Why not? It's a wonderful summary of writings. I'm so glad I found this resource on HN.

Why not? I have been on this particular website quite a few times, but there have been other pages linked on here which I haven't been to so much. It's good to have a variety of interests. I am getting a broader range of websites and articles off here than mainstream media.

Why not? They're nice stories. People like stories, even if they're entirely made up.

I guess maybe it does feel a bit like gross proselytizing. Hm.

I, also frequent this sight to avoid religious dogma.

This is not an online bible, it's an archive of the surviving material from a movement that has had unimaginable reach and impact on the world we live. You can see first hand how diverse their thelogy was prior to canon and orthodox enclosure.

Because it's interesting as hell. I'm Catholic, and clicking around in here there's practically nothing religious in it to me at all. No part of my own faith engages with Celsus Description of the Ophite Diagrams. But it sounds like something out of a Clive Barker book --- and, behold, it is like something out of a Clive Barker book:

    He is the Demiurge of this world, the God of Moses described in his creation    
    narrative. Of the Seven archontic demons, the first is lion-shaped; the second 
    is a bull; the third is amphibious and hisses horribly; the fourth is in the 
    form of an eagle ; the fifth has the appearance of a bear, the sixth, that of 
    a dog ; and the seventh, that of an ass named Thaphabaoth or Onoel.

This is like a weird parallel of Greek mythology. But it's got a little extra charge because it ostensibly plugs into a modern religion. Super fascinating.

Religion is basically assembly for civilization?

Docetism is an early version of the Holographic Universe theory.

It doesn't have to be. From the guidelines (link at the bottom):

On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity