was that absence of certain knowledge which prompted me to request god to make up the deficiency. I was not at that stage a freethinker. I simply wanted certainty.
Agapeo says that he is able to contemplate the non-existence of god, and I now know that many Believers go through phases of doubting, but that doesn’t mean they are Freethinkers; they’ve not left the safe harbour of their Faith and ventured out into the open sea. They’ve just looked at it.
Finally, he raises the issue of a Religious Experience.
I can only tell him that I have read several accounts by people who have had a religious experience, and I thought something along the same lines might occur in my life.

Starboy

Oh my, a lucid moment. Are you perhaps then living in a medical institution?

Starboy

HelenM

Starboy

HelenM, your last post has prompted me to ask a question of you. What do you think is the minimum requirements that a person must meet in order to call themselves a Christian? Or would you say that I am a Christian?

Starboy

agapeo

Originally posted by Stephen T-B:
Does anybody really know what time it is? Does anybody really care? (Don't take that seriously. The comment I quoted just reminded me of a song)
Yeah right, but how many times do people bring up in discussion the monster in your backyard?
Hmm . . . interesting. Where do you spend most of your time then? On atheist's or theist's Boards?
Then you were one up on me. I've always questioned them. Not in a obsessive way, but in an attempt to understand why I believed what I believed. If they made much sense or if I was just blindly following dogma without thinking. Personally I find that dangerous.
What's a personal knowledge of God? Is that the same as having a personal relationship with God?
What certain knowledge?
I get the impression that you simply went with the program that you were given as a child. Is this correct? I find it difficult to believe that you never questioned your beliefs prior to (I believe you said) when you were 20.
Well, if I'm willing to look at it then doesn't that in a sense indicate free-thought?
Ahh, no, you raised the issue. I personally put very little stock in religious experience. Not saying it doesn't happen but I don't consider it a guarantee for truth.
Thanks for telling me. But you point out why I don't put a whole lot of stock in personal religious experience of others. If one fails to experience the same thing it appears to cast doubt on the validity of those who have had a religious experience.

Stephen T-B

Well Agapeo, you are right in thinking that I did just “blindly follow dogma without thinking.”
Farther down you wrote: “I get the impression that you simply went with the program that you were given as a child. Is this correct? I find it difficult to believe that you never questioned your beliefs prior to (I believe you said) when you were 20. “
You might find it difficult to believe, but it’s true.
“Thinking” wasn’t something we were encouraged to do, except within the bounds of our religion.

You asked me what is a “personal knowledge of God?”
I’ve absolutely no idea. It’s something I’ve heard people refer to. Some refer to it at Infidels.

You asked me what I meant by “certain knowledge” of god.
I can only tell you that what I required of god was just that - certain knowledge. Again, other people spoke as though they had it. Why didn’t I? I’d spent all my life - up to the age of around 20 - pretending there was a god. I was like one of those courtiers who declared that the Emperor was wearing a fine new set of clothes: everyone else said he was so he must have been, despite the fact that I couldn’t see any.
What happened was, I just stopped pretending.

Like GeoTheo, I consider you to be a relatively liberal thinker - relative to some Christians. But it remains my opinion that you no more qualify as a Freethinker than I do. You are in the safe harbour of your Faith looking out at the sea - but you won’t go there; I am out on the sea and looking at you in the safe harbour - but I won’t go in there. Not now. How can one be a Freethinker if one cannot / will not pursue one’s thoughts to wherever they might lead?

As for religious experiences, all I know is that they happen to some people, and on that basis I thought I might have one too. Who can tell?
I don’t question their validity as regards the individual who has one, nor do I question their affect. In the same way, if someone tells me he has seen a ghost, I don’t question that experience either. But I would question the assumptions which generally accompany such an experience.

galiel

Amos,
We do have a legitimate communication problem here. While I know a great deal more about Gnosis than you might think, I am not familiar with the use of the terms "Freethinker" or "Freemen" in association with Gnosticism. That is my problem. However, you have a problem as well. "Freethinker", in particular is a problem, because the word has a common usage which is diametrically opposed to yours. alpha. I know Gnostics in general place a great deal of magical power in words, and that sometimes language is used (some would say abused) deliberately to confused and bewilder the mind--the theory being that this opens the mind to receive true knowledge about the world that may be clouded by the mental pathways normal language has imposed upon us. epsilon

Nonetheless, when you are communicating outside your faith, you will get nowhere if you insist on calling our "apple" your "orange".

