Ideally I think one would understand religious malarkey functionally: what conditions made preposterous metaphysics attractive?
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Replying to @jaspergregory @Meaningness
I think mythic expression like this is all about the feels it evokes. This expresses a yearning. What is so preposterous?
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Replying to @robamacl @jaspergregory
That does make sense here … some of the gnostic stuff is really bizzare. Not sure what feels they’d evoke or why you’d want them
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Replying to @Meaningness @jaspergregory
Example? High order bit of Gnosticism seems to be solution to the "problem of evil". Like solipsism? But "the world is bad" is common belief
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Replying to @robamacl
There’s central gnostic mythology involving exceptionally creative kinky sex.
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It seems the Gnostics may have invented “the world is bad”? Seminal proponents, anyway. (So to speak… there’s a lot of semen in their myths)
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Replying to @Meaningness @jaspergregory
Joseph Campbell's 3 stages in orientation toward world: all good, all bad, bad but we can improve.
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He identifies Jains as "all bad". Seems common Indian belief the the world is at best a distraction.
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Replying to @robamacl @jaspergregory
Yup, definitely. No reliable dates for early Jains or Buddhists (afaict), so hard to know whether they or Gnostics got the idea first.
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Counting Plato as a Gnostic here, I guess! Which isn’t nominally accurate, of course.
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Replying to @Meaningness @jaspergregory
Taking Campbell's word, but plausible that "world is bad" is a post-civilization thing. His example of "can improve" is protestant xtian.
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