The reason they go out of their way to defend Gnostics like the Cainites, is because they practically believe the same things. They believe they have a "soul" where as everyone else is a soulless, animalistic automaton, just pure matter, but where does an antinomian gnostic, like the Cainites, believe a "soul" comes from? They believe it was a piece of "Sophia" or the Divine Feminine imbued into the 'serpent's seed,' through coitus with Eve. The Cainites believed Eve prostituted herself for 'sacred' "gnosis" (forbidden knowledge/ magic arts) and the offspring was Cain, and Cain was actually the protagonist where as the Creator of the physical world was the "authoritarian" antagonist. In that sense everyone with a "soul" is equal, and equally divine to "Sophia". They believe the creator of the material world is imbued within material creation. And all "matter" is "chaos" because it is the Demiurge's order that causes disruption/ confusion against the immaterial universe & Sophia/ Supreme Androgyne... or something like that. Upon the destruction of the Demiurge and his material world, there is emancipation from "gilgul" or Reincarnation in the material world, and collective apotheosis as 'one'. The Divine Feminine and Divine Masculine are reunited back into the First Matter, which is the Supreme Androgyne. You see the same shit in Kabbalah, the "limitless light of Nothingness" is the "First Matter," and the balance between the Path of Severity and the Path of Mercy is the Hermetic path, Hermaphrodite was the offspring of Hermes & Aphrodite.