If we apply the same skepticism towards the existence of love

[Curious_Hobbit]

If we apply the same skepticism towards the existence of love as we do towards the existence of God, is there enough proof for rational people to believe that love exists?

Tolstoy once said, “ There is no such thing as love, only the physical need for intercourse and the practical need for a life companion.”

If you were going to try and prove the existence of love, how would you go about doing it? I doubt there is much science can tell us that could convince an agnostic about love that love does in fact exist. Most non-believers today probably agree that religious belief is at least in some sense what Freud considered to be “wishful thinking” and I don’t see why the existence of love shouldn’t also be subject to the same criticism. I saw an interview with Stephen Hawking a few months ago and he was asked what advice he would give his kids about life. His response was something like, “ If you are so fortunate in life as to find love then cherish it and hold on to it and be glad that you are so lucky”. I thought this was interesting because Hawking is an excellent scientist who is very crippled and does not believe in God. I can’t even imagine having to live life in his paralyzed conditioned and I am so thankful for my health. Hawking will not give into the belief that there is a God (what many consider wishful thinking) but he is all too ready to believe that there is such a thing as love, and it really exists.

Sam Harris briefly brought this point up in a lecture he was giving. He said that there are many things that spouses can do for each other to show each other that they love each other. Is that the standard by which we decide that love exists? Psychology and Neurology are progressing so fast that surely there will be some scientific explanations to these kinds of acts of love in the future. From an evolutionary standpoint, giving your wife flowers or taking her out to dinner could be seen as a way of enticing your mate to stay with you so that you can continue to have kids and pass on genes. There could be social reasons to sending your spouse a valentines gift at work like, feeling obligated to do so, wanting to avoid a fight, or wanting to give the most expensive present etc.

What if Tolstoy is right and the only reason why people get married is because we are animals that need to have sex and there are psychological and financial benefits to not living your life alone? When people get married they vow to love each other until “death do us part”, but the divorce rates in the U.S. are somewhere between 40% and 50%. One research says 2nd marriages have a 67% chance to end in divorce while 3rd marriages have a 74% chance (divorcerate.org/). Some people go to Vegas and get married by Elvis and vow to be together forever, and then get divorced in a week. A recent Pew Research Center study claims that 4 out of 10 Americans believe that marriage is becoming obsolete.

How do we know that love isn’t just another form of wishful thinking? It is much more comforting to believe that you have a romantic and almost mystical connection with someone than to believe that humans need to interact with other humans and also have sex. Couldn’t love be nothing more than 2 companions who you mate, receive mutual benefits, and idealize their bond? I don’t think other animals fall in love so why do humans claim to? Secular people believe we are nothing more than evolved primates with greater intellects, so what’s so special about humans that they get to fall in love? Many couples get infatuated with each other and claim to be in love but break up after the puppy love wears off. If you have a tingling feeling in your heart when you are around the person you love that is great, but there is probably a scientific explanation as to why the chemicals in your body are reacting this way to give you such a feeling. In modern western culture we think of love as being at least monogamous, but people in different times in cultures have practiced polygamy. Lovers say things like “we were meant to be together”, but in a purely random universe with no divine plan that can’t possibly be true. Most of the people who have ever lived believed in some kind of higher power, but that doesn’t prove that there is such a higher power. Similarly, we have millennia of people falling in love and expressing their love in the different forms of art and that doesn’t prove that love exists.

Whatever way you define love I think you have to include in your definition the kind of romantic, extraordinary, almost mystic feelings that most people who’ve been in love have claimed to feel. The point of this was just to show that there are many reasons to be skeptical about whether or not love really exists but all people in love believe that love is real. Similarly, there are many reasons to be skeptical about whether or not God really exists, but most people who have lived have believed in some kind of higher power. I believe that there are some things that can’t be fully explained rationally or scientifically and perhaps love is one of them. I would like to hear your thoughts on this issue, what do you think?

 

[PassingThru]

If we apply the same skepticism towards the existence of love as we do towards the existence of God, is there enough proof for rational people to believe that love exists?

Tolstoy once said, “ There is no such thing as love, only the physical need for intercourse and the practical need for a life companion.”

