No. Gnostic Christians holds no supernatural content and you might recall how Emperors used to name themselves Gods and their sons sons of God.
Does this Gnostic saying sound like we believe in some supernatural being?
Matthew 6:22 The light of the body is the eye: if therefore thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light.
John 14:23 Jesus answered and said unto him, If a man love me, he will keep my words: and my Father will love him, and we will come unto him, and make our abode with him.
Romans 8:29 For whom he did foreknow, he also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brethren.
Those speak of God in the more eastern religion way and not the foolish western religion way.
So do these quotes.
Gnostic Christian Jesus said, “If those who attract you say, ‘See, the Kingdom is in the sky,’ then the birds of the sky will precede you.
If they say to you, ‘It is under the earth,’ then the fish of the sea will precede you.
Rather, the Kingdom of God is inside of you, and it is outside of you.
[Those who] become acquainted with [themselves] will find it; [and when you] become acquainted with yourselves, [you will understand that] it is you who are the sons of the living Father.
But if you will not know yourselves, you dwell in poverty and it is you who are that poverty.”
As you can see from that quote, if we see God’s kingdom all around us and inside of us, we cannot think that the world is anything but evolving perfection. Most just don’t see it and live in poverty.
One of the main points of Gnostic Christianity is free thinking and the perpetual seeking after God as defined as the best rules and laws to live by. Nothing supernatural.
I don’t think that’s true. It’s not that I want to convince you that you believe in supernatural things, but it would be silly to call oneself a Christian of any kind if one did not. Could you define supernatural, just to make sure we are not having a word problem.
Not sure what the relevance of this is.
This sounds very supernatural. It is not an experience that, for example, a realist would consider meaningful. Nor a natural realist. Nor a scientist. Nor most secular intellectuals.
AGain, yup, sounds very supernatural. How can someone’s father make house inside me. Now, of course, they could be speaking metaphorically.
predestinate refers to a supernatural process. And eastern religions - all religions having supernatural facets, are still religions. I think we must have a definition of supernatural before we can go on.
Then why call it a religion? Why use the word God, with a capital G even?
Why not say you are seeking to know yourself? You could consider yourself socratic. The use of the word God assumes supernatural entities and/or processes.
Gnosticism should also be avoided as a term for what you believe since the gnosticisms believed that their was a divinde spark within us related to God who did exist outside us. Note that Jesus above wants people to focus inside themselves but also adds AND IT IS OUTSIDE YOU.
Gnostic Christian is clearly a supernatural formulation. Supernatural : of or relating to an order of existence beyond the visible observable universe; especially : of or relating to God or a god, demigod, spirit, or devil
You use the term God, you have Jesus related scripture, ALL gnosticism believe their is a way to learn about what is beyond the visible observable universe.
Going by all the uses of these word I know and can find.
The dictionary does a good job. Whatever it gives I agree with.
Just showing that the word God applied to people.
You are quite wrong as a realist, especially a natural realist, knows that the ideal for any species, which we would term as God, is one of their own.
A lion looks to a lion for his ideal ideology and God. So should man.
Look up Jung and Freud’s Father Complex and you will recognize that you too have an internal set of instincts that guide you. The word Father has been used to designate that set of instincts way before Christ used it.
What do you have against Webster?
If I say that the sun will rise tomorrow, is that predestination supernatural. No. I thus refute your claim.
Because it is a religion and it uses the word God. I do not have the power or desire to change all the Gnostic Christian traditions because those are what define Gnostic Christianity. You would have me invent a whole new religion. No thanks.
We do say we try to know ourselves. That is part of the definition of Gnosis.
It is not my fault if the term God is misapplied and if you look at the definition you will see that you are adding to the definition. Pick whatever dictionary you prefer and see the truth.
Indeed as he knew how to look.
What do you see? Likely it is not the evolving perfection a Gnostic Christian sees.
I see the best of all possible worlds, because it is the only possible world, given our past. That best is perfection to me as it has me in it. That perfection evolves all the time.
What do you see?
As I said, no. It is rather presumptuous of you to tell me what I believe or what my religion believes. You are trying to make me a literalist to myths and I am telling you that we are not literalists.
[/quote]
Science is saying the same of black matter. That is not supernatural anymore than Gnostic Christian beliefs are.
We do not look at the unseen the same way today as we did in ancient days.
Are radio waves visible? Not to the naked eye, but they are at the subatomic level.
Gnostic Christianity posits a mental condition that allows access to the all. Oneness some call it. Some of the eastern religions posit the same thing. That telepathic connection is as far as we go in believing in what cannot be seen.
That oneness does not include angels and demons which re fictitious characters like all the supernatural Gods.
As to the Christian view, they keep talking of the one and only God when their own first commandment posits many Gods.
Place no Gods above me indicates that there are more Gods than one.
Iconography in the Vatican places God in our minds as shown in the creation painting. In that Gnostic Christianity agree as that notion was likely usurped by Christians from Gnostic Christians.
Then I cannot see where the word God comes in. There should be a much clearer way to describe your beliefs without the word God.
