Assuming no possible values without the existence of god is simply stupid. You do not need an absolute value to compare things with.
I didn't say you couldn't compare things. An Atheist can state that a brick is not a gold bar. That is a comparison. What they cannot say is that a gold bar is better than a brick in any meaningful sense. It is completely subjective which one is better. Economics and market demand aside the valuation ultimately depends on certain chemical reactions in the brain that indicate that one is preferable to the other.
And biological and cultural evolution will account for love, empathy etc etc.
Again, these things are really just abstract representations of chemical reactions in the brain... that is it and nothing more. Additionally, because evolution is always changing you cannot use it to make value judgements. Looking forward you can have no idea what path evolution will take and you can't say that should take a certain path and not another one. Similarly, looking back you can only state this is how things evolved there is no basis to state things should have been any different. Survival of the fittest is not a basis of value judgments because of its circular nature.
While religions do not explain anything but just state that it's all because of the magical unicorn nobody ever saw in the sky. And that it's good and loving anf fair but murders people, is jealous, thinks it's okey to give your wife and daughters for a bunch of rapists to fuck and kill to protect the ass of an angel. Or almost kill your son to show the guy how much of a good slave you are. Oh and then there's this, metaphorical first sin, and god came back to commit suicide basically (which is a mortal sin) to forgive us for this sin. This sin he by the way, knew would happen, and made happen, since he's omniscient and omnipotent. and so on.
You cannot criticize the Bible until you defend a framework which justifies value judgments. Otherwise what happened in the bible is merely part of evolution nothing more and nothing less.
2nd. No, belief systems AREN'T circular. FAITH is circular, belief is based on empirical data and a given value of uncertainty, the more you 'do' \ test it the less uncertain the belief becomes and closer to an ideal 'fact'. Though nobody has infinite time to test things out so whenever the system is open ended (so actual events as opposed to 2+2=4) you're bound to have uncertainty.
Uncertainty isn't the same thing as saying something that doesn't explain anything, and refuses to adjust to new knowledge in other ways than deciding that religious 'facts' suddently become metaphores. And pick and choose what 'god means' in a book of fairy tales based on what is deemed desirable and proper.
Belief is merely acceptance that something is true.
Faith is complete trust.
Your analysis gets at the two fundamental ways we interpret and understand the world around us: Experience and reason.
Both of these we put complete trust in as authoritative and reliable despite the fact that reliance on these two things is not independently justified.
That is we have no way to know whether what we sense and experience is an actual representation of material reality.
There are at least two alternative possibilities:
1) We are in the matrix
2) The world was created as is 5 seconds ago with all you're current memories programmed into your brain.
There is no basis for determining the likelihood of any of these since you cannot rely on experience.
You might say that it is not reasonable to consider the two alternatives, but reasonability has it's own problems... it's self-referential. The only way to justify reliance on reason is to engage in reasoning.
Thus, both the Christian and Atheistic-materialist framework rest upon unprovable presuppositions on which all other beliefs must rest. Or in other words all positions are faith positions.
3rd, I never said I was an atheist. You just assume polarized positions.
I keep using the world EMPIRICAL\ISM, how much clearer can I get. My position is just that your position is utterly unprovable and has a galaxy high pile of arguments going against it therefore doesn't have any value as a description of the world what so ever.
There is no such thing as neutrality in belief frameworks. If you are going to attack another's beliefs you must be standing somewhere yourself. this is because every attack or question presumes an alternative framework. I based my analysis on the presumption that you were defending an atheistic-materialist position that I perceived in your other posts in this thread. If I'm wrong and you actually subscribe to a different belief system feel free to correct me.
. Kinda unfair to discuss with those people, because they make all kind of assumptions, which you cant even make from the start. Like you said "if God doesnt exist, I live in anarchy" what would absolutely not be the case in the real world, if he wouldnt exist.
