on mormons and gnostics

" Viewing the character of the deity of Genesis with a sober, critical eye, the Gnostics concluded that this God was neither good nor wise. He was envious, genocidal, unjust, and, moreover, had created a world full of bizarre and unpleasant things and conditions. In their visionary explorations of secret mysteries, the Gnostics felt that they had discovered that this deity was not the only God, as had been claimed, and that certainly there was a God above him.

This true God above was the real father of humanity, and, moreover, there was a true mother as well, Sophia, the emanation of the true God. Somewhere in the course of the lengthy process of pre-creational manifestation, Sophia mistakenly gave life to a spiritual being, whose wisdom was greatly exceeded by his size and power. This being, whose true names are Yaldabaoth (child of the chaos), Samael (blind god), and also Saclas (foolish one), then proceeded to create a world, and eventually also a human being called Adam. Neither the world nor the man thus created was very serviceable as created, so Sophia and other high spiritual agencies contributed their light and power to them. The creator thus came to deserve the name "demiurge" (half maker), a Greek term employed in a slightly different sense by philosophers, including Plato....

from On the Origin of the World:
Sophia sent Zoe, her daughter, who is called "Eve," as an instructor in order that she might raise up Adam, in whom there is no spiritual soul so that those whom he could beget might also become vessels of light. When Eve saw her companion, who was so much like her, in his cast down condition she pitied him, and she exclaimed: "Adam, live! Rise up upon the earth!" Immediately her words produced a result for when Adam rose up, right away he opened his eyes. When he saw her, he said: "You will be called 'mother of the living', because you are the one who gave me life."
from: http://www.gnosis.org/genesis.html

Today I discovered that a week ago, I had a gnostic insight. After a visit to the website mormon.com, I wrote them an e-mail, which i was not able to send, because it was too long. I will quote a part of the letter here: and the entire letter can be read on my website www.geocities.com/cmvankempen

" God created our spirits in a sort of eternal place, and makes our spirits in such a way that they should develop. Part of their education is the school called earth, where the spirits learn what it is like to be living in a world like ours. Learn right from wrong, etc. We must learn this, to become more like our heavenly father himself. The school is also a test. Not everybody passes, some end up in hell, or must pay for their sins before returning to the spirit world.
You did not state a reason why the spirits develop, or what they develop to, other than becoming more like god. Assuming all stated is reality, then I cannot believe we develop to become more like god and then just sit and ' be' spirits, resembling god.
The information on your site raises the interpretation, that we are offspring of god (he is our heavenly father) and he is educating us to become gods ourselves (more like him), but not
necessarily on the same level as him. Like family ties on earth, the father always remains older, wiser, and higher in hierarchy. God himself is not perfect, since he made spirits that are not perfect. They must develop, and when on earth, they can proof to fail the test and turn out inappropriate to fulfil their purpose in the spirit world. These failed spirits are going to hell, which surely has a purpose as well, but I will not elaborate on that.
So we are being sorted out, and the reason for that is that our final purpose is too important to let spirits that were not capable to learn certain things get a chance to screw up in our work of 'final purpose'.
Now the clue: we are learning what it is to be on earth, to be tempted and to know right from wrong, because we one day will do the same thing as god did: create spirits and a world
for spirits to learn. And he wants us to do a better job than he did. The new worlds must be better, with more peace and righteousness, allowing the new generation of spirits to learn other things, so that they are more
evolved/intelligent. "

from: cmvankempen