(09-10-2024, 10:47 PM)pattylt Wrote: [ -> ]Now that this poster has been thoroughly spanked, will we hear from him again?
If so, Mr. Theist, which specific sect of Christianity are you involved with? What makes you think this was some slam dunk of an argument? Did you see it on a YouTube? Besides love, what other emotions are best explained by god…anger, frustration, sympathy, longing?
Have you considered all the hormones involved with our emotions? Estrogen, testosterone, oxytocin…
Finally, can you identify the exact difference between liking someone and loving them? Can you like someone but not love them or love someone but not like them? Is this also God’s doing?
You know that you're making him resort to prayer. I wonder if he's a kneeler?
(09-10-2024, 01:37 PM)PleaseProveMeWrong Wrote: [ -> ]ARGUMENT:
A) For most people, love (in all its forms) is the most important thing in the world
B) It's tricky to explain the existence and importance of love on naturalism
C) The Christian story clicks well with people's experiece of love as a powerful and important thing.
D) Therefore, the existence of love (by the likelyhood principle) supports Christian theism over atheistic naturalism.
No, that argument absolutely does not work.
A:
Argumentum ad populum fallacy. It doesn't matter how many people think love is important.
B: Love is a survival-positive psychological trait and likely evolved; therefore, naturalism adequately explains it.
C: The Christian story is
vile and grossly immoral. In addition to having a human sacrifice as its central event, there are multiple Christian sects that believe that refusing the "gift" of substitutionary atonement will send someone to eternal torment. That is not love; that is the very antithesis of love.
"God is love" is bullshit. Only love is love, and we don't need gods to explain it.
Love and Jehovah's Witnesses?
JWs refuse blood transfusions (even for their children)
which they consider a violation of God's law based on
their interpretation of
*Acts 15:28, 29. They also do not
eat blood-based foods; one such prohibited dish is blood
sausage, or black pudding as it's called in the UK.
Since 1961, the willing acceptance of a blood transfusion
by an unrepentant member has been grounds for expulsion
from the JWs.
Members are directed to refuse blood transfusions, even
in "a life-or-death situation".
—Ain't love just grand?
* Quote:It seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us not to burden you with anything beyond the
following requirements: You are to abstain from food sacrificed to idols, from blood, from
the meat of strangled animals and from sexual immorality. You will do well to avoid these things.
(09-10-2024, 10:47 PM)pattylt Wrote: [ -> ]Now that this poster has been thoroughly spanked, will we hear from him again?
If so, Mr. Theist, which specific sect of Christianity are you involved with? What makes you think this was some slam dunk of an argument? Did you see it on a YouTube? Besides love, what other emotions are best explained by god…anger, frustration, sympathy, longing?
Have you considered all the hormones involved with our emotions? Estrogen, testosterone, oxytocin…
Finally, can you identify the exact difference between liking someone and loving them? Can you like someone but not love them or love someone but not like them? Is this also God’s doing?
It is essentially an "argument from emotion". I feel something, so it proves something. Especially since other people feel it and generally value the feeling. It is a transparently fallacious argument and if the poster can't see it, I probably can't help him see it.
Many things are universal, such as hatred, bigotry, and warmongering for instance, and many people are inspired by those things, too -- to things like war and lynching and rape, but that doesn't mean there's "something more to it than meets the eye". It is all totally explicable sociologically. That an emotion is positive and more functional has nothing to do with it.
(09-10-2024, 01:37 PM)PleaseProveMeWrong Wrote: [ -> ]POINT B)
-Reductive materialism can explain love only as a chemical process. Why does it feel like it's so much more?
Your argument is that love feels like it's more than just a chemical process, so it must be from god? What do you think love would feel like if it actually was a chemical process?
Yo OP: If animals, other than humans, demonstrate 'love' does that mean god does or does not exist? If it does, do animals have a different god, one without demands and consequences?
