Guest end3 Posted November 29, 2007 Share Posted November 29, 2007 "I can love", says the ex-Christian...."I have Love", says the Christian..............if Christianity defines Love as God, I can rationalize that side. My question is: How/where do you classify love from the ex-Christian standpoint? Before ya'll remove my head, I am really looking for an answer that clearly separates this from Christianity and explains the reasons for where it belongs and why it has evolved. Let me please express the definition I am referring to, as there are many........Love - a deep, tender, ineffable feeling and solicitude towards a person, such as that arising from kinship, recongnition of attractive qualities, or a sense of underlying oneness. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dhampir Posted November 29, 2007 Share Posted November 29, 2007 "I can love", says the ex-Christian...."I have Love", says the Christian....... Y'know, if you hadn't started out with that, I might have read beyond the opening sentence. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ouroboros Posted November 29, 2007 Share Posted November 29, 2007 You define Love as God? So that means that when you say "I love hot dogs", you really are saying "I God hot dogs"? Love is an emotion we feel as the creature we have evolved into. Just like anger, frustration or sadness etc. Feelings are part of us. Why is Love separated and considered "God", while anger is not? It's just by tradition Love has become a "nicer" feeling to have than anger, and because of that, love has become a symbol for God. But not the other way around. God didn't create love. We created a God and gave him the attributes we like to him. I don't know how you can rationalize Love as being God, since you don't know if killing your son for being obnoxious is really love or not... that's what God commanded you to do... in love. So are you really sure you know what kind of love your God really represents, or do you just do exactly like I said, pick the good parts and make that your picture of God? It's like asking a kid to draw a flower. They will use their favorite colors to paint it. Why? Does that mean that flowers represent only that color? Or does it mean that this picture of a flower created that color? No, not at all. You use your favorit colors to paint your God, and that's how you make sense of things. Explain to me, if I don't have God, and I don't believe in God... how can I, as an unbeliever... feel love? Or do you claim that only you feel love, and I'm a robot without love? Or do you think that I'm lying? Do you think that I'm deluded and I only think I feel love, while I really feel a gas, but when you say you feel love it's the only real thing? Do you follow me here? Basically, how can you think or claim that I do NOT feel love when I say I DO feel love? Especially since I used to be Christian, and I feel the same or more love now than before. I'm happier. I know more about life. I know more about nature. I understand things better now. I have more emotions and I can feel more love. And lastly... things actually make more sense now. How is that possible? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ouroboros Posted November 29, 2007 Share Posted November 29, 2007 "I can love", says the ex-Christian...."I have Love", says the Christian....... Y'know, if you hadn't started out with that, I might have read beyond the opening sentence. Yes. It is very arrogant and belittling. Basically he says (but I don't think he really meant to say that) end3 knows love and can feel love for real, while non-Christians say they love and can feel love, but they don't. End3 doesn't know what someone else feels, so he's the one that's deluded into thinking that he can know. --edit-- Maybe the only true love can only be felt when you do not have a God that demands you to love? End3, maybe I feel the true love, and you don't? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RIPw4 Posted November 29, 2007 Share Posted November 29, 2007 Love is love..I dont understand what kind of answer your looking for! If your saying that since love is G-d for you then what is love for us...then you answered your question with the definition you gave.. Love is the action and feeling that arises when someone or something causes great joy in your life and you wish to reciprocate those feelings.. Your question comes off like your saying that love is only something a christian can experience..you might want to rephrase your question..it isnt very clear. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest end3 Posted November 29, 2007 Share Posted November 29, 2007 Look folks, I have been well informed of how poorly I write. Let me explain please. I am not trying to claim any love highground. Those statements are actual comments I have heard here on this site, so don't shoot me. I think they are real and representative of both sides. I am looking for the evolution and need for love from a science standpoint perhaps....as in where does it belong from that prospective. I repeat, this is not an attack, but a searching inquiry. Thanks Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kelli Posted November 29, 2007 Share Posted November 29, 2007 I can tell you what love isn't. Love isn't allowing people to be tortured for eternity. Not for any reason. Therefore, your god has nothing to do with love. