Is Gnosticism on the Rise?

For the past few months, I have heard of this word crop up a number of times. In the "Judas Gospel" it was mentioned a number of times. In the internet forum which I visited, the term was also used when an ongoing discussion about God was in full swing. Even the movie "The Matrix", which I found quite profound and thought provoking was rumored to have a Gnostic theme. The funny thing is no one really would talk about it at length. Some Christian material which I have read mention it, but does not fully expound on the belief.

So as usual, I started researching with the help of the internet on my own. I took a look at www.religioustolerance.org. I like this site because it is very concise with its explanations.

http://www.religioustolerance.org/gnostic2.htm

This webpage outlines the beliefs of the gnostics. The most notable for me are the following:

Deity: The Supreme Father God or Supreme God of Truth is remote from human affairs; he is unknowable and undetectable by human senses. She/he created a series of supernatural but finite beings called Aeons. One of these was Sophia, a virgin, who in turn gave birth to an defective, inferior Creator-God, also known as the Demiurge. (Demiurge means "public craftsman" in Greek.) This lower God is sometimes called Yaldabaoth or Ialdabaoth Jaldabaoth -- from Aramaic words meaning "begetter of the Heavens." This is Jehovah, the God of the Hebrew Scriptures (Old Testament). He is portrayed as the creator of the earth and its life forms. He is viewed by Gnostics as fundamentally evil, jealous, rigid, lacking in compassion, and prone to genocide. The Demiurge "thinks that he is supreme. His pride and incompetence have resulted in the sorry state of the world as we know it, and in the blind and ignorant condition of most of mankind."

Evil: They did not look upon the world as having been created perfectly and then having degenerated as a result of the sin of Adam and Eve. Rather the world was seen as being evil at the time of its origin, because it had been created by an inferior God.

Snake Symbol: Some Gnostic sects honored the snake. They did not view the snake as a seducer who led the first couple into sinful behavior. Rather, they saw him/it as a liberator who brought knowledge to Adam and Eve by convincing them to eat of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil and thus to become fully human.

Christ: The role of the redeemer in Gnostic belief is heavily debated at this time. Gnostics seem to have looked upon Christ as a revealer or liberator, rather than a savior or judge. His purpose was to spread knowledge which would free individuals from the Demiurge's control and allow them to return to their spiritual home with the Supreme God at death.

Goodness, when I saw this, I swear I did a lot of thinking. Everything you've learned in Catholic school has been turned upside down. Imagine, God the Father, a "defective, inferior Creator-God". I have to admit though that this theory would answer a lot of questions on why God in the Old Testament was not as likeable as his supposed son Jesus Christ. A lot of people who are against Christianity are against it because of the behavior of God in the Old Testament. There are many sources in the internet that have talked about this.

Two websites I have seen which are not afraid of voicing out there sentiments are:
www.evilbible.com
www.biblicalnonsense.com

From www.evilbible.com, specifically in www.evilbible.com/Murder.htm

The act of murder is rampant in the Bible. In much of the Bible, especially the Old Testament, there are laws that command that people be killed for absurd reasons such as working on the Sabbath, being gay, cursing your parents, or not being a virgin on your wedding night. In addition to these crazy and immoral laws, there are plenty of examples of God's irrationality by his direct killing of many people for reasons that defy any rational explanation such as killing children who make fun of bald people, and the killing of a man who tried to keep the ark of God from falling during transport. There are also countless examples of mass murders commanded by God, including the murder of women, infants, and children.

The following passages are a very small percentage of the total passages approving of murder in the Bible. They are divided here into three parts: 1) Capital Punishment Crimes, 2) God's Murders for Stupid Reasons, 3) Murdering Children, and 4) Miscellaneous Murders. This list is long, but it barely scratches the surface of all the murders approved of in the Bible.

And from www.biblicalnonsense.com, specifically in http://www.biblicalnonsense.com/chapter9.html

Without any conceivable doubt, I firmly believe that the Hebrew god is the most evil character of all time. Starting with the book of Genesis, we learn that he’s an insanely angry deity. Of the many atrocities committed in the Old Testament, God is usually the sole participator. The Genesis authors record the first such instance in chapters 6-8 as the account of Noah’s flood.

The reason that God decides to drown the entire world, killing nearly every living person and animal on earth, is his belief that people are evil and unworthy of existence (Genesis 6:5). So what if they were evil? As Lenny Bruce once exclaimed, “The fault lies with the manufacturer!” God allegedly created humans, yet he faults us for being guided by our desires, instincts, and natural tendencies. Since he’s supposedly omniscient, God realized how we were destined to turn from the beginning. He must also have realized that his lament would fuel the urge to destroy his precious creations, only to leave himself back where he started. Even so, he creates Adam, yet hundreds of years later, he drowns nearly all the men, women, and children on the face of the earth because he deliberately chose not to make us to his liking the first time.

Even if we suppose the adults deserved to die slow and torturous deaths, what association could we conceivably make between their decisions and the adolescent victims of the flood? Couldn’t God have just placed the innocent children and animals aside for a while so that they wouldn’t drown? If not, how about a humane death at the very least? Drowning is a horrible way for people to die. As a result of hopelessly treading water for hours, their muscles burned due to large amounts of lactic acid production. Once they finally gave up, went under, and held their breaths, acidic carbon dioxide eroded their lungs until the unbearable pain forced them to inhale where there was no air for them to breathe. The water brought into their lungs robbed their bodies of oxygen, causing them to go numb. As water violently rushed in and out of their chests, the currents eventually laid their heavily breathing, slowly dying bodies at the bottom of the ocean. The inhaled water caused their lungs to tear and bleed profusely. As their blood supply dwindled, their hearts slowly came to a halt. Even so, their brains continued to process information for another couple of minutes. They were patently aware that death was imminent, yet they could do nothing to speed it or prevent it. I imagine that their final reflections would have been on what they did to deserve such treatment.