You've made some awfully strident remarks in this thread, including "We must save our children from foolish belief in the supernatural".
So has your own "Gnostic" Christianity somehow been stripped of all belief in the supernatural? If so, how does that work? It would seem to bear little resemblance to historical Christian gnosticism.
If not, then are you trying to draw a distinction between foolish belief in the supernatural and belief in the supernatural that isn't foolish? That kind of distinction would need to be carefully delineated and justified, and would probably generate no end of philosophical controversy.
Logic, mathematics, the laws of physics and even the meanings of words would seem to be handy. Platonism at least, would give these a supernaturalistic spin. My point is that the natural/supernatural distinction has never been clearly defined and the associated epistemological questions have never been resolved to everyone's satisfaction.
Up above you wrote "Education is the only tool we have to drag ourselves out of ignorance and superstition...", and then you argued that instruction concerning religion should be incorporated into school curricula as some kind of grand anti-superstition social-change program orchestrated from above. My point is that the supposedly-superior 'above' doesn't currently possess the final answers to the age-old metaphysical questions.
Ontologists, epistemologists, ethicists, religious studies scholars, theologians, historians and psychologists of religion, textual scholars...
The academic study of religion is more of a research program (many of them actually) than it is a fixed and settled body of conclusions.
And this is to say nothing of all of the countless individuals whose spiritual progress is their own concern. Religion isn't just a body of facts that students can memorize and then spit back on a test. Religion is something that religious individuals incorporate deeply into their own personal life.
Yet you seem to be calling for some kind of mandatory anti-"superstition" curriculum.
Unfortunately, I suspect that some of your 'facts' might turn out to just be dogmas that you happen to personally favor.
Right, with you in the position to decide what is and isn't 'poor thinking' and in the position to shape young minds so as to ensure that everyone else agrees with you.
That would be more intelligent than most out there but it would be quite boring if everyone thought the same way.
You confuse the myths that Gnostic Christians used to try to explain what they saw with what we believe.
You should remember that Constantine's Christians decimated us and burned our scriptures because we would not believe myths in a literal way. We are esoteric ecumenists and naturalists and have no woo in our beliefs of reality. That is why we say that the only God fit to rule man is a man. Let me expand on that belief a bit.
Some history.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oR02ciandvg&feature=BFa&list=PLCBF574D
The thinking shown below is the Gnostic Christian’s goal as taught by Jesus but know that any belief can be internalized to activate your higher mind.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=alRNbesfXXw&feature=player_embedded
This method and mind set is how you become I am and brethren to Jesus, in the esoteric sense.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FdSVl_HOo8Y
When you can name your God, I am, and mean yourself, you will begin to know the only God you will ever find. Becoming a God is to become more fully human.
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To say that logic, mathematics, and the laws of physics like or need the supernatural is foolish. Science deals in proofs. Not the supernatural.
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"My point is that the supposedly-superior 'above' doesn't currently possess the final answers to the age-old metaphysical questions."
But there is no argument between science and religion on this. Religionists and philosophers both agree that nothing of the metaphysical has been proven and it can only be speculation except for things that have been proven.
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"Ontologists, epistemologists, ethicists, religious studies scholars, theologians, historians and psychologists of religion, textual scholars..."
95% of whom all buy into evolution and have relegated God to the Gap before the big bang.
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"Yet you seem to be calling for some kind of mandatory anti-"superstition" curriculum."
Indeed. Schools should deal with facts and not superstitious and supernatural garbage as none of it has proven itself to be real.
Regards
DL
