There is no such thing as
good vs evil. One religion's good is another religion's evil.
Good too has been defined by Islamic terrorists and Christian Inquisitionists is "true" good.
Who defines right vs wrong?
There is no humanly way possible to define "true" good and evil. Because I don't believe in Jesus, or Buddha or Krishna, and therefore, neither Jesus, Mohammed, Hare Krishna, Gandhi nor Stalin is qualified to define
good or
evil for me. They may offer some helpful suggestions, but they are way way not qualified.
The only possible explanation, is purity vs impurity, desirable vs undesirable, alignment vs misalignment.
Purity is also a hard to define term, unless we define the qualities that we want. Such that in a mixture, if we want lead, and gold is considered impurity, then we will melt and refine a piece of rock to get rid of all the gold to get the lead.
Our life is a centrifugal purifier. Life in the Universe is a percolator, to evolutionarily percolate the best to the top, to be separated from the slag.
But then who is qualified to define what is purity and what is slag? We ourselves the human race is qualified to define "truth", "righteousness", "good", etc.
Let me illustrate it with Hebrew, since I am familiar with Hebrew. I am sure other primeval languages like Chinese or Sanskrit would have similar predispositions. We can't depend on English, Greek or Latin because they are abstract languages that have lost all their connections to primitive humans.
[אב] = father
[א]head of [ב]enclosure/house
[אם] = [אמ] = mother
[א]head of [מ]flow of water
[אם] = [אמ] = possibility, what-if, discovery
[אמת] (emet) = truth
[אמן] = [אמנ] (amein) = agreement to a communal truth
[אמונה] emunah = trust, faith.
passive participle of [אמן].
having a communal agreement between the parties involved.
Arabic, Aramaic and Hebrew draws from the same Phoenician roots. That means the primitive peoples of the middle-east already honestly accept that "truth" is due to the collective agreement of a community.
That is what Evolution is about. Evolution is about the ability of a group to formulate a unifying framework. The framework that is able to unite a larger group will defeat the groups whose ideologies have low unification tendencies.
Islamist groups are like the Ebola virus. It kills its own carriers. Islamism, the Crusaders, the Inquisitionists, anti-gay proponents are like Ebola virus. They turn on their own. They kill their own carriers, and creating a huge empty crater devoid of life.
Evolution is said to be the survival of the fittest. That is not an adequate definition. Evolution is the survival of the most liberally diverse group that is able to put aside our disagreement and help one another to survive the percolation and centrifugation taking place in the universe. Diversity in unity is strength because it will ensure survival of a group when an enemy attacks one subgroup, the rest of the main group survives.
In this way, according to the primeval origins of Hebrew, "TRUTH" is defined by the largest and most liberally diverse group.
So this Universe is merely a self-defining baking oven to bake a multi-flavoured pie, and those ideologies who refuse to cooperate in the survival of the human race will be burnt to a crisp.
This is the ingenuity of G'd the Creator. The self-defining human race.
[אמונה] (emunah) is the word translated in English as "faith".
It is from the word [אמן] (amen), which means agree.
Emunah means trust and confidence.
In engineering, we build confidence by deploying doubt. Doubt is the scaffold of quality confidence.
But the English word "faith" is not so much as meaningless but is an aliased word.
Aliasing is a term in signal engineering to describe a situation where a message masquerades other messages by imitating their characteristic shadow.
People use the word "faith" liberally in ways that do not reflect the actual Hebrew meaning.
In engineering, we do not place that kind of faith. We build confidence. In the financial and business realms, we do not place faith. We build relationships and confidence in those relationships.
You cannot have confidence unless you have a relationship. You cannot have a relationship unless you have spent time building that relationship.
Like a stranger would come to a woman and says "trust me, marry me now so that we have a relationship." You cannot simply say a silly prayer of confession of sins and then claim to have a relationship due to faith.
You and the other party must actively build that relationship from the time both of you accept the relationship. Without works there is no faith. Faith alone cannot save you.
Confidence will save you. Confidence = faith + work.
Emunah/Confidence is a two-way street. You have as much trust in G'd as G'd trusts in you. Does G'd trust you?
In order to have emunah-faith confidence, you need to have a relationship. In order to have a relationship, you need to build that relationship. You cannot have emunah-faith unless you work at building that relationship.
Therefore, "faith" without works is meaningless. It's like getting a electricity bill without using the electricity. You cannot be "saved" by "faith" alone, because it is meaningless.
"Truth" emet in Hebrew is an agreement, a collective amen.
So when you invoke the word "truth" it sounds empty. Because unless I am in agreement with you, "truth" is an empty meaningless word.
Therefore, Romans and Pauline concepts are totally out of alignment with the Hebrew scriptures and Hebrew grammar concerning the word Emunah.
