Laird
Member
Obviously, the undeniable fact that not all is "love and light" does not mean that all is "horror and darkness". But the horror and darkness need explaining - denying them or not looking at them will simply not do. It's intellectually dishonest to say the least.
Yes, well said. The ultimate answer agreed to in that interview as to the existence of evil seems to be that evil is self-existent in its own right, rather than derivative of the Good. This makes most sense to me too, but even given this, it is still very difficult to explain the reality in which we find ourselves.
Let's say that the ultimate Good, that which Nathaniel experiences when he meditates, emanated a Demiurge which was corrupted by this self-existent evil. I have two questions re this: firstly, why would the Good have emanated anything in the first place? Secondly, why could God / the Good not retract or destroy (harmlessly, without pain) this corrupted emanation?
I'm not studied enough in Gnostic thought to know what the "standard" answers are, so I welcome clarification, but perhaps one answer to the first question is that the Good, not knowing of the (self-)existence of Evil prior to emanating, Created for the pleasure of sharing Its goodness with others.
One answer to the second question might be that, having been contaminated by, and to some extent, then, equally controlled by / beholden to Evil as by/to Good, the Good does not have the power to retract or destroy Its emanation without a fight.
So far, so good (and so evil...), and this might leave us in a situation where the Good is forced to reclaim its emanation, and its emanation's flawed creations, from, and by waging a war with, a force to which It is utterly opposed. I do find it difficult to reconcile this sort of "reality is a battlefield" view with the world in which we find ourselves though: yes, there certainly are obvious spiritual battles, both inner and outer, but there is also so much order, pleasure and goodness, which don't really seem to fit the notion of ongoing warfare.
But then again, it might just take a sort of squinting to perform the reconciliation. As I wrote in my guest post for Skeptiko a few episodes back, it is possible that some of the things that we experience as "good" or "pleasurable" are, in fact, traps set by the Enemy to ensare us, to sink us even deeper, to hold us back from reclamation into the Good - "blue pills", if you will.
So, after all, I still find ditheistic moral dualism - despite the difficulty of reconciling it with spiritually transformative experiences (STEs), including near-death experiences, whose message is that "All is Good" and that "God wields ultimate control" - to be the best explanation of and for reality. Can anybody suggest or argue otherwise, or, especially, can anybody perform a tidy reconciliation of this "battlefield" view with those type of "it's all Good" STEs? Are they staged by the demonic? Is it a case of "the darkness appearing as the light"? Is it the demiurge playing tricks on us, boasting of its goodness and omnipotence, fooled into believing it is the Good? But then, why does the demiurge not realise its own fallen nature, if we, its flawed creations, do, and seek salvation from the Good?
This is confusing territory, I have to admit...