Are religions that use military power instead of moral authority and persuasion

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Is this going to be one of those threads in which everyone embarrasses themselves?

[Filuwaúrdjan]

You have canvased us Gnostic Christians have you?

Yes. They've all been dead for well over a thousand years.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

I don't understand the relation between freethinkers and gnostics

I do: there is none. And the Gnostics would have been opposed, of course.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Not so. I think you should refine your research methods. Or at least get some.

My research method is the following: there was once a branch of Christianity that held certain views and this branch is conventionally referred to by historians as Gnostic Christianity. This particular branch of Christianity - about which we know relatively little and of which what we know at all it is by chance (i.e. the discovery of the Nag Hammadi library) - appears to have died out by the 5th Century at the latest. Of course there has been substantial interest in Gnosticism in certain circles since the 19th century but there's no connection between this and the actual (long dead) religion.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

So I see that you are literally resorting to overt pseudohistory. I would probably give more credence to some fruitloop drivelling on about the Knights Templar...