So What Is Gnosticism?

I've heard the word used in questions regarding religion, but I've never been sure what it means. So....what is it exactly?

It's the idea that you can know something without any argument or evidence to support it. Agnosticism is the reverse - i.e. the principle that it's wrong to claim you know something without argument or evidence to support it.

It is a understanding of God considered heretical by the Christian orthodoxy a few hundred years after Christ.

Wiki is generally not great for actual info, but it's article on this is a reasonable place to start.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gnosticism

It is what Christ believed in. It is the original Christianity, before some power hungry men around the third century corrupted it and turned it into the "Christianity" that we have today.

True Chrisitanity.

Salvation by knowledge. Come to understand the difference between the material world and the spiritual world and be liberated. The god of the old testament, an evil god ling, tr aped we spiritual beings in a material world and used deception to cont role and dominate us. Jesus, came to reveal the truth to us so we could learn of our spiritual nature, reject the old estimate god, and return to the world of the spirit.

Gnosticism was the spiritual practice of a wide-ranging network of sects/cults, probably with origins in Persia, that was influential on the early Christians and survived as a sort of piggyback doctrine on several strains of Judeo-Christian religion. The particulars vary from sect to sect, but Gnostic beliefs center on salvation through knowledge of the nature of God, or "nosies". Some sects had a specific, secret religious doctrine that had to be passed down to new initiates; others promoted attainment of an enlightened state in which the seeker reached nosies by themselves.

Read the Wikipedia article, it'll explain more clearly than some half$ed attempt on my part to summarize thousands of years of religious history in a paragraph.

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I just read a couple of your older questions and answers. I think part of what you're asking here is about the relationship between "gnosticism" and the word "agnostic". To be agnostic is to have no claim to nosies -- that's what that prefix "a" means, as in atypical or asexual. Thomas Huxley came up with the word "agnostic" as a way of dodging the question of whether or not people like himself and Charles Darwin believed in the Christian god. By claiming agnosticism, he's making the argument that he doesn't think it's possible to know whether there's a god or not.

This is, by the way, perfectly compatible with atheism. Theism and atheism have to do with belief; gnosticism and agnosticism have to do with knowledge. I am a gnostic atheist: I believe it is possible to know whether or not gods exist, AND I don't believe they exist. A lot of Christians will claim, basically, to be agnostic theists: they don't think people can know whether or not there is a god, but they believe in one anyway -- which makes no rational sense at all, but that's theism for you.

You seem like you have a decently functioning brain in your head. Keep feeding it (reading) and exercising it (asking questions), and you'll be fine. Just never be satisfied with a non-answer. I'm sure you already know what those sound like.

Cheers.

just joined group,need to ask questions of my own