(09-11-2024, 03:20 AM)Astreja Wrote: [ -> ] (09-10-2024, 01:37 PM)PleaseProveMeWrong Wrote: [ -> ]ARGUMENT:
A) For most people, love (in all its forms) is the most important thing in the world
B) It's tricky to explain the existence and importance of love on naturalism
C) The Christian story clicks well with people's experiece of love as a powerful and important thing.
D) Therefore, the existence of love (by the likelyhood principle) supports Christian theism over atheistic naturalism.
No, that argument absolutely does not work.
A: Argumentum ad populum fallacy. It doesn't matter how many people think love is important.
B: Love is a survival-positive psychological trait and likely evolved; therefore, naturalism adequately explains it.
C: The Christian story is vile and grossly immoral. In addition to having a human sacrifice as its central event, there are multiple Christian sects that believe that refusing the "gift" of substitutionary atonement will send someone to eternal torment. That is not love; that is the very antithesis of love.
"God is love" is bullshit. Only love is love, and we don't need gods to explain it.
SMACK THAT BITCH UP! you do a
good job of that!
(09-11-2024, 05:10 PM)brewerb Wrote: [ -> ]Yo OP: If animals, other than humans, demonstrate 'love' does that mean god does or does not exist? If it does, do animals have a different god, one without demands and consequences?
And Commandments.....commandments are bullshit!
(09-10-2024, 01:37 PM)PleaseProveMeWrong Wrote: [ -> ]Can you refute this argument logically?
>>snip<<
ARGUMENT:
A) For most people, love (in all its forms) is the most important thing in the world
B) It's tricky to explain the existence and importance of love on naturalism
C) The Christian story clicks well with people's experiece of love as a powerful and important thing.
D) Therefore, the existence of love (by the likelyhood principle) supports Christian theism over atheistic naturalism.
>>snippety snip<<
Abbreviated to save you from reading through a wall of text.
Your argument is formally known as an argument from ignorance and takes the form of:
1) X exists
2) I/We don't understand X
3) Therefore god
There are a host of other flaws, but that's the heart of it. Your inability to understand something, regardless of how intricate it may be, does not demonstrate the existence of the divine.
Another (yawn) drive by. A theist has the grand and final persuasive proof (usually copy pasta) their god exists, so they drop in here and deposit it the same way you make a deposit next to the shower stall, and zoom off to chuckle secretly and wickedly at their "victory", but (so predictably) wind up proving only their colossal vacancy of conviction or courage. Ho hum.
Yep, he seems to be gone…
(09-11-2024, 06:31 PM)Edible crust Wrote: [ -> ]Thou shalt sit.
From my favorite book of the bible, Dalmations
The only response the OP needs, or deserves:
Love doesn't prove god. Love has a nice evolutionary value on its own.
Hey there,
Thanks for engaging!
A) I agree, for some it is not, that's why I said most.
B) The way I say it naturalsim can offer explanations based on evolutionary biology (survival, passing on of genes) and chemical processes, which are ways to see what is going on with this thing we call love, but does it explain why for many people it feels like it's the most important thing in the world, what gives meaning to their lives, something that immortalizes the human experience, inspires art and reflection, etc.?
C) I agree that it matters whether the claims make sense and are based on evidence. The point I am considering is that the evidence that I suggest in the question above would harmonize if a loving God who created the world for love existed.
Obviously, one way out of this argument would be to say that the naturalistic account as given in B is correct and that the minority of A is right and everyone else is just totally exaggerating love and it's all a big lie of consumerism, etc. Is that a direction you would take?
I don't understand the sock reference. I'm new to this forum, is it an insider thing?
Thanks!
(09-10-2024, 03:54 PM)Deesse23 Wrote: [ -> ] (09-10-2024, 01:37 PM)PleaseProveMeWrong Wrote: [ -> ]A) For most people, love (in all its forms) is the most important thing in the world
B) It's tricky to explain the existence and importance of love on naturalism
C) The Christian story clicks well with people's experiece of love as a powerful and important thing.
D) Therefore, the existence of love (by the likelyhood principle) supports Christian theism over atheistic naturalism.
Unfortunately, you fail on every level. Before we go into details, please let me ask an important question: You are a sock of whom? I am asking because there was someone recently whose style matches yours surprisingly well.
A) For some its not
B) Tricky or not, if it can be explained by naturalism, we are done. You want to claim "it never will be..."?...well thats a logical fallacy
C) It does not matter what "clicks well" with peoples experience. What matters if your claims can either be factually demonstrated (if your agument is sound) or if your argument is valid in structure, that means "it does not contain logical fallacies", which it does.
D) Your best argument (and i suppose you just gave us your best one) for the existence of your god, for an event that so far has never been confirmed, once is "likelihood"?????
What god are we talking about? The christian one? If so, why should likelihood be better than....anything in your scripture? Are you a theist because of likelihood or because of what you learned by scripture? If its the latter, why are you trying to convince others with other arguments than those that convinced yourself? Please tell me you arent a theist because of ....love.
Thank you so much for this detailed engagement! You've given me lots to think about!
(09-10-2024, 04:28 PM)Rhythmcs Wrote: [ -> ] (09-10-2024, 01:37 PM)PleaseProveMeWrong Wrote: [ -> ]Hello everyone,
I would love to put forward a theistic argument and I am looking for honest, intellectually sound rebuttals. Can you refute this argument logically? What are flaws in the argumentation? Which premises or conclusions do you find unconvincing and why? What alternative explanations, backed by evidence, can you propose?
Here goes the argument, bear with me by reading ALL OF IT before engaging, please:
Introduction: For most people, it is a given that love is not only real, but essential to human experience and existence. However, explaining why that is so is not very straightforward. How can love be explained and does that explanation point to theism or atheism?
ARGUMENT:
A) For most people, love (in all its forms) is the most important thing in the world
What is love! (I had to)
People disagree about the importance, and particularly the relative importance, of love. Between you and me it's true enough to accept as a starting premise.
Quote:B) It's tricky to explain the existence and importance of love on naturalism
I'm not sure what you mean by tricky - or that anything is trickier than explaining something in a supernatural way would be. We know that the tide comes in and goes out because of a relationship between the earth and the moon - the behavior of large bodies of water under gravitational and rotational stress. That's a natural explanation for the tides. Try a supernatural explanation. Love has similar explanations in a naturalist sense. I see down below that you're at least aware that there is a natural explanation for love. A complex biochemical reaction occurring in animals with higher level neural organization with clear survival benefits through natural and kin selection. Now....try a supernatural explanation.
Quote:C) The Christian story clicks well with people's experiece of love as a powerful and important thing.
"Clicks well"? Well, not to me...but more fundamentally, would it matter if it did? Cutting straight to the heart of the matter, are you certain that the story "clicks well" insomuch as it does because it's true....or could it be that the story "clicks well" because we wrote it, in part, to narrativize our natural experience of love (among other things like projection, expectation, transactional, etc).
Quote:D) Therefore, the existence of love (by the likelyhood principle) supports Christian theism over atheistic naturalism.
Even if we assumed every premise as written...and there's good reason not to, this is still a nonseq. It can be simplified and that might make it easier to see at a glance.
Love exists, love is not natural, therefore god exists.
Quote:Let me flesh this out a little bit: (You don't need to agree with Christian doctrine to grant Point C, but have a look to see if you think this point internally coherent on the super-hypothetical assumption that God exists, for argument's sake. Does this Christian description give a good context for the nature and importance of love as we perceive it in society and individually?
I suppose it serves as a lesson in love gone wrong? A lost of things not to do or be. I think that you're underestimating the need to accept christian doctrine, and a specifically permissive and loving christian doctrine, in order for this to even seem like it would matter to the conclusion. Plenty of things "click well" with our varied and various experience of love, in all of it's forms. If you saw a hateful god, would you then conclude that god (or love) did not exist? Bluntly, is this assertion and it;s inference determinitive - or merely prejudicial?
