The "New" Gnosticism

I occasionally listen to Radiolab podcasts, which attempt to introduce listeners to some interesting concepts in the science and technology fields and occasionally delve into some philosophical and religious subjects.  In short, it's a fertile ground for examining some pop-modern thought.  Their 31 December podcast (Solid as a Rock) is a great example of this.

Jim Holt, author of the book Why does the World Exist? and guest on the program, is essentially what I would call a sort of "new" Gnostic.  The science of quantum mechanics is in retrograde motion toward gnosticism, but with a slightly different spin.

An oversimplification of the gnostic position is that matter is bad and spirit is good.  Really, it is more the idea that matter is a sort of prison for what's actually Real, which is a spiritual existence.  The body in the worldview of the gnostics is a prison to be escaped.  Reality in their frame of reference is a Platonic ideal.  A common example is one of a chair:  the chair is an example (instance) of the Ideal Chair; its very chairness is derived from a Universal Chair.

The gnostics extend this principle to people and explain the creation of matter as a sort of cosmic mistake, or the result of quarreling godlings.  Jesus, the Word (Logos), is seen as one member of this pantheon, and his physical nature is entirely assumed.  Gnostics therefore rejected the idea of a physical human messiah, conceding only that he appeared in human form to accommodate us and lead us to a higher knowledge of spiritual reality.

Interestingly, we have found out that we're mostly made out of empty space thanks to a lot of fun physical principles.  Holt gets into this in the podcast, but takes it a step further:  that in a sense the mathematics describing all of these bits of reality actually are the reality (or at the very least they invoke this reality), and that it's equations all the way down.  He says a lot of very gnostic things in this interview, including a real sideswipe at matter itself.

It's well worth a listen if only for this.  The link also contains some comments that are worth reading, as they expose a bit of interplay between chemistry and physics.