Then why did many of the state churches use rape, ethnic cleansing, and war in a Holy War against the Albigensians, partially because they were labeled as heretical?

Gnosticism is a dead religion more or less, because State Christianity successfully purged the records, the people, and the books. It’s sorta like the 4th Reich or Southern Slave lords talking about freedom or Lincoln.

There’s an inherent bias from the Church of Rome’s pov concerning any kind of heretical organization they had to fight.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l1IoqsFuNec

Just look the factions fighting here today over Woke. It was not much better back in history. Just you read the history books written by the ones that survived the purges.

This one is rarer still, where commentary exceeds the high level lead content by sustained dialogs: sober, stoic, insightful, with unsparing and courageous fatalism. Yogi Berra and R2Ls engineering joke? Yeah.

You people are rare delights! Thank you all for sharing with us, here. Thanks you.

See the Real World consequences of ideas? From the past summer? The estimated property loss from riots in 142 cities is 1 or 2 billion dollars, making the Antifa/BLM/Floyd George riots and arson more costly than the South LA race riots of around 30 years ago. Thus, becoming the most expensive ever.

As I write, the lead story on FNCs Martha MacCallum (?) show mentions that in Minneapolis, murder is up 90%, arson up 80%. Roughly doubling down on metrics of decline.

Yet the far left City Council there is in complete denial of the physical and social decline of the city into the new Detroit.

Ideas discussed here have real world consequences seen there, in Portland, in New York City.

Trump in Bemidji, Minn., directly confronts the Donkey in the state: immigration and the Somali Marxist from my home Congressional District, Ileana Omar. And then segues into the Protest against stupidity that is their rally, and the DFLs virus crisis tyranny and hypocrisy. Good time, good times!

Because the President states the Emersonian Rude Truths of our Time. Sarcasm on the “take this crap” vacillating virus control rules. He cannot help but be the honest voice of outrage. Retaining self-control, insight, and policy criticism, while mincing Sleepy Joe.

Good times, good times. Living in The Truth, riffing like only Trump can. The Manhattan builder turned TV entertainer turned heroic politician.

And Minneapolis still wants to abolish the police? He asks. Yes, replies the crowd. “These are Democrat controlled disasters,” he says. Only in America. Only in our time.

“We love Trump! We love Trump!”

Justice Ginsburg just died. Oh, a Holy Hell! Only in our time.

Actually,come to think of it, see this.

That’s a surface response.

For some, you are correct, and those are the people most amenable to change. For others, there are philosophical assumptions at work and they are meaningful (although faulty IMHO) – and powerful, when taught to the young. And they are being taught to the young.

Love that joke.

Once you determine that you cannot sin with your body, all kinds of abuse are possible. Joseph Stalin, for instance, had likely raped a woman and killed a man when he was quite young. He became utterly convinced of his righteousness as the true warrior of Communism, and he showed no mercy to friends, family, or foes. Jeffrey Epstein may have had his own form of Gnosticism. Nazism, likewise, is a perverted Gnostic religion for the supposed purification of the German race at the expense of everyone else. The committed Nazi could convince himself that the German people were only a few executions away from paradise.

Yes, this definition of Gnosticism is very broad, but the results of people denying the sinful power of their physical humanity are death and destruction. The philosophies of today’s Left are just as Gnostic as those of years past; this is ironic for those, i.e. Marxists, who call themselves materialists.