Could someone here explain Gnostisism?

[C-Nub]

I'd ask one of them directly, but to be honest, anyone I've seen on the boards that says their a gnostic, without meaning to be too blunt about it, annoys the crap out of me with their holier-than-other-theists presentation. Would someone mind explaining what exactly sets them apart from other 'stuff'-worshipers and what their basic belief structure is? I didn't find the wiki article to helpful at all.

[McCulloch]

Melodious is the only active member of the forum who claims to be a Gnostic. I can move this thread to the Questions for ... forum and PM a link to him. You are more likely to get an answer that way.

[C-Nub]

Missed the holier-than-thou bit that irritates me about the poster(s) on the forum that actually follow gnostisim.

[McCulloch]

Missed the holier-than-thou bit that irritates me about the poster(s) on the forum that actually follow gnostisim.

Right, I did miss that. Reading too quickly and jumping to conclusions.

Here's my take, not authoritative and probably missing some of the finer points, but here it is.

Gnosticism comes from a Greek word meaning to know. Gnostics claim to have some kind of divine knowledge that has been imparted directly to them from the spirit world and is somehow beyond normal human reasoning and understanding. Hence, they cannot explain it adequately to those of us who have not experienced it.

As far as I can see, Gnostics are less irritating than most believers in that they see all forms of religion and spirituality as essentially an expression of the same thing, so their religion is not as exclusive as the others. They might go on about astrology and strange incomprehensible interpretations of metaphors, but they are not about to lobby our governments into suppressing human rights or advocate violent solutions to religious differences.

[C-Nub]

THAT was all I needed, thank you sir. Wiki went into way too much depth, to the point where I would have had to read a lot more very-dry stuff than I would have wanted to in order to grasp the basic concept.

I think the 'divine knowledge / understanding' aspect of it is what irks me about it, no offense to the (lone) practitioner of it, it's nothing personal, but the pretense at a deeper, meaningful spiritual understanding equates pretty much to assumed-superiority and unjustifiable arrogance to me. I'm a reasonably arrogant guy, so I'm sort of like a sinner casting stones in a glass house in a creek without a paddle (...?) here, but I think I will attempt to adopt some of your very even handed definition of their positive qualities into my assessment. While dealing with them on a one-on-one basis may never be for me, at least now I can appreciate that they're collectively less dangerous than the more fundamental theists in our midst (on earth, that is, not on the forum, where I fear no man and only one Mutant-Badger).

Again, thank you. Sometimes, I prefer to get a simple, non-theistic summation rather than a theistic (and bias) definition from the believers themselves.

[Matt Bentley]

I think they also beleive Christ came to earth as a spirit, not a physical body.