Quote:POINT C) Why it's not illogical for a Christian to say that love is real and that it is the most important thing:
- According to Christianity, God is love (1 John 4:7). Thus, God’s character would explain the nature of love: it is other-centered, self-giving, and serving as evidenced by the doctrine of the Trinity (three divine persons united in love).
-According to Christianity, humans exist to be loved and to love (1 John 4:16), which would explain why love feelsso meaningful.
-Christians believe love is eternal: the Trinity would show love to be prior to nature (there was love between Father, Son, Spirit before the universe began) and the doctrine of heaven would show that love does not end when people die. It goes on forever.
-Human sin would explain how love both points to God in its beaut when it's at its best, as well as how we fail at it.
-Love is the highest moral duty in the Bible (Mark 12:30-31) which would ground our human sense that love is an 'ought' (something we should be doing/living) as it would provide a law-giver who gives authority to the perceived moral law (or etihical principle) of love.
Let me flesh out the naturalistic position as well and forgive me if I got something wrong. Obviously these views don't apply to all atheists, but I'm trying to paint a view of naturalism/materliasm leaning on the work of Richard Dawkins, among others:
Do you think a christian needs to..or even does..practically, refer to any part of any scripture when they decide that love is real and important? Or might they have the brute fact of their own lived experience? Is the fact that someone else said something was important actually a reason to logically conclude that it's important in the first place?
Quote:POINT B)
-Reductive materialism can explain love only as a chemical process. Why does it feel like it's so much more? There' no other chemical process we dream, write, make songs and movies, are willing to die for, etc. like love.
Sure there are. In the naturalist explanation all of the things we do any of that for are all..at the bottom of the well....chemical processes.
Quote:-If love is only an illusion to help us work together to ensure survival (Michael Ruse) then we can't really say that love is real, yet it is such a basic experience.
OFC we can. Laying aside that I disagree with this notion..illusions are still real. A magician pulling a rabbit out of a hat is not pulling a rabbit out of a hat, but they are exploiting the very real faults with our sense apparatus and creating that expereince in the natural world.
Quote:-Evolutionary biology casts love as the passing on of genes for the survival of the species. According to Richard Dawkins, romantic love is only an evolutionary illusion.
That's one of it's natural functions, sure.
Quote:-Naturalism cannot truly account for altruism (selfless love) as it is not beneficial for survival
It absolutely can - though I have to point out that there's disagreement on whether there is such a thing as "true altruism". The winning strategy for the prisoners dilemma is tit-for- tat with a cooperative opening.
Quote:-Love doesn’t have any objective meaning, since naturalism can only explain subjective meaning. (Without God there is no grand narrative that gives purpose or direction to the universe. Instead the universe just is, and one day it will cease to be in the heat-death of the universe
So much to unpack here - these two assertions are downright pregnant, and very possibly false.
Quote:-Since there is no intentionality in how nature evolves, we cannot say we are (as humans) made for love.
In the same way that a puddle is made for the hole. We seem intentional, though, don't we? We can make ourselves more or less amenable to love and to being loved. We can circumscribe love and determine when others conform to our expectations. We say things like "fall in love" alot - which works well enough for a meet cute..but what about the lifetime after? Are we not building love, and building a community of love?
Quote:-What we experience as love is only a random byproduct of an unguided process.
Selection is not random.
Quote:-Love can only amount to an emergent property on materialism. It comes after nature. The end of the natural also means the end of love. Death ends all love. Only memory lives on, until the heat death of the universe, then nothing will remain
It does seem like there would be no love absent creatures capable of it. Nature doesn't have to end. If this world were covered with nothing but ants there would be tons of nature and no love. Confounding matters...some people think ants are lovable....so we have a world full of nature, lacking love, but chock full of potential for love.
Quote:-Naturalism can only determine how loving/unloving behavior impacts survival, but it cannot explain the pain and suffering of corrupted love, since it cannot judge it as morally wrong, but only less conducive to survival.
