Author Topic: Love and God  (Read 2151 times)

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Offline Sleepy

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Love and God
« on: September 27, 2012, 11:58:51 am »
I've seen a fair number of Christians make the following argument:

Love exists, yet it is something that we cannot literally touch. There is no tangible evidence for love, but we still acknowledge its existence because we feel it.

Similarly, God exists, but we cannot touch him. There is no tangible evidence for God, but we still believe he exists because we can feel him.

I honestly don't know what to think about this point. Is it a fair one? I mean, I've felt love and know it exists, and people claim they have felt a god and therefore know it exists. What are some arguments for or against this?
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Offline Mechtaur

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Re: Love and God
« Reply #1 on: September 27, 2012, 12:36:16 pm »
Depends on what someone can mean by "exist".

On the one hand, you have a metaphysical feeling that is the result of neurochemistry (like all emotions) that we call "love". We can show existence for it by looking at the brain's chemistry and finding what chemicals are used to create these feelings. So, while "love" doesn't really "exist", we do have the chemicals that result in a reaction in our brain that is describable as that feeling. This does make it hard to achieve any real sense of a conscious deity that some how doesn't exist on the physical level, but can invoke feelings on the emotional, reactional level that isn't a part of that things brain. This makes it even harder to argue for when you argue for the next part, down there as well.

On the other hand, you have people trying to argue for some kind of physical reality or something that can affect reality. These are arguments that try to argue that a non-existent, non-physical item can somehow affect the physical in some way, despite no real explanation given. These are more or less nonsense since you would need to violate physics in order to accomplish this on some level without fucking the whole system up in the process (and only God knows how that would work). And of course, you could just get even more and more meta about it if you wanted to. Philosophical arguments tend not to have any actual bearing on reality after all.

TL;DR: It is hard to argue for the existence of a meta-physical without a physical construct to initiate feelings of said meta-physical.

Offline JohnE

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Re: Love and God
« Reply #2 on: September 27, 2012, 03:28:53 pm »
Pretty much what Mech said. Love isn't something that exists outside ourselves that we experience through our senses, the way we experience a dog, a rock, or a piece of pizza. It is an electro-chemical reaction in our brain. It can, at least in theory, be observed, recorded, and measured, but it only exists as a function of our brain and body.

So the argument fails to prove the existence or even the posibility of god, unless you define "god" as existing only as a function of our own brains.

Offline Old Viking

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Re: Love and God
« Reply #3 on: September 27, 2012, 04:44:44 pm »
One would have to define terms before proceeding with this one.  As rendered here it is simply diddling with words.
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Offline Sylvana

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Re: Love and God
« Reply #4 on: September 28, 2012, 03:03:52 am »
Well both love and the feeling of god exist in the same way, both are chemical reactions in our brains that trigger certain conditioned responses. This does not prove that god exists in any objective sense, just that people can have a warm fuzzy feeling that they attribute to god. It has been proven that following religious rituals and such trigger similar neurochemical releases that result in that feeling. This in turn leads to a cycle of self reinforcement where one does the rituals to get the feeling, and think they get the feeling from god and hence believe in the rituals even more.

In short, both love and the feeling of god exist, but only in our brains.

Offline TigerHunter

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Re: Love and God
« Reply #5 on: September 28, 2012, 04:09:08 am »
Just because I feel love doesn't mean there's a physical manifestation of it anywhere. Just because someone may feel the presence of a god doesn't mean there's a magic man in the sky controlling everything that happens.

Offline Vypernight

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Re: Love and God
« Reply #6 on: September 28, 2012, 05:38:45 am »
"God is love.
Love is God.
So if you feel God in your heart,
you feel love.
When you feel love,
God is in your heart.
God is with everyone
and so is love . . .

unless you're gay."

Is that about right?
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Offline czechmate

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Re: Love and God
« Reply #7 on: September 28, 2012, 06:46:21 am »
Love was around long before ANY religion was around, but one thing is certain is that is NOT the exclusive property of any single faith, least of all the Abrahamic sects.

Offline Star Cluster

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Re: Love and God
« Reply #8 on: September 28, 2012, 10:24:22 am »
Well both love and the feeling of god exist in the same way, both are chemical reactions in our brains that trigger certain conditioned responses. This does not prove that god exists in any objective sense, just that people can have a warm fuzzy feeling that they attribute to god. It has been proven that following religious rituals and such trigger similar neurochemical releases that result in that feeling. This in turn leads to a cycle of self reinforcement where one does the rituals to get the feeling, and think they get the feeling from god and hence believe in the rituals even more.

In short, both love and the feeling of god exist, but only in our brains.

This is exactly along the lines of what I was thinking as I read the OP.  I realized a long time ago while I was still a believer that the euphoria I felt when in a religious "moment" was exactly the same feeling I got when I got really excited over something of a non-religious matter.  Religious folk attribute their euphoria as "being filled with the spirit" when it is nothing more than being filled with an emotional response to something they find exhilarating.
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Offline Yla

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Re: Love and God
« Reply #9 on: September 28, 2012, 03:19:43 pm »
Love exists as a concept, and as a concept, God exists too. However, as a immanent thing, neither God nor Love* exists as far as we can determine.

*cf. "Power of Love" in several works of fiction.
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