before our search for definitions
What do we, humans, understand by "righteousness", "unrighteousness", "wicked" or "just"?
As with every term in a communication, all terms should mean the same thing for the people communicating.
Since these consequence-characteristics are not defined, then maybe they should not be defined, but only claimed by the Genesis-Exodus to test our own "righteousness" which may precisely lie in trusting its reasons and explanations, without understanding, even while being bewildered by the incoherencies.
Our "righteousness" may never lie in the understanding of these characteristics to follow or avoid, but only in the shut-down of our understanding or our critical thinking, and the opening-up of our uncritical trust.
If so, then these characteristics should never have clear definitions.
If so, then we should be reduced to helplessly accepting anything anything as righteous or as wicked...
If so, then the monotheistic hierarchy should claim which is which, or when which becomes which...
What they want should become what God wants...
Now we should imagine their grip...
But what I notice is that even the monotheistic hierarchy, curiously discards the essence or the "righteousness" expressed in religious laws, by allowing ways around these laws, like for example applying only the letter of the law, or the words making up the sentence of the law.
For example, if God asks women to cover their hair, we don't even have to guess the evident reason, since He says it: humility, as opposed to seduction.
If women use wigs to cover their hair, are they being humble, or are they being outrageous?
If women cover their beautifully dressed hair in church and expose it the moment they step out, are they being humble or are they being outrageous?
If women cover their hair but use lavish make-up and multi-color nail polish on fingers and toes, are they being humble or are they being outrageous?
All religious authorities have allowed the way around this law, as they have allowed for so many others. Times change...
But how much more can religious authorities mock the supposed God by mocking the supposed "word of God" and defeating any purpose for the law itself by applying the words, emptied of their purpose?
Doing that only means that the religious authorities themselves do not take the word of God as immutable.
So they "interpret" the demands of God too?
Does time change in any way, any aspect of the law, the "eternal word of God", to need "interpretation"?
If yes, then the word "eternal" starts flickering...
With the "eternal" flickering, the central column supposting monotheism starts cracking...
All the claims of the Genesis-Exodus about the presented God and His miracles are plagued by the cruel absence of any kind of confirming information coming from any period.
The record keeping civilizations never recorded anything about this illustrious Creator, or about any "multiplication" of any "wonder"; not one.
What makes some people doubt Him further, are the unbelievable errors of simple logic or common sense "revealed" in the Genesis-Exodus, and naturally attributed to the LORD God of Abraham of Isaac and of Jacob.
But maybe the record-keeping civilizations had flooded their archives by records of the LORD God of Abraham of Isaac and of Jacob and His miracles, even if the record-keeping civilizations were not shaken in their belief system...
Maybe these abundant records could not be transmitted to us because they were all lost to time...
In later periods maybe the Romans had flooded their archives with records of all sorts of miracles during their occupation of the land, but all of them were lost too.
After getting everything in its proper historic context, let's come back to "wickedness" or "unrighteousness".
The word "unrighteous" or "wicked" is left to mean some unchangeable, vague but terrible, genocide deserving negativity that everybody is free to understand according to his own experience of "bad".
What the Genesis-Exodus expects us to accept by claiming to be the "word of God" is unbelievable.
The appreciation of someone being "righteous", wicked" or "unrighteous" are vague personal appreciations about the quality of his "being".
The advanced cosmopolitan justice systems at the time insisted on judging actions and discarded any personal appreciation about any "quality of being".
Yet even now we are made to accept these same casual, personal appreciations as reason enough for the killing, extermination, or dispersion of our brilliant ancestors; the ones who built cities, towers, pyramids...
Babylon, Egypt...
The ones who produced our human civilizations...
We should not be condemned to rely on the monotheistic hierarchy to be "explained" "wickedness".
We should be able to read in the Genesis-Exodus at least some clear guidelines into "righteousness" or "wickedness" (reflections of good and bad which are themselves consequences of scarcity) that after supposedly motivating creation, are making the LORD God of Abraham of Isaac and of Jacob incinerate man again and again and again...
As mentioned, the terms "righteous", "unrighteous", "just" or "wicked" can only be a kind of personal, casual appreciation about the character of men, nothing else.
You cannot go in court and say: "He is unrighteous" or "He is "wicked" without specifying what the person did.
You cannot make the judge or the jury condemn even a single man considering your undefined, personal appreciation about the "quality" of his character.
The judge and jury will need to know what he did, and so do we, if we are to go along and subscribe to the extreme devaluation, mass execution, incineration or genocide of men, who were our brilliant forefathers.
Those were our forefathers whose vision and creativity paved the way to our human civilization.
I will never accept to watch my brilliant human forefathers being diminished by anything, not now, not ever;
Not by any "revelation",
Not by any "word of God".