More pregnant assertions. This one is certainly false. Nature can absolutely judge, no matter what the metaethical reality may be..and we know this..because we do judge.
Quote:-Naturalism is only descriptive, not prescriptive and it cannot explain love as a moral duty beyond survival-conducive behavior. There is no love-law-giver and love has, thus, no authority.
This would only matter if the only real and/or valid morality makers were not facts of a matter..like whether or not love actually existed...but..instead, some subjective deontology, and only one subjects subjective deontology.
...and now...try a supernatural explanation for any of that. Are any of these questions determinitive? I disagree with you, strongly, on what naturalism can explain...and also about what love is - but suppose that nature couldn't explain any of it. And suppose it was all an illusion? What's the kicker here? That if this were true..it would be bad. That's an appeal to negative consequences. Sometimes bad things are true.
Quote:TRYING TO REFUTE MYSELF:
-Could altrusim be explained the kinship or reciprocity principles, which show that even selfless love could be evolutuionary advantageous and, thus, don't need a divine grounding? Can we still call this behavior love if it turns out the be selfish (even if the benefits are only reaped later or indirectly)?
-Romantic and monogamous relationships are evolutionary advantageous and don't need a grounding in God, even though passing on genes would work better in polygamous or polyamorous contexts as Richard Dawkins attests.
You might want to ask yourself why you think the choices are "natural grounding" and "divine grounding" to begin with. Are these the only categories and are these things different things and are these things all amenable to investigation by just one or the other of these categories?
For example..if..as you repeatedly insist, love is purely subjective -and- a god existed that created us all and blah blah blah..then the reason that love is important boils down to a subjective deontology. However, we don't need gods for subjective deontologies, and subjectively speaking, every subjective deontology is as true as any other - even directly antithetical ones. No subjective deontology has any grounding in reality, none of it is "real" in the only sense that could distinguish between them. The question of whether or not love is important..in subjective metaphysics with or without a god is yes and no, at the same time, and trivially so.
Just food for thought. I personally think that we live in a world with subjective and objective content, love straddles them, and to the extent that gods exist and have delivered a subjective deontology and it's accurately reflected in theistic beliefs...that gods opinion on this and every other matter can be (and often is) utterly wrong. Both as a matter of fact, and morally speaking, supposing there's a difference.
Quote:Conclusion: For those who believe that love is most real, and most important, for those who have a notion that love provides uniquely appealing answers to existential questions (like why are we here? what is the meaning of life? why is love so special and so important?) the Argument from Love provides tentative reasons to believe in the Triune God, especially in contrast to its naturalistic alternatives.
Thanks for reading this through! Can you please include the word or emoji 'HEART' in your response, so that I know you have read through the entire thing (congrats on your endurance, haha) and I can, thus, take your response very seriously? Thanks!
Now it's not just a god, but a triune god. I must have missed the importance of the number three in all of that. 
I don't think you gave a fair shake to "naturalistic alternatives" - and I don't think it even makes sense to call them alternatives until you provide some...any...god explanation whatsoever. Worse, you've got a nonseq on your hands. No amount of quibbling about the content of the assertions can fix that.
Thanks for engaging and reading the whole thing! I admit that, for time reasons, I don't do all the alternatives justice and I have to kind of rush through things. Here are some thoughts on your reply:
1) You describe love within the context of natural selection very clearly. However, can natural selection explain altruism? Can it explain love of complete strangers? Can it explain loving actions (selfless and serving) to people that no one ever sees or notices, and thus, have no benefit of reciprocity?
2) I like your example, but it doesn't quite apply, I think. Perhaps we could frame it like this: a) Bacon is a good thing b) There MIGHT be a Flying Bacon Monster, whose very essence, according to the Flying-Bacon-Monster cult, is love. FBM-believers think this is how the tasty divinity describes itself: as love and as having made the world for love. c) Thinking that the existence and experience of love could validate the belief in the Flying-Bacon-Monster of love would be at least a rational thought, since the experienced reality and the held belief would harmonize - that's cognitive consonance.
