@Witch_Hunter_Siegfried @WhiteJihadJaws @grey It's occultic in its origin, but not exactly competing in the same domain as 'capital G Gnosticism' which is an attempt to subvert Christianity. There are a number of Christians who don't read their Bibles with consistent exegesis and come to conclusions about The Old Testament God being of wildly different temperament and character from New Testament God, and I have even heard sermons on this. People see the fire and brimstone and genocide and the contextual understanding is lost on them, so the temptations to take an easy answer is big. Gnostics come in and say things like
>"Genesis is a foreshadowing. Jesus Christ is the Messiah and the serpent He is going to crush is ackshually the OT God, because the world was made imperfect by a bad creator!"
When you hear this after being never having any proper spiritual formation or being taught how to actually read The Bible properly, it can lure you in. People then rationalize their confusion and cognitive dissonance by simply withdrawing from their faith or becoming "spiritual but not religious" etc. Lots of evil things start out with people taking bad advice and reading books and arguments they're not spiritually mature enough to handle.