Science Fiction and Gnosticism

Found : Science Fiction and Gnosticism

The gnostic religion, which flourished in the first through third centuries A.D., provides an excellent paradigm for the understanding of the type of religious awareness that much SF favors. The gnostics, regarded as heretics by the faction that became orthodox Christianity, were radical transcendentalists. They believed that man is essentially pure spirit (pneuma), trapped in a cage of flesh. The world cannot be taken at face value: it is one vast snare for the senses, causing man to forget his inner spiritual reality. The being who created it was not God: it was a lower power, an "archon" or demiurge, who masquerades as God to the unsuspecting. This creator is not good but evil, or at least ignorant and self-deluded. Mankind's goal must be to transcend its own nescience through gnosis. Gnostic sects had their own subjective science to accomplish this, involving the development of mental powers to break the tyranny of the archons…