so... I read the first post and most of the discussion, but it did get a bit long, so forgive me if I mis-read or missed some things.

Two things I would like to say first, and then see where that takes me. First, from a physical/cosmological standpoint something can come of nothing. In fact, and I've posted this somewhere else, cosmologists believe that the big bang is more of a local phenomena which seems to happen when a perfect vacuum is reached. Vacuum energy. I'm a physicist, but by no means studied cosmology so I can't give you the details. In essence, as I#ve understood it though, they believe that when space becomes vast and the fields/radiation and particles per volume are low enough, energy just bubbles up. And since Einstein we understand that E=mc^2, meaning matter is just another form of energy. With this bubbling up, we get a big bang (lots of energy). One of many possible ones. Space being warped by matter, no information can escape these bubbles; at least not by means that we as physicists know about. Which doesn't mean there aren't means that we don't know about. Possibly there are many bubbles that exist side by side. From the statistical point of view it seems likely that there are actually an infinite amount of these bubbles.

Now given that our bubble-universe is expanding and even accelerating at this expansion, as it is believed by cosmologists, at some point all matter in this universe will be so far apart that it will again form a near-perfect vacuum and new bubbles can emerge.

So it seems almost - to me at least - that existence is inherent in even the nothingness. And following the logic of one of my favorite books Goedel Escher Bach, it seems that consciousness is inherent in existence (I'll not go into why, if you're interested, read the book, though it's not what it seems to be about at all in the beginning).

God for me, is the ultimate consciousness.

The second thing I wanted to say, or rather ask is - what do you think of the gnostic texts?

I've been reading up on gonsticism lately and how they originally belonged to christianity but were later persecuted and called heretics because they challenged the authoritarian views of the institutionalized churches. Meaning they were rather inconvenient, especially in terms of controlling the followers. Also in gnosticism there seems to be more ballance between women and men, which it seem historically existed for a short period of time, before men decided they needed to put a stop to it and therefore wrote that women should be obedient and listen to their husbands about all matters.

In gnosticism it seems everyone has authority on religious matters, who has had direct religious experiences. This of course stands in direct opposition to the institutions that seem to claim only the chose leaders who are descendants  of the apostolic tradition are in communication with god. Gnostics believed in Christ. I'd like to know your take on this topic. Gnostics also believed that God could be experienced through self-reflection and that god was the true self.

I haven't studied this to the extend that I would like to, so please forgive me if I got something wrong.

Now personally I have a few problems with the idea of God and Satan etc as it is stated in the old Testament. From personal experiences I can state that the God that I experience is not wrathfull. Rather it is the stage before I reach communication with the divine that seems wrathful and judgemental. Once divinity is accessed though, I find there is nothing I can do to offend it. It is invulnerable to my failings, it is infinitely forgiving and loving, and it misses me, when I turn away from it.

Also the more I think about the more I have to agree with the idea that all evil is just a cognitive disturbance -> you not recognising yourself. God not recognizing itself (sorry I just can't use the  masculine term, it is not the way I experience it). The life that we live we experience seperation - from one another and even from ourselves. This is the ground upon which what we perceive as evil exists. We find we are being controlled by forces we do not understand, but perhaps these are just drives within ourselves that we have not yet fully brought to light. And when we glimpse them they seem alien. I propose that they are not, they only seem to be wholly other. It is the nature of our kind after all to perceive things as other, when they are in fact one...

As for the aliens and the evil - I do believe in some of these ideas to an extent: I believe that we have created over centuries a very hostile world for ourselves. I'm talking about thought-prisons. Prisons that keep us from ever finding our true self, from ever experiencing true freedom and God. I don't think that there is an extradimensional conspiracy at work, or at least that it was not so from the beginning. It could be that in a way what we have created has gained its own life now, and operates like a machine fuled by us, and we can meet its minions as evil entities.

I'm talking about the machinery of our society. This includes institutionalized religions, our economy, slavery, punishment, power-structures, hierarchical thinking, the usage of Aristotelian logic, the idea of yielding authority to another for something we shouldn't etc.

For me this is a matter of mass psychology, perhaps mass pathology. This is not to say the energies are not real. They are real, IMO. But fighting them, rebelling against them, would have to begin in the same place where the problem is situated. In the self. In your prison cell. First you have be break out. Pull the veil from your eyes, unplug your ears and walk out of the cell. The door is open by the way...

oh well. that's just my take on the whole matter. nice thread btw. A little too much dogma for my taste but some interesting thoughts. maybe a little heavy on the quotes there too.