3) Yes, I have not considered other religions, and there could certainly be made a case for other religions, to a certain degree. I think Christianity would have a stronger claim, because it is the only religion that in their own sacred texts defines God simply as love. I appreciate your point on Hinduism, it's certainly worth exploring, but for this particular argument I've decided to test whether it holds any water as evidence for the God of Christianity. And yes, I have assumed, for this argument's sake that we atheism and materialism go hand in hand, but I'm aware it doesn't always. From my research, however, it does often enough for me to assume this confluence for the argument's sake.
Thanks again!
(09-10-2024, 04:51 PM)Dānu Wrote: [ -> ]There is too much wrong here for me to detail unless you want to pay an hourly rate for tutelage.
However I will make a couple of quick comments.
1. That you are incredulous as to whether nature can explain love is not an argument. You repeatedly conflate what we want (love) with what nature wants (fitness). It's entirely possible that we have evolved to want things that increase fitness. An example is fatty foods. Prior to civilization, acquiring fatty foods increased our fitness because they provided more calories and thus could sustain us longer. Thus those individuals who preferred fatty foods had an edge in terms of survival. Thus the desire for fatty foods was selected for because it increased survival. The story with love is much the same. Homo sapiens sapiens gives birth to young that are not able to survive on their own at birth and require a long period of raising and shepherding them before they are ready to live independently. The longer the parents or caregivers cooperated to raise their offspring, the more successful the offspring would be once they left the nest. Thus the desire to stay together and care for offspring was selected for. The genes themselves do not do the selecting. They simply provide the raw material upon which selection operates. Thus your understanding of evolution is simply not accurate.
2. There are two steps on the Christian side of things. First, to describe a valuable thing that exists (love) and then attribute the existence of that desirable thing to God (an inference). I am required to acknowledge the first part as it's a fact that love exists and can be described. I have not been given any reason why I should be required to grant step two, attributing this good thing to God. That primitive worshippers of God attributed this good thing to God is not in and of itself a reason why I should do likewise. And there's nothing remarkable about them attributing the good thing to God as it need not be true for them to claim it, and attributing the good to God is pretty natural, whether or not God exists. For example, most people would say that bacon is a good thing. If I attribute the existence of bacon to the Flying Spaghetti Monster, while I'm sure that you'll acknowledge the existence of bacon, you won't necessarily accede to my attributing it to my favorite god.
3. Other religions provide alternative accounts of love and your argument is completely silent on them. For example, as a secular Hindu, I see Bhakti yoga, the path of loving the godhead, as a legitimate and proven path for acquiring Krishna consciousness and ultimately moksa. Thus there is an extremely practical and divine aspect t to love which has nothing whatsoever to do with Christian explanations of love. You appear to have concentrated upon naturalism because you have mistaken atheism as requiring a belief in materialism, but there is nothing about atheism that requires such, and in focusing on what is essentially a mistake, you've ignored all the other religions and cultures that offer their own explanations for the existence of love. This is an example of the misapplication of the law of the excluded middle, namely in only considering two potential explanations when more than two explanations exist. This alone is enough to render your argument invalid and thus is fatal to your conclusion.
I HEART SHEEP.
Hi!
Great point! Any arugment can open up a whole lot of new lines of argument! Firguring that out is, in part, what I'm doing on this thread!
I think there's a big difference with your example: On naturalism, things that have no natural explanation are indeed problematic. I would suggest they are either an illusion/not real (and naturalism prevails) OR this thing's reality would suggest that perhaps the given worldview - here, naturalism- is wrong (naturalism fails, because love-in this case-prevails). However, there is no problem with God having no natural explanation, because, if God exists, naturalism cannot explain everything and God can logically be explained super-naturally.
Not quite sure I understand your last point about God being bad. My case it not that love is good and therefore God exists, but only that the goodness of love seems to imply a meaning that might not be able to be explained on the basis of natural selection and chemical processes, but would make sense in a reality created by a being that self-identifies as love and that creates out of love and for the purpose of love. My point is that this seems a more coherent view with how we experience and think about love than just atoms and molecules.