But those royals meant that they were partly supernatural. They did not mean they were merely people.
Could you rephrase that, I don’t know what you are trying to say.
What did you add when you added the word God in that sentence?
Jesus said ‘my Father’. He did not say ‘your FAther’. That would be a poor way to indicate a Father complex, which is generally problematic in Freud and often in Jung.
Who determined that the Sun will rise tomorrow. Predestination, especially in a religious context has to do with fate and being controlled in advance by God. Predestination requires one to predestinate, generally God. IN science certain physical properties and laws are all that is required, no predestination. YOu are confusing the word predestination with causal terms from naturalism.
It is not simple cause and effect. There is no predestination in the scientific world.
Then why call it a religion? Why use the word God, with a capital G even?
[/quote]
So you do not believe in God, but to not use the word would make you think you had to invent a whole new religion?
Yes, of course. That was part of why I asked you why you don’t just say you are trying to know yourself. Why bring God into it?
Note that it is not mere reality, it is the supreme one and both examples are supernatural.
Right but I was pointing out that the Kingdom was not just on the inside which you said was all he meant.
Then it is perfect that the religions are the way they are also.
Something in serious need of evolution, read, change.
I made it clear I was not telling you what to believe. I was, on the other hand, telling you about Gnostic Christianity and also the problems with your language use. You have now told me that to no longer use the word God would mean you had to reinvent the whole religion. I think that is a judgment that is holding you to language you do not need, as you have explained your principles right in front of me without using words that have supernatural connotations.
Oh, so your religion has changed. Then perhaps I am pointing out ways your religion could change further and be more clear.
Visible in that context meant detectable.
Telepathy is a supernatural phenomenon.
It could mean that. Or it could mean that if you place something as God above me you are worshipping something that is not me and thus is not God. IOW the pagans are not worshipping God.
I am happy to drop this since you seem to think I am telling you what to believe, when in fact I am saying that what you tell me you believe is clearer without things like the use of the word God. Much clearer and no longer self-contradictory. So with some other terms. Do what you want but watch and see how the miscommunication repeats in dialogue with others and you will have to explain again.
I got my refreshed information from online definitions of Gnostic Christianity. Perhaps you have already reinvented the religion.
Note, a dualism. A natural world and one that is spiritual. That is supernatural.
The God who created the world, supernatural.
More supernatural, since the term spirit(ual) means something not natural, something transcendent.
Even the basic to Gnosticism idea of the human soul returning to the Oneness requires a supernatural entity. Because then there is no death for these souls.
I get it, you want us to take the word God to be something like the word Buddha in Buddhism. But the problem is this is a revision of Gnosticism and Gnostic Christianity which does not have the emptiness concept at its heart like Buddhism does, and because Gnostic C DOES believe in a transcendant being, God, even if they think one cannot know anything about that being except that everything is an emanation from it in some way. Sorry, that is still supernatural by any definition of the term.
But everything he says about God is a myth anyways. So whether he says that God is supernatural or not makes no difference … it’s not something he knows, it’s something he made up in his imagination. You know … “everything we say about God is a lie”.
If it was easy, there would not have been Inquisitions and Jihads and people using the sword to grow their immoral religions instead of good ideas.
I see natural as anything covered to the sub-atomic level and subject to the laws of physics. Anything undetectable I would put into the supernatural.
Thoughts and consciousness to me are natural. If something or someone is un-detectable to us, then we are foolish to let such phantoms influence us in any way.
Telepathy, which is thoughts, is real to me, — not supernatural. This natural form, me that is, cannot do the supernatural.
The problem with this is that what is detectable changes over time. Things that were not detectable before are detectable now. I think it is extremely likely this will continue. So what some people experience now will only be later confirmed. This has been true in the past. Nature has not been completely detected. Up until the 70s it was considered irrational to speak about animal emotions and intentions in the scientific community. We had no way to confirm that animals were experiencers. This may seem obvious and it was, but in science it was considered anthorpomorphism. I think it was rational to believe that animals had emotions, desires, cognitive processes, plans, memories EVEN THOUGH this was not accepted or explained by science at that time. If someone followed your approach, they might decide that they cannot believe X, because it has not been accepted by scientists, when it is nevertheless real. Further there are many things that the scientific community consider real, but which they cannot explain (yet) using the laws of physics.
[/quote]
Telepathy is natural for me also. But here we have at the very least a gray area. Mainstream science does not accept telepathy, for many of them, those willing to use a problematic term like ‘supernatural’, it would fall in that category.
You also mention only accepting things that are explained by subatomic stuff and the laws of physics. We have no explanation for conscsiousness. We do not know what this phenomenon is.
[/quote]
True but we know it is produced by our minds as we can control outside gadgets just with out mental power.
We know beyond a doubt that consciousness is expressed by our minds/bodies. So far, no one has shown any other source of it.
You might be right that the mainstream scientific community does not accept telepathy as it is hard to reproduce effectively. They are learning much these days.
This scientist developed what they have dubbed the God helmet. His experiments are reproducible, although his is only a low intensity telepathy while I know that it goes a lot deeper than what he has found.