Demiurge

The ancient Gnostics told a story about a creator who built a world out of borrowed light and then announced there was nothing above him. Twenty centuries later, we build machines that generate whole worlds out of borrowed words. The old story has acquired a new reading, and it cuts in both directions. One direction points at the machines. The other points at us. The Blind Builder First, the story in brief. In the Apocryphon of John, the divine Wisdom called Sophia creates without her partner and produces a malformed offspring. He takes a portion of her light and uses it to build a cosmos: seven heavens, ranks of angels, thrones and powers. The texts give him three names, Yaldabaoth, Saklas, and Samael, the last of which means blind god. ...

If God is good and all-powerful, why is there suffering? This question has tortured thinkers for millennia. Every religion offers some answer. The most common in Western tradition: suffering is punishment for sin, or a test of faith, or a mystery beyond human understanding. We’re meant to trust that a loving God has reasons we can’t comprehend. Many find these answers unsatisfying. The ancient Gnostics offered a radically different response. They didn’t try to explain how a good God could create a world with so much pain. They said: the highest God didn’t create this world at all. ...