(09-10-2024, 04:53 PM)Rhythmcs Wrote: [ -> ]-as commentary - consider all of the fronts this line of argumentation opens up if/when you decide to try to repair the argument. You may want to save yourself the trouble. We see the confusion, insinuation, or conflation throughout with the idea that things which have no natural explanation (or, allegedly, anyway) being illusory. Not real. Are we sure that a person who believes in a supernatural god wants to make too much noise with such assertions?
If god has no natural explanation- does that make god illusory? If god is not natural, does that mean god is not real?
The same gaps open up in appeals to consequence. If god being real would be bad...should we, then, believe the converse? That god does not exist?
It's so funny that this 1993 hit comes to everyone's mind when this question is asked, including my own! I wonder how has Jesus hurt you?
(09-10-2024, 05:21 PM)AutisticWill Wrote: [ -> ] (09-10-2024, 04:28 PM)Rhythmcs Wrote: [ -> ]What is love! (I had to)
Jesus, don' hurt me.... Don' hurt me.... No mo'.......
It sounds like you've had bad experiences with Christians! I am really sorry to hear that and for what it's worth, I love you too!
(09-10-2024, 05:17 PM)AutisticWill Wrote: [ -> ] (09-10-2024, 01:37 PM)PleaseProveMeWrong Wrote: [ -> ]Hello everyone,
...
...
Here goes the argument, bear with me by reading ALL OF IT before engaging, please:
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
I don't love you enough to bother. I don't even love you enough to tell you to go fuck yourself.
I don't know what you said after your title. But I do know this:
There is no HATE like christian love.
and:
For me to believe in god, I would have to forget everything I know.
There.
Now,
take that an... shove it up your ass.
There.
-- I love you.
Hello there and good to be here!
Obviously, if you can't get on board with premise 1 then the argument fails. In my experience, most people would agree with this premise, so it's still worth considering (at least for argument's sake). Could it be that we both lack the statistical data to make a case whether most people think love is essential?
Thank you for educating me on
alexithymia - that's very interesting, indeed. Have you considered that even people who suffer from this condition have thoughts about love? And the fact that it's a condition? However, feelings are part of love, but not necessarily ALL that is meant by love.
Also, I'm afraid you must have misunderstood why I used references to the Bible. They are only there to support the claim that within the Christian worldview love is seen as primal or in other words, it gives evidence to the claim that love is important and makes sense internally when you assume a Christian worldview. I am very well aware that writing down Bible verses is not very likely going to convince anyone in this forum as you say
(09-10-2024, 06:04 PM)SYZ Wrote: [ -> ]G'day PleaseProveMeWrong, and welcome to the forum.
I'm a lifelong atheist, and have been in and out of
love numerous times over those decades, and the
notion of a mythical supernatural entity somehow
affecting or failing to affect that state of mind is,
to put it simply, absurd.
Unfortunately, everything is wrong with your contention,
and I don't have the time or inclination to contest the
various claims you've made. Additionally, you've failed
to give us your definition of the word "god" that you've
used several times. So... what is it?
I'm an ignostic, so God or gods have—literally—no meaning
to me as definable terms. They're nothing more than words
I've seen countless times in the Abrahamic bible, the Quran,
the Tanakh, or the Vedas et al.
Your principle tenet that "For most people, love is the most
important thing in the world" is of course immediately without
any viable evidence. There are millions of people the world
over that don't or never have experienced the emotion we call
love.
There's also clinical condition known as alexithymia, or
emotional blindness, which is a neuropsychological phenomenon
characterised by significant challenges in recognising, expressing,
sourcing, and describing one's emotions. Alexithymia occurs in
approximately 10% of the general population.
—[Taylor GJ, Bagby RM, Parker JD, 1997.]
Incidentally, you need to know right from the start that there is
absolutely NO point, and no worth, in citing biblical scripture in order
to support any or all claims you make on these forums.