The wise truly know that they have something, but the fool pretends that he has everything and expresses the opposite.   According to Hebrew wisdom, the fool is not really the atheist, as is commonly assumed.  Atheists are openly saying that they have  no belief in God or a god, while the fool is not necessarily someone who makes such a public declaration.  The fool says so in his heart.  The fool would seem logically then to be the religious people.  Is that too wide a sweep of the brush?  Aren’t the professedly religious people usually implicated in unneighbourly and destructive thinking and behaviour?  As a religious person, I would be a fool to elevate religions in general to the kind of pedestal that the  some religions occupy.

None of my leaders claim to be God.  They dare not claim that their word is law.  They do not claim to have the power of life and death over the religion’s adherents.  In fact some religions do not have adherents; one is either born into it or not.  Entire populations, born into imposed belief in the existence of God this become weapons of mass distinction.   We do have the right to follow our ancestor’s God, provided, I would argue, that we take His worship to the next level, forward we would hope.  This would be an appropriate application of wisdom.

In the search for wisdom, people take on loyalty to a person, like Mohammed, or Moses or Messiah, as the infallible guide, but frequently and increasingly we see a preference for a less than reasonable robotic compliance.  We see an imposition of oppressive edicts on one’s peers.  We see less intelligent and reverent interpretation of the instruction (from the guide) and equally reverent interpersonal relationships (as exhibited by the guide).  There is some kind of inner-man denial (play-acting?) taking place.

On the inside is where fool or the wise person is born.  It is on the inside that we get our label: fool or wise.  If the fool is one who says, in his heart, that there is no God we should not take the public or audible saying too seriously.  he fool is essentially fooling himself.  If my heart was denying God’s existence I could be an a lama, a rabbi, an imam, a guru, a prophet, a pastor , a priest or a pious Christian, but I would still be a fool.