By way of analogy, imagine that we were discussing the astronomical phenomenon of "syzygy". This has a precise modern meaning (the alignment of 3 or more celestial bodies). However, it used to have a specific religious meaning (I think to Valentinians). If a poster started to comment on syzygy assuming the ancient religious meaning, he or she would not be communicating effectively with others on the thread. eta

The OP, "Can a believer be a Freethinker", based on the originator's opening post, clearly refers to the popular modern meaning of the term, *not* an esoteric Gnostic meaning.

Respectfully, you can choose to join the conversation, or you can be reduced to irrelevancy, by insisting on speaking, essentially, a different language. iota Your choice.

With respect, this statement leads me to one of two conclusions: either you really do not know anything about Gnosticism and are just pretending, or you belong to some remote dissenting sub-sect to what is a fairly esoteric sect to begin with. I say this, because one of the defining characteristics of Gnosticism, in all the various (and numerous) permutations of which I am aware, women are not only valued participants, they feature prominently in the cosmogony and myth of Gnosis, from Sophia, Aeon of Wisdom, to Mary Magdalene. omicron This has a lot to due with the synchretic nature of Gnosticism, which assimilated pantheistic beliefs from throughout the Mediterranian and Middle East, from Iran to Greece to Egypt and ancient Judaism.

(By the way, Gnosticism apparently precedes Christianity by some centuries, although, in typical Gnostic fashion, they adopted their tenets to fit with the emerging Christian faith. Gnosticism is an extraordinarily pliable belief system, and is very clever to adopt rituals and symbols of whatever the prevailing religion is so as to attract believers. This is one of the reasons early Christianity was so determined to hunt down and extinguish all Gnostics and Gnostic belief centers--they recognized the threat it presented to the increasingly congealing and dogmatic Church. upsilon

Of course, the main problem Christians--and Jews and Moslems--had with Gnosticism is the fact that they view the Old Testament God, Jehovah, as an evil, flawed and inferior Demo-God, who screwed everything up when creating the world and its inhabitants, which is why life here is so miserable and dreary. (Contrary to some CHristian libels, Gnostics did not reverse the roles of God and Satan, worshiping Satan as the true God; like the stories of Jews eating Christian children on Passover, this is an utter fabrication, created to justify the Christian witchhunt and extermination of Gnostics). Within about 500 years CE, the Church had virtually wiped out Gnosticism, which had thrived through much of the ancient known world.)

Sophia, mother of the seven planet-entities (like other contemporary religions, Gnosticism only refers to the seven planets identified in the ancient world), is a particularly revered figure, and women in general are held to have an easier, shorter path to enlightenment than men. Eve is considered to be the first human endowed with the gift of knowledge, and several mortal women in Gnostic history are considered to have ascended. So, to say that women cannot be Gnostics is rather contrary to current scholarship on the subject.

Most Gnostics and most Gnostic writings, including the Act of Thomas and other parchments discovered at Nod Hammabi would disagree with you. Of course, you are probably defining "religion" in a wierd way that is contrary to the commonly accepted definition. You see the dilemma? If you are interested in communicating, on topic, with the intent of helping others to gain (nonesoteric, material) knowledge, then you have to use a common language. Otherwise, you are just trolling.omega

Once again, you persist in using English words against their meanings. you must decide if you want to communicate or obfuscate. If the former, I will make every effort to engage you in serious conversation. If the latter, I will help everyone else here make you irrelevant to the discussion. No disrespect, just that I am tired of word games and the people who use them to avoid rational thought.

No disrespect was meant by my comment. It had occured to me that perhaps you were actually typing in a second language, and I wanted to make sure I was not interpreting that kind of difficulty with the deliberate tendency of mystic sects, like Christian Gnosticism, Jewish Kabbala and Muslim Sufism or Assasini, to use language to confuse rather than illuminate. It is up to you to convince us of your desire to participate in mmany-to-many conversation, rather than merely ranting orthogonally to it.

[ October 01, 2002: Message edited by: galiel ]

[ October 01, 2002: Message edited by: galiel ]</p>

HelenM

I wouldn't say you're a Christian if you don't say you are - and as best I know, you don't say you are.

As for what the 'minimum requirements' are - well, for what? Anyone can say they are a Christian.

Do you mean 'the minimum requirements to get into heaven'? That's up to God.

You can find this in John's gospel:

John 6:28-29 Then [the crowd] asked [Jesus], "What must we do to do the works God requires ?" Jesus answered, "The work of God is this: to believe in the one he has sent.

One thing that is said here regularly is that Christians can't even agree on what a Christian is.

So whatever I say you could say "Ah but the so-and-so Christians don't agree, do they?"

So, what's the purpose of your question, anyway? Was it worth me responding to it at all? Should I have gone with whining instead?

take care
Helen