Can love prove God? What's wrong with this argument?

[Cavebear]

Love is the basis of morality.

Nope

But what is it?  It is almost defined by what it isn't.  It isn't the submission of self to another.  It isn't the total admiration of another.  It isn't the feeling that one person is all there is to you.  But those are negative definitions.  And I agree there are positive sides of "the feeling of love".  But I can't define/explain that.

[Alan V]

As stated above plus hormones, oxytocin and others…all acting upon a physical brain. Aren’t we marvelous!

I assume you are being ironic.

We are certainly complex, but we routinely over-estimate ourselves IMO.  Christians saying that our love must come from God is just another such over-estimation.  

Too often we want to be more important than we really are.  It's just self-centered human arrogance.

[Cavebear]

As stated above plus hormones, oxytocin and others…all acting upon a physical brain. Aren’t we marvelous!

I assume you are being ironic.

We are certainly complex, but we routinely over-estimate ourselves IMO.  Christians saying that our love must come from God is just another such over-estimation.  

Too often we want to be more important than we really are.  It's just self-centered human arrogance.

I think pattyit has a point. Actually, we are pretty much just bags of fat, enzymes, hormones, and meat. And with a lot of formerly parasitic microbes that have evolved to cooperate. With some weird improvement of self-awareness that we call "mind".

[Alan V]

I think pattyit has a point.  Actually, we are pretty much just bags of fat, enzymes, hormones, and meat.  And with a lot of formerly parasitic microbes that have evolved to cooperate.  With some weird improvement of self-awareness that we call "mind".

Humans are highly complex combinations of material ingredients, many components of which are always changing.  So although I don't believe in the magic of spiritualism, I am not a reductionist either.  

A mind is a brain function, and therefore depends on brain structure, chemistry, and activation.  All three components change in ways similar to how software operates in hardware.

[airportkid]

... we are pretty much just bags of fat, enzymes, hormones, and meat ...

No.  That's the same as saying a Boeing 747 is just bins of sheet metal, wire, bolts and rivets.

A complex, organized structure functioning in multiple coordinated organized processes transcends whatever material comprises it so much that whatever the constituent material is becomes irrelevant to essential definition of the structure.  Much of our technology, especially electronic technology, approaches biological organisms in complexity and capability; we define animals and computers by their behaviors and capabilities, not by the base atoms of their makeup.

[Dānu]

[SaxonX]

That's some messed up thinking

[Cavebear]

... we are pretty much just bags of fat, enzymes, hormones, and meat ...

No.  That's the same as saying a Boeing 747 is just bins of sheet metal, wire, bolts and rivets.

A complex, organized structure functioning in multiple coordinated organized processes transcends whatever material comprises it so much that whatever the constituent material is becomes irrelevant to essential definition of the structure.  Much of our technology, especially electronic technology, approaches biological organisms in complexity and capability; we define animals and computers by their behaviors and capabilities, not by the base atoms of their makeup.

I disagree, maybe. . We are not (the religious watch-maker argument)[ like the parts of pieces like a dissassembled Boeing 747, we are the results of the particular assembly of them. A snail has the same parts (more or less) but not the connection of them that creates self-awareness.

Actually, I agree with much of your post. I was just reading in Scientific American about how AI development works to replicate human thought (and fails so far, but is interesting). And I recall from some old sci-fi book that "the map is not the territory" (there were 3 ideas and the other 2 escape me right now).

[Inkubus]

As stated above plus hormones, oxytocin and others…all acting upon a physical brain. Aren’t we marvelous!

I assume you are being ironic.

We are certainly complex, but we routinely over-estimate ourselves IMO.  Christians saying that our love must come from God is just another such over-estimation.  

Too often we want to be more important than we really are.  It's just self-centered human arrogance.

I fail to see how this is a counter to what pattylt said.

[Cavebear]

I am sometimes amazed at how long it took us to understand that air was "something". Wind seems so obvious. But I wasn't around then...

