Heimburger - Davis: Ch. 3

The schism between Manichaeist schools of thought, such as Gnosticism, and Augustinian forms, such as modern American Christianity, is a slim but fundamental difference. When examining the attitudes of the two schools of thought, especially the stances they have regarding nature, creation, the world, transcendence and liberation, the conflict between the two seems unwarranted since, at first glance, a Gnostic and a Christian seemingly believe in enlightenment in some form that can help individuals escape a world of pain and sin. Yet traditional Christianity seems to frame the world as a ruinous wasteland caused by man's ignorance and poor choices. As a result, transcendence becomes a game of reconciliation with God where the individual has a never-ending spiritual struggle. Gnosticism, however, alters this line of thinking by shifting the blame on state of the world as well as the source of confusion and pain towards the creator. Although such ideas were initially proposed by extreme fringe groups, some Gnostics seemed to believe that the nature of how the earth was created was inherently flawed and designed to bring pain and confusion from its inception, implying an accusation of responsibility towards the God as opposed to the man. The study of these debates over fundamental principles of good, evil and the relationship between reality and the individual has many parallels to interactions between spiritual and religious groups that exist today. Christians, for example, may not consider Transcendalists, Mormons or Jehovah's Witnesses in the same ideological group as them due to fundamental differences regarding the Holy Trinity or the role of Jesus in human history. Since such schisms still exist, understanding how communicating information plays a role in philosophical debates is even more essential, which is this chapter may have more heavily covered topics regarding entropy, organization and other metaphysical concepts. Entropy and organization are particularly important concepts to emphasize since they concern the fragmentation of information. The bits of information that are omitted from a message or statement play just as important a role in conveying meaning as what is included, and idea of entropy demonstrates this.

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