As with every term in a communication, all terms should mean the same thing for the people communicating.
Since these consequence-characteristics are not defined, then maybe they should not be defined, but only claimed by the Genesis-Exodus to test our own "righteousness" which may precisely lie in trusting its reasons and explanations, without understanding, even while being bewildered by the incoherencies.
Our "righteousness" may never lie in the understanding of these characteristics to follow or avoid, but only in the shut-down of our understanding or our critical thinking, and the opening-up of our uncritical trust.
If so, then these characteristics should never have clear definitions.
If so, then we should be reduced to helplessly accepting anything anything as righteous or as wicked...
If so, then the monotheistic hierarchy should claim which is which, or when which becomes which...
What they want should become what God wants...
Now we should imagine their grip...
But what I notice is that even the monotheistic hierarchy, curiously discards the essence or the "righteousness" expressed in religious laws, by allowing ways around these laws, like for example applying only the letter of the law, or the words making up the sentence of the law.
For example, if God asks women to cover their hair, we don't even have to guess the evident reason, since He says it: humility, as opposed to seduction.
If women use wigs to cover their hair, are they being humble, or are they being outrageous?
If women cover their beautifully dressed hair in church and expose it the moment they step out, are they being humble or are they being outrageous?
If women cover their hair but use lavish make-up and multi-color nail polish on fingers and toes, are they being humble or are they being outrageous?
All religious authorities have allowed the way around this law, as they have allowed for so many others. Times change...
But how much more can religious authorities mock the supposed God by mocking the supposed "word of God" and defeating any purpose for the law itself by applying the words, emptied of their purpose?
Doing that only means that the religious authorities themselves do not take the word of God as immutable.
So they "interpret" the demands of God too?
Does time change in any way, any aspect of the law, the "eternal word of God", to need "interpretation"?
If yes, then the word "eternal" starts flickering...
With the "eternal" flickering, the central column supposting monotheism starts cracking...
All the claims of the Genesis-Exodus about the presented God and His miracles are plagued by the cruel absence of any kind of confirming information coming from any period.
The record keeping civilizations never recorded anything about this illustrious Creator, or about any "multiplication" of any "wonder"; not one.
What makes some people doubt Him further, are the unbelievable errors of simple logic or common sense "revealed" in the Genesis-Exodus, and naturally attributed to the LORD God of Abraham of Isaac and of Jacob.
But maybe the record-keeping civilizations had flooded their archives by records of the LORD God of Abraham of Isaac and of Jacob and His miracles, even if the record-keeping civilizations were not shaken in their belief system...
Maybe these abundant records could not be transmitted to us because they were all lost to time...
In later periods maybe the Romans had flooded their archives with records of all sorts of miracles during their occupation of the land, but all of them were lost too.
After getting everything in its proper historic context, let's come back to "wickedness" or "unrighteousness".
The word "unrighteous" or "wicked" is left to mean some unchangeable, vague but terrible, genocide deserving negativity that everybody is free to understand according to his own experience of "bad".
What the Genesis-Exodus expects us to accept by claiming to be the "word of God" is unbelievable.
The appreciation of someone being "righteous", wicked" or "unrighteous" are vague personal appreciations about the quality of his "being".
The advanced cosmopolitan justice systems at the time insisted on judging actions and discarded any personal appreciation about any "quality of being".
Yet even now we are made to accept these same casual, personal appreciations as reason enough for the killing, extermination, or dispersion of our brilliant ancestors; the ones who built cities, towers, pyramids...
Babylon, Egypt...
The ones who produced our human civilizations...
We should not be condemned to rely on the monotheistic hierarchy to be "explained" "wickedness".
We should be able to read in the Genesis-Exodus at least some clear guidelines into "righteousness" or "wickedness" (reflections of good and bad which are themselves consequences of scarcity) that after supposedly motivating creation, are making the LORD God of Abraham of Isaac and of Jacob incinerate man again and again and again...
As mentioned, the terms "righteous", "unrighteous", "just" or "wicked" can only be a kind of personal, casual appreciation about the character of men, nothing else.
You cannot go in court and say: "He is unrighteous" or "He is "wicked" without specifying what the person did.
You cannot make the judge or the jury condemn even a single man considering your undefined, personal appreciation about the "quality" of his character.
The judge and jury will need to know what he did, and so do we, if we are to go along and subscribe to the extreme devaluation, mass execution, incineration or genocide of men, who were our brilliant forefathers.
Those were our forefathers whose vision and creativity paved the way to our human civilization.
I will never accept to watch my brilliant human forefathers being diminished by anything, not now, not ever;
Not by any "revelation",
Not by any "word of God".