[SYZ]

"To love without knowing how to love wounds the person
we love,” the great Zen teacher Thich Nhat Hanh admonished
in his treatise on how to love—a sentiment profoundly
discomfiting in the context of our cultural mythology, which
continually casts love as something that happens to us
passively and by chance, something we fall into, something
that strikes us arrow-like, rather than a skill attained through
the same deliberate practice as any other pursuit of human
excellence. Our failure to recognize this skillfulness aspect
is perhaps the primary reason why love is so intertwined with
frustration.

That’s what the German social psychologist, psychoanalyst,
and philosopher Erich Fromm [1900-1980] examines in his
1956 masterwork "The Art of Loving".

      Fromm considers our warped perception
      of love’s necessary yin-yang:

Most people see the problem of love primarily as that of being
loved, rather than that of loving, of one’s capacity to love. Hence
the problem to them is how to be loved, how to be lovable.

[Alan V]

I assume you are being ironic.

We are certainly complex, but we routinely over-estimate ourselves IMO.  Christians saying that our love must come from God is just another such over-estimation.  

Too often we want to be more important than we really are.  It's just self-centered human arrogance.

I fail to see how this is a counter to what pattylt said.

It isn't.  It's just an addition.

More often than not these days, I respond to someone who has critiqued some weird theistic or political idea.  In other words, I would rather talk with other atheists.

[Alan V]

Substitute the words "the facts" for "God," and this actually means something helpful.

The problem is that people have been taught that God is equivalent to truth.

[Huggy Bear]

...So Love requires a ‘brain’, ‘dopamine’ and ‘neural pathways’, all of which are present in animals, yet animals don’t have the ability to love. Love is the basis of morality. Without love, one wouldn’t be able to empathize. Without love, one wouldn’t have a conscience.

How do you know that animals don't have "the ability to love"?
Take birds for example—many, such as penguins, lorikeets, magpies,
and cockatiels form lifelong pairs.  How do you know that's not love?

This is why the opposite of love isn’t hate because hate comes from the same place as love, the opposite of love is apathy.

Not so.  Love is spontaneous and unplanned, and indefinable.
Hate is a totally human-inspired emotion, both planned and
easily defined.  Hate can be consciously overcome, whereas
love cannot.

An animal mating for life doesn't imply that they love each other, it's simply their instinctual nature to do so, or else you'd see cases where love ends and they separate, same as humans. 

Love and hate are two sides of the same coin, depending on the context either could be a good or bad thing. For instance one can love evil and hate good, or love good and hate evil, making love contextually not always a good thing and hate not always bad. In Greek there are like 3 different words for love that have different definitions.

[Huggy Bear]

... we are pretty much just bags of fat, enzymes, hormones, and meat ...

No.  That's the same as saying a Boeing 747 is just bins of sheet metal, wire, bolts and rivets.

A complex, organized structure functioning in multiple coordinated organized processes transcends whatever material comprises it so much that whatever the constituent material is becomes irrelevant to essential definition of the structure.  Much of our technology, especially electronic technology, approaches biological organisms in complexity and capability; we define animals and computers by their behaviors and capabilities, not by the base atoms of their makeup.

Sounds like you’re making a case for intelligent design.

[Dānu]

How do you know that animals don't have "the ability to love"?
Take birds for example—many, such as penguins, lorikeets, magpies,
and cockatiels form lifelong pairs.  How do you know that's not love?


Not so.  Love is spontaneous and unplanned, and indefinable.
Hate is a totally human-inspired emotion, both planned and
easily defined.  Hate can be consciously overcome, whereas
love cannot.

An animal mating for life doesn't imply that they love each other, it's simply their instinctual nature to do so, or else you'd see cases where love ends and they separate, same as humans. 

Love and hate are two sides of the same coin, depending on the context either could be a good or bad thing. For instance one can love evil and hate good, or love good and hate evil, making love contextually not always a good thing and hate not always bad. In Greek there are like 3 different words for love that have different definitions.

[SaxonX]

An animal mating for life doesn't imply that they love each other, it's simply their instinctual nature to do so, or else you'd see cases where love ends and they separate, same as humans. 

