I have to disagree with the opening post. It is possible to love without believing in God. I am an example of that: I love my family and my wife and have no belief in any god or gods.
I have already noted my disagreement with the original post and so I agree with you on this point.
A few of you expressed that without belief in God, love is somehow diminished. How you are able to make this assessment? Love is a subjective feeling and you have no way of really knowing how I, or any other non-believer, feels about another person. There is no way to compare your feelings of love as believers, to my feelings as a non-believer since neither of us are able to feel each others feelings in order to compare.
I cannot necessarily say that my atheist neighbor loves his children less than I love my children. I do not know his soul and his heart and I would think that to make or believe such a statement on the basis of the father being an atheist falls under judging and I do not think it is justified. There is a lot of tragedy, ignorance, abuse, negligence etc…that we hear about parents, and I can think that parents who do xyz or do not do abc are awful parents - I can judge their actions but - not their souls. I certainly can not say that a Catholic is automatically a parent who loves his children more or better than a non-believer. I don’t know what the current population of Catholic is in the world today but I am certain that there is a percentage that are awful parents and that of the atheist population there is a percentage that are great loving parents.
Many Catholics do not know their faith, I forget who it was that said (Maybe Bishop Sheen) that Catholics who leave the Catholic Church leave because they do not know what they are leaving - and this is so true. There are many, also, who practice it according to their convenience and many confront the challenge of living or working to attain holiness. Many Catholic struggle to live holy lives as they are challenged by temptation, disabilities, etc, etc. To say that they are not perfect, they are human beings just like atheists, Buddhists, Muslims, Jews, etc… So that, even though they are Catholics they may not be the greatest husbands, wifes, children, relatives, neighbors, employers, etc…nor the most loving or lovable person.
Also, although he may feel a deeper love in his current marriage than in his previous marriage, we can’t be sure that this stems from belief; it may just as easily be because his current wife is a much better match, or other factors.
I agree with you here. The challenges of youth also need to be taken under consideration. Many years ago, I went to a Mormon building to pick up a worker who converted to Mormonism. The pastor knew that I was stopping by to pick up the worker and he waited in the lobby and insisted that I join the meeting. I of course, did not want to be bothered, but he and I were in a spiritual mini war on account that he was having in converting people from a particular countryside and he was barking up my tree and I was barking up his as I was speaking to people to set the record straight. After a lot of commotion and insistence and challenge I decided to join his meeting. It was a meeting to train pastors and there were about seven trainees present. I sat down with a lot of protocol and courtesy and the battle began. His intention was to make my faith look bad in front of the pastors to be and with the Grace of the Holy Spirit I think that he himself was questioning his conversion to Mormonism by the time we were done. All honor and praise be to God! To cut the story short, one of the things that he said was that when he was a Catholic he was unfaithful to his wife and that they finally divorced. He said that many years later he converted to Mormonism and re-married and that he is do to Mormonism now faithful to his wife. One of the things that I pointed out was the minor detail, that he was in his teens and twenties when he was a married Catholic man and in his fifties and sixties as a married Mormon man. C’est pa’ la meme chose (it is not the same). Btw, one of the potential student ran after me when I left the building and said that based on what I had said that he no longer not only not wanted to be a pastor but that he did not want to belong to that sect. He said that he did not wanted to join the Church Our Lord Jesus Christ established. I directed him to speak with a priest at the nearby Cathedral.
I think it is very presumptuous to declare that someone else’s love is somehow lesser than yours when you have no way of experiencing their feelings and comparing it to yours.
Many people here are making a bald assertion that love is enhanced through belief, but they have absolutely no way of backing that claim up. You cannot measure two peoples love and compare them.
Now, this may sound radical to you, but, please bare with me. I am not the most eloquent person in town. I hope that in all my rambling above I have at least made clear that I am not speaking at the individual level nor group nor none of that. I am trying to express my faith and it is not easy because it is not as though I was taught everything I know nor did I necessarily deduced it. So, I have to think about how I can express my faith…I am going to try…
Brainstorming…
I understand that God is a triune God…yeah, this is how I am going to tackle this one…with the Trinity, and the essence of God and how He penetrates all of existence and maintains it, My Soul
Magnifies the Lord, Love, the Holy Spirit, John 14 16-18, John 14:23 etc…, etc…
Okay, I am going to sleep on it…I’ll be back…but, this is my faith and I will try to explain it.
Good night everyone,
Abba
You are entirely allowed (and encouraged!) to express whatever views you like and I apologize if I gave the impression that you can’t.