If you were going to try and prove the existence of love, how would you go about doing it? I doubt there is much science can tell us that could convince an agnostic about love that love does in fact exist. Most non-believers today probably agree that religious belief is at least in some sense what Freud considered to be “wishful thinking” and I don’t see why the existence of love shouldn’t also be subject to the same criticism. I saw an interview with Stephen Hawking a few months ago and he was asked what advice he would give his kids about life. His response was something like, “ If you are so fortunate in life as to find love then cherish it and hold on to it and be glad that you are so lucky”. I thought this was interesting because Hawking is an excellent scientist who is very crippled and does not believe in God. I can’t even imagine having to live life in his paralyzed conditioned and I am so thankful for my health. Hawking will not give into the belief that there is a God (what many consider wishful thinking) but he is all too ready to believe that there is such a thing as love, and it really exists.

Sam Harris briefly brought this point up in a lecture he was giving. He said that there are many things that spouses can do for each other to show each other that they love each other. Is that the standard by which we decide that love exists? Psychology and Neurology are progressing so fast that surely there will be some scientific explanations to these kinds of acts of love in the future. From an evolutionary standpoint, giving your wife flowers or taking her out to dinner could be seen as a way of enticing your mate to stay with you so that you can continue to have kids and pass on genes. There could be social reasons to sending your spouse a valentines gift at work like, feeling obligated to do so, wanting to avoid a fight, or wanting to give the most expensive present etc.

What if Tolstoy is right and the only reason why people get married is because we are animals that need to have sex and there are psychological and financial benefits to not living your life alone? When people get married they vow to love each other until “death do us part”, but the divorce rates in the U.S. are somewhere between 40% and 50%. One research says 2nd marriages have a 67% chance to end in divorce while 3rd marriages have a 74% chance (divorcerate.org/). Some people go to Vegas and get married by Elvis and vow to be together forever, and then get divorced in a week. A recent Pew Research Center study claims that 4 out of 10 Americans believe that marriage is becoming obsolete.

How do we know that love isn’t just another form of wishful thinking? It is much more comforting to believe that you have a romantic and almost mystical connection with someone than to believe that humans need to interact with other humans and also have sex. Couldn’t love be nothing more than 2 companions who you mate, receive mutual benefits, and idealize their bond? I don’t think other animals fall in love so why do humans claim to? Secular people believe we are nothing more than evolved primates with greater intellects, so what’s so special about humans that they get to fall in love? Many couples get infatuated with each other and claim to be in love but break up after the puppy love wears off. If you have a tingling feeling in your heart when you are around the person you love that is great, but there is probably a scientific explanation as to why the chemicals in your body are reacting this way to give you such a feeling. In modern western culture we think of love as being at least monogamous, but people in different times in cultures have practiced polygamy. Lovers say things like “we were meant to be together”, but in a purely random universe with no divine plan that can’t possibly be true. Most of the people who have ever lived believed in some kind of higher power, but that doesn’t prove that there is such a higher power. Similarly, we have millennia of people falling in love and expressing their love in the different forms of art and that doesn’t prove that love exists.

Whatever way you define love I think you have to include in your definition the kind of romantic, extraordinary, almost mystic feelings that most people who’ve been in love have claimed to feel. The point of this was just to show that there are many reasons to be skeptical about whether or not love really exists but all people in love believe that love is real. Similarly, there are many reasons to be skeptical about whether or not God really exists, but most people who have lived have believed in some kind of higher power. I believe that there are some things that can’t be fully explained rationally or scientifically and perhaps love is one of them. I would like to hear your thoughts on this issue, what do you think?

Its an interesting thought.

However, love is usually defined as something close to a feeling, and the words used to describe it have been felt directly by most people, making it easy to believe in. Also, love has a low bar to clear. All it is used to define is a feeling, for the most part. Belief in God requires God to be the source of all life, our beginning and end, our souls, our actions, where we go after we die, let alone the entire existence of the universe, to include love itself!!!

I think its a nice idea, but on any realistic level, they are not even remotely comparable.

 

[slywakka250]

Its an interesting thought.

However, love is usually defined as something close to a feeling, and the words used to describe it have been felt directly by most people, making it easy to believe in. Also, love has a low bar to clear. All it is used to define is a feeling, for the most part. Belief in God requires God to be the source of all life, our beginning and end, our souls, our actions, where we go after we die, let alone the entire existence of the universe, to include love itself!!!

I think its a nice idea, but on any realistic level, they are not even remotely comparable.

Once we admit of the existence of love however, it follows that we are more than merely physical particles in an evolutionary process.

I have always found this argument to be one of the strongest arguments against radical skepticism.

If anything it helps me believe there is a spiritual side to us.

 

[John21652]

Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O no! it is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth’s unknown, although his height be taken.
Love’s not Time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle’s compass come:
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

The above is William Shakespeare’s Sonnet 116.

In it he waxes lyrical about something that is intangible, but about which much has been written. It is a driving force which makes people behave in a certain manner and to have about themselves a certain disposition which shapes their behaviour and shapes their personality. Whatever it is, Shakespeare tells us, it is something very lasting, despite obstacles and difficulties which get in its way. Our Op has fallen for the positivist, reductionist method of trying to analyze what love is, when their is evidence galore around us and all the way back through history of the power of love. It is not something to be sceptical of when the evidence for its existence is overwhelming. Romeo and Juliet, Cleopatra and Marc Antony, Abelard and Heloise, define the reality of romantic love. Joan of Arc, Jesus of Nazareth define a love that is not romantic yet was still a driving force that shaped character and caused action, even self sacrifice. Especially self sacrifice! Buying flowers for a spouse might be a genetically advantageous thing to do when examined by a cold hearted scientific reductionist , but another might see it as a form of sacrifice, or of giving, which is a simple display of thoughtfullness and appreciation formed out of an emotion called love. Today’s divorce rates do not dissprove the existence of love. In fact, they highlight the pain and despair of the loss of love. Perhaps too many read Tolstoys cynical treatise on love?! Maybe, when push came to shove, many people found they didn’t really love the other, and to paraphrase Shakespeare, their love was not unbending and was not unshakeable. Perhaps love does come in degrees and Shakespeare was writing of one end of the spectrum of love, while those who readily divorce are somewhere towards the other end of the spectrum. Or maybe just one party was at Shakespeare’s end of the spectrum and the other not so far along. After all, we speak of “falling” in love, so it is fair to say finding love is a process. Tolstoy’s cynicism does not disprove the existence of love. If we are sceptical of the existence of love, then we must equally disdain the existence of hate and there is plenty of evidence of it in the world and there is plenty of evidence of its existence throughout the ages. There are degrees of hate, of that we can be sure. I have never heard of anyone being born hating, nor loving, so the evidence would suggest that both are a process which people are capable of experiencing to varying degrees.

Now that I think on it, my dog must have read Shakespeare’s Sonnet 116!

 

[fhansen]

Whatever way you define love I think you have to include in your definition the kind of romantic, extraordinary, almost mystic feelings that most people who’ve been in love have claimed to feel. The point of this was just to show that there are many reasons to be skeptical about whether or not love really exists but all people in love believe that love is real. Similarly, there are many reasons to be skeptical about whether or not God really exists, but most people who have lived have believed in some kind of higher power. I believe that there are some things that can’t be fully explained rationally or scientifically and perhaps love is one of them. I would like to hear your thoughts on this issue, what do you think?

I didn’t know for sure that love was real until I experienced it myself by being willing to lay down my life for another. Now I think that experience is the only way we can know love-the non-selfish agape variety, that is-the real thing.

The only other way is directly-if God, Who is love-wills to reveal Himself to us in some way. Then you would be hit with love’s reality in such an overwhelming manner that it could literally knock you off your feet. Infinitely powerful, ineffable, virtually tactile, peace-instilling, unconditional love. Nothing like it. Afterwards, all theories and speculation such as Tolstoy’s sound ignorant and laughable, while simultaneously seeming quite sad- that the world doesn’t know this kind of love.

Nothing like it.

 

[jakedubbleya]

A reality including love and a reality including God are remarkably similar (subject to definition of said terms.) The difference is the social consequences that a society that no longer believed in love would have to have to accept. It will be interesting to see how society deals with the creationist nature of love as it becomes more and more Godless.

 

[freethinker83]

When brain activity is monitored in a laboratory different areas of the brain show activity that corresponds to different emotions. Yes, I believe love exists as an electrical signal in the brain as all emotions do.

 

[jakedubbleya]

When brain activity is monitored in a laboratory different areas of the brain show activity that corresponds to different emotions. Yes, I believe love exists as an electrical signal in the brain as all emotions do.

If our knowledge of brain function was as exhaustive as you imply philosophy of mind would be a dead science.

 

[Ichthys4121517]

When brain activity is monitored in a laboratory different areas of the brain show activity that corresponds to different emotions. Yes, I believe love exists as an electrical signal in the brain as all emotions do.