Actually it does and your assumption is we should instances of birds separating or falling out of love. That's not a valid assumption. It's also wrong as we observe animals breaking up.

[SaxonX]

Sounds like you’re making a case for intelligent design.

Nope this assumes that can about by intelligence. This is not valid reasoning

[Minimalist]

This year our dog rescue has had 3 females give birth to litters within 8 days of each other.  We have had 7 litters born over the last 2 years.  In every case by the time the pups were six weeks old momma was pretty much done with them.  The little darlings have sharp teeth by then and nursing them becomes a painful endeavor for momma.  Our human mid-wives begin weaning the pups onto solid food and momma contents herself with "socializing" her offspring for want of a better word.  None show the slightest sign of missing them when we move them to their permanent homes.

It's all instinct.  I imagine that early human births were instinctive as well.  The religious always seek to cram their bullshit into everything but we got along fine without it for eons.

[SYZ]

One only has to look at the birth rate in the central
African region to confirm that blind instinct has a
lot to play...

•  Niger: 6.9 children per woman
•  Somalia: 6.1
•  Chad: 5.9

•  USA: 1.66 children per woman.
•  Canada: 1.43
•  Australia: 1.63   [ABS, 5 July 2024]

[Paleophyte]

You know how this goes, post the peer reviewed research…

Animal Emotions: Exploring Passionate Natures

"...current research provides compelling evidence that at least some animals likely feel a full range of emotions..."

If only Huggy had the wits to Google his bullshit first.

[Paleophyte]

You know how this goes, post the peer reviewed research…

You know how this goes, burden of proof rests upon the claimant. Kindly provide peer-reviewed research demonstrating the existence of your god, that it is the exclusive source of love, that love is necessary to morality, and so forth.

He who makes the batshit insane claims gets to back up the batshit insane claims.

[Dexta]

I love ridiculing the concept of gods on the internet. I fucking love rubbing the stupid theist's faces across the sidewalk, scraping their skin and flesh from the bone. So, yes, God (shiva) is love.

[Huggy Bear]

You know how this goes, post the peer reviewed research…

Animal Emotions: Exploring Passionate Natures

"...current research provides compelling evidence that at least some animals likely feel a full range of emotions..."

If only Huggy had the wits to Google his bullshit first.

*emphasis mine*

Did I say that animals don't feel emotion or did I specify love? Also, are you at all familiar with the word "likely" and it's place regarding scientific data?

"My goal is to convince skeptics that a combination of “hard” and “soft” interdisciplinary research is necessary to advance the study of animal emotions."

If we actually go to the section of the article that discusses love you start to see words like "opinion" "suspect" and "seem".

 Many animals seem to fall in love with one another just as humans do. Heinrich (1999) is of the opinion that ravens fall in love. He writes (Heinrich 1999, p. 341): “Since ravens have long-term mates, I suspect that they fall in love like us, simply because some internal reward is required to maintain a long-term pair bond.”

Pure conjecture... indeed, the whole section of the article discussing love is 100% opinion.

[Huggy Bear]

You know how this goes, post the peer reviewed research…

You know how this goes, burden of proof rests upon the claimant. Kindly provide peer-reviewed research demonstrating the existence of your god, that it is the exclusive source of love, that love is necessary to morality, and so forth.

He who makes the batshit insane claims gets to back up the batshit insane claims.

Actually I made no claims buddy, let me paraphrase how we ended here.

"There is a giant leap here between "Love", something that we know ultimately is chemicals in our brain making us feel a certain way about others that forms long lasting attachments between people"

THAT is the actual claim being made, my repose to that was:

"What is the chemical composition of love?"

The response to that was:

"Dopamine
Neural Pathways 
A Brain"

My reply to that was:

"So Love requires a ‘brain’, ‘dopamine’ and ‘neural pathways’, all of which are present in animals, yet animals don’t have the ability to love."

The claim that animals can love comes from your fellow athiests...

Do you agree with the following statement?

"Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres."