Stoicism vs Gnosticism in Star Wars

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MithrandirOlorin
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Re: Stoicism vs Gnosticism in Star Wars

Post by MithrandirOlorin »

Frustration wrote: Tue May 10, 2022 4:22 pm It's like... it's sort of like a kind of really stupid Christian thriller novel where someone gets DNA from a holy relic and clones Jesus Christ, said clone then having magic powers.

It completely misses the point about who and what Christ is supposed to be in Christian theology (admittedly kind of Platonic) and reduces miracles to special flesh, that can be duplicated, engineered, and controlled.
The fact that you think there is anything platonic about the nature of Christ proves your the one who's wrong.

That the Midichlorians are living things with a will of their own is exactly what prevents it being so easily artificially manipulated, unlike in the the EU stories Lucas didn't like which already had genetic engineering of Force Sensitives.
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Lazerlike42
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Re: Stoicism vs Gnosticism in Star Wars

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I had never before heard the suggestion that Dooku was Anakin's father. I thought the dialogue was pretty clear in the opera scene that Palpatine used midichlorians to create Anakin.
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Re: Stoicism vs Gnosticism in Star Wars

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Lazerlike42 wrote: Wed May 11, 2022 1:50 am I had never before heard the suggestion that Dooku was Anakin's father. I thought the dialogue was pretty clear in the opera scene that Palpatine used midichlorians to create Anakin.
I have heard the theory but it's usually logged as one of the more outlandish ones.
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Re: Stoicism vs Gnosticism in Star Wars

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MithrandirOlorin wrote: Fri May 06, 2022 6:54 am Star Wars fans getting so offended by the Midichlorians, insisting The Force is no longer something spiritual if you’ve also made it Biological or Physical or “Carnal”, wreaks of Gnosticism to me.
More like it reeks of Fundamentalist Protestantism. Trying to shoe horn the spiritual with literalist, scientific explanations of religion in the way Young Earth Creationists do is more this territory.
Now Star Wars has been accused of being Gnostic. Ryan Reeves in one of his videos (I don’t remember which one) references a quote from Yoda in Empire Strikes Back where he says “Luminous being we are, not this crude matter” and yeah that sounds pretty Gnostic out of context, like how some quotes from Paul and the Fourth Gospel are taken out of context to make them sound Gnostic.
You're going to find a lot of Gnostic thinking in North American Christianity if you look.

This is one of my mom's favourite songs which I tolerate hearing when I'm around her, but detest given its implications and my loathing of Gnosticism and its influence in the Modern Era: https://www.songlyrics.com/dottie-rambo ... me-lyrics/
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MithrandirOlorin
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Re: Stoicism vs Gnosticism in Star Wars

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Yeah the Reformation is good because it started the Materialism of the Early Church, but sadly the mainstream didn't go far enough.
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Beastro
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Re: Stoicism vs Gnosticism in Star Wars

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MithrandirOlorin wrote: Wed May 11, 2022 2:39 am Yeah the Reformation is good because it started the Materialism of the Early Church, but sadly the mainstream didn't go far enough.
?

The Renaissance was already doing that.
good because it started the Materialism of the Early Church
What do you mean by this? "Started" what?
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Re: Stoicism vs Gnosticism in Star Wars

Post by hammerofglass »

In Legends it was canon Plagueis created Anakin but it was an accident (it's complicated and a lot more on the Evil Wizard end of the scale than Mad Scientist) and Plagueis didn't find out himself until years later. I don't know for the Disney canon.

In Darths and Droids Anakin still got the Force from someone artificially tinkering with his midiclorians. Qui-Gon did it to fix a bet.
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MithrandirOlorin
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Re: Stoicism vs Gnosticism in Star Wars

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Beastro wrote: Wed May 11, 2022 3:38 am
MithrandirOlorin wrote: Wed May 11, 2022 2:39 am Yeah the Reformation is good because it started the Materialism of the Early Church, but sadly the mainstream didn't go far enough.
?

The Renaissance was already doing that.
good because it started the Materialism of the Early Church
What do you mean by this? "Started" what?
After "started" it was supposed to say "restoring", started restoring.
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Beastro
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Re: Stoicism vs Gnosticism in Star Wars

Post by Beastro »

MithrandirOlorin wrote: Wed May 11, 2022 4:32 am
Beastro wrote: Wed May 11, 2022 3:38 am
MithrandirOlorin wrote: Wed May 11, 2022 2:39 am Yeah the Reformation is good because it started the Materialism of the Early Church, but sadly the mainstream didn't go far enough.
?

The Renaissance was already doing that.
good because it started the Materialism of the Early Church
What do you mean by this? "Started" what?
After "started" it was supposed to say "restoring", started restoring.
"Restored the Materialism of the Early Church"?

The early church wasn't materialistic anymore than it was its opposite. Nobody back two millennia ago materialistically, even those who argued in areas almost in line with it. The paradigm was completely different.
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MithrandirOlorin
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Re: Stoicism vs Gnosticism in Star Wars

Post by MithrandirOlorin »

Stoicism was Theistic Materialism and Epicureanism was Atheistic Materialism, in the first century those two schools the dominant ones not Platonism. A number of books have bene written now on how the Early Church was in line with Stoicism on a number of key concepts.
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