h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I vaguely remember being exposed to a system of belief (related to Gnosticism, I think) that went something like this:

The world is Evil
God created the world
:: God is Evil (or at least amused by our torment)

The mor strictly Gnostic version is more like this:

The world is Evil
God is good
:: God did not create this world


Can anybody identify the source of the previous (and far mor disturbing) theory?

You're almost there. I've been studying Gnosticism a bit lately, and even have an Approved Guide Entry on it. It goes like this:

God created the world as a boundary between Good and Evil.
Evil invaded.
The world is now evil, as well as a battleground between Good and Evil.

The struggle between Good and Evil in the Gnostic faith, as well as a few other dualistic systems (Zoroastrianism, Hermeticism, Mazdaism, etc.) are where the Christian myths of God and Satan's battles come from. Makes for some good apocalyptic movies, but not much else.

Don't know where the first one came from, but I know I've heard it before.

I like that turn on things. I'll keep reading.

I've just found some excellent (or at least entertaining) pages that talk about Gnosticism and have led me to the Gospel of Thomas.

This short scripture may or may not be related to Orthodox Gnosticism (is there such a thing?) but speaks a great deal about being the twin of Christ and the oneness of all things and women having no souls.

Strange and unusual. Women have no souls but if they act like men they can have one mysteriously scotch taped to their spleen. I hope I got that bit wrong, it's just too foul a thought to think that Talulah Bankhead had no soul.

I'm in the throws of reformulating my universe and this nature of God and Evil thing might just help me find/invent something comfortable.

No, there's no such thing as Othodox Gnosticism. Like any sect in those early days, it was widely divided among many issues. I have a copy of the complete Nag Hammadi collection, which is where the Gospel of Thomas was rediscovered. As for being the twin of Christ... ummm... I'm not sure where you're coming from, there. The Gospel of Thomas is a book of the sayings of Christ, all smashed together without any story fluffing it out. It is the source material (or, as most biblical scholars believe, directly related to the source material) that the authors of the Synoptic Gospels (Matt, Mark, Luke) used to write their stories. Therefore, the person in the Gospel of Thomas is not a twin to Jesus... he's the very thing.

The previous theory, I think, was espoused by Mark Twain (?) who said that the Devil was good, was the victim of enemy propoganda, and that God was evil. Whether he was the source, I dunno - it's an idea that plenty of people have come up with on their own.

Or been tempted into by Satan. of course...