Yes, but how do you account for the kind of love that causes one to lay down his life for a friend - what we call agape? There is no evolutionary purpose for that kind of love. Saying that love exists merely as a bunch of chemical reactions in the brain is like saying the laws of logic only exist in that sense, which makes no sense because if that were so, then logic would not influence the world as it does.

 

[John21652]

So what is the Catholic conception of Love, where we must even love or enemies. What category of Love covers the requirement for Love in the general sense that Catholicism asks for? How can we love a sinner, yet hate his sin?

 

[luvzminis]

So what is the Catholic conception of Love, where we must even love or enemies. What category of Love covers the requirement for Love in the general sense that Catholicism asks for? How can we love a sinner, yet hate his sin?

I think love for sinners includes sometimes asking them the hard questions. I’m thinking not letting a (true) ‘troll’ ‘get away with it.’ Ask them the tough questions abour social issues such as abortion, contraception, euthanasia, etc.–and ask how they feel about the Church’s teachings on such. If they’re just posing as Catholics, the truth should eek out once they show their true colors.

 

[AlanFromWichita]

One model I like to use, is that love, as well as other human experiences, can be transmitted spiritually via empathy.

Based on a person’s words, smileys, photos, and web links, all of these little spots and shapes appear on my screen, and they trigger memories. Memories of what this word and that word mean. Memories of the time another person said the same thing to me and it was wonderful/terrible (circle one). Imagination over what could a person be like who just sent me this post?

It’s like the deeper senses of scripture. The brain can sit around and argue with itself and others about anything and everything, but that just keeps it busy and noisy so that it can’t hea and respond to the subtle groanings of love.

After my dad died, my mother told me one thing that was a stumbling block for him, but for which he would believe totally in Catholic teaching. He said he could not accept that a father who would – even after the son asks him not to – subject his son to ridicule, torture, crucifixion, and as if that wasn’t enough, a trip straight to hell.

How can that possibly be an act of love? How can we gain peace and freedom from thinking about the passion? It seems awful and terrible and everything. Sure Jesus loves us, but what’s the point? We know He gave up His life for us. We don’t know exactly how that works, but He was God and we can’t know so it doesn’t matter. Right? For some that’s enough. For my engineering mind, I want a working model of love and suffering that I could use to make some kind of logical sense out of seemingly contradictory things. I’ve been working on this for 10 years, but only started focusing on it a couple weeks ago, as I’ve been experiencing explosive healing and feeling deluged with peace and joy. Everything anybody does to/for me or any other seems like an act of love now, even though some might reasonably say they are “annoying.”

So everything came together, and yesterday I finally understood in my mind – and therefore no longer need faith – how I could possibly explain how a loving God would let His Song go through all that. I’m not saying it’s a correct model. I’m an engineer, not a scientist. Therefore, what is true does not matter directly. What I need is a model which I can figure stuff out with and apply math and logic and stuff like that. So if my model works for me to accomplish what I need, then it doesn’t need to be true. Just a good enough representation of the truth that I can design solutions to life’s problems.

I called this the Grand Unification Theory of the Heart and Mind, a concept I stole from Rush’s song Hemispheres.

A less grandiose way to say that is that I’ve been praying and seeking spiritual unity.

So here it goes. It all starts with human empathy.

People want leaders who understand their problems. If the leader has been where I have been, I feel connected to him, and like maybe I can try to trust him. One of the few things about President Clinton that I think of a lot, is how the world went gaga – friends and foes alike – by his use of the remark, “I feel your pain.”

So who do we want to be in charge of us? Somebody who feels our pain. They say that, and if we believe them, we elect them to office.

So what sort of kindness can you do to a person who has some sort of mental or emotional or spiritual pain, over the Internet? Well, we can perform any of the spiritual works of mercy.

Comfort the afflicted. If you were a mother who just lost her son and was sitting in the surgery waiting room, she is experiencing something terrible, new, and frightening, as the doctor tells her the bad news. After the doctor leaves, another person in the waiting room says, “I am so sorry. My son and daughter were in a car accident last night. My daughter died, and my son is in surgery.” What did she just do? She opened a door for direct empathic transfer of experience, that is triggered by the words but require some commonality of memories or thoughts or experiences for the empathy to take place. They both lost a son. That means to either one, “I am not going it alone. There is someone who understands my pain.”

So yes, Jesus understands our pain. Totally. Seems like I’ve been typing a while, this post is probably long enough; I’ll submit and take a break … I’ll be back and try to get to the model I’m using now.

Alan