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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Steampunkette" data-source="post: 8269882" data-attributes="member: 6796468">I -vibrate- with the urge to explain the fullness of the Gnostic Heresies, but the banhammer would probably drop because while it's a matter of history, it's also obviously incredibly religious. I'll instead hit you with this much:The Gnostics were Philosophers, rather than actual religious individuals. They tried to explain all of the things in the world based on philosophical understanding and greater learning. They even got close to what we'd consider the "Truth" in the theory of Monads. Essentially Atomic particles that are functionally indivisible, the smallest things that could exist.When confronted by Religion, which they often were, they did their best to explain Deities in the same sort of terms, but specifically in the sense that belief in an idea, collective knowledge and focus, could be what makes it "True", inasmuch as anything could be considered true.But they also had their own mythological figures, like Apollonius of Tyana. He was a guy from Cappodacia (Modern Turkey) who supposedly went around teaching Gnostic ideas and philosophies in the first century. He also Healed the Sick, Cast out Demons, and Returned from the Dead after the Romans killed him.Sounds... familiar. There's even suggestions that they're the same person in history being viewed through two different storytellers!(They also believed that Jesus was of God, but only Seemed to have a mortal form when he was, in fact, only a spirit. Docetism was a thing)But yeah. The Gnostics were like "If gods exist it's because we believed them into existence".</blockquote>

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