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ouroboros Posted November 29, 2007 Share Posted November 29, 2007 Thanks End3, That clarifies it. The explanation is quite simple. Love has evolved as a mechanism to make an individual (or animal, or an entity of a living, higher organism) to care for and protect his near family and proteges. And the reason is... it had to be so. Consider the opposite. If you had a species that evolved hate as the primary force, and that each individual wanted to, and worked their ass off to kill each other. What would happen? They would die out. Very fast. And why is that? Because they all would to their best effort kill everyone else. So in evolutionary terms, only the animals and species that have a mechanism like love can survive. If they don't have it, they can't survive. So if we could take a time travel machine and look back in history and look at any animal that did NOT feel love and did NOT care for their family and did NOT care for their offspring... we'd see most of those species died out. There are a few exceptions. It is, in rare cases, possible to have animals that eat their offspring (like fish), but they have a million eggs and by planting the eggs in protective places there is a chance of survival. That means that fish that evolve a better technique of hiding their eggs have a better chance of survival. Hence we have more fish hiding their eggs than fish that don't. That's not strange. It's simple math. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest end3 Posted November 29, 2007 Share Posted November 29, 2007 Thanks Hans, Is anyone to the point of describing emotions as definable mechanisms? If evolution works towards survival, then wouldn't the love mechanism had to have been there from the beginning? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ouroboros Posted November 29, 2007 Share Posted November 29, 2007 Thanks Hans, Is anyone to the point of describing emotions as definable mechanisms? If evolution works towards survival, then wouldn't the love mechanism had to have been there from the beginning? The first level is the love for one self. The most simpliest life forms have to have that to even survive. Can you imagine a life form that wants to die, and strive to die, be able to survive? The next is when the simple life forms slowly gets more and more complex, the mechanism to survive gets stronger, but when the life form changes to a two-sex reproduction instead of a mono-sex production, then only the life forms (how simple they ever were) had to also want to leave the individuals of their own species alive and only attack and eat individuals of other species. So yes, the simplies, most primitive form of saving and protecting itself, its partner, its family and its extended member of the species evolved simultaneous. The reduction of non-loving, or non-simple-caring organisms were weeded out early on in evolution before they even got to become a higher level of organisms. Love is our word to define a very complex set of emotions that is a combination of many generations of survival instincts and needs to protect ourself and the ones around us. Imagine the cave men, living in a larger family of say 20 people, and they would kill each other and not even care for each other. Imagine if they were so selfish that they didn't share the food. Would your wife in the cave, who is pregnant and can't hunt, survive and give birth to your son if you passed on absolutely only-self-fulfilling genes? Not likely. But if you were born with the genes of protecting and sharing food with your pregnant wife, then she would be able to give birth to offspring, and suddenly, your family would survive, but your neighbor family with all the selfish bastards would die. It does make completely sense if you just think about it. And to the matter of describing the mechanism of emotions I think we still have a long way to go, but what I have been giving you here is part of what game theory talks about, and it's a fairly new science in math. Not even 100 years old. And it already can establish formulas for how we build societies, who we choose as partner, who and why we think someone is pretty or ugly, and how we even interact in financial affairs, or communicate most efficiently in police interrogation. (and much more) It's more science than you think, and more science than you and I know. I have a book with the title: "Survival of the prettiest - The science of Beaty" by Nancy Etcoff. That book is about 8 years old, and it's not a book about makeup tips. I do believe they have come much a long way further after that, but there's not enough time to keep myself updated. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HuaiDan Posted November 29, 2007 Share Posted November 29, 2007 I god chinese food! I god chinese girls he he. Let's make god baby! Seriously, love is a biochemical reaction that ensures our survival as individuals and as a species. It doesn't make it any less wonderful or meaningful. In fact, my understanding of love is far more meaningful than yours, End3, because I understand on a deeper level than you without all the mystical nonsense clouding my judgment. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ouroboros Posted November 29, 2007 Share Posted November 29, 2007 Oh, and I forgot. Dawkins wrote a book, the Selfish Gene that kind of covered some of the concepts behind altruism and why the care for family evolved... I can't find it in my pile of books, but I think it was written some 30 years ago. If Christians read these books, you would never have had to ask this question. The reason why you ask it, is because the books that explain these things are not in the Bible. That's the sad fact. You don't know, because your religion limits you to only read books that agree with your belief. To learn these things, you have to admit that there might be an answer, but you just haven't seen it or read about it yet, and it might be outside of your religious reading curriculum. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HuaiDan Posted November 29, 2007 Share Posted November 29, 2007 Oh, and I forgot. Dawkins wrote a book, the Selfish Gene that kind of covered some of the concepts behind altruism and why the care for family evolved... I can't find it in my pile of books, but I think it was written some 30 years ago. If Christians read these books, you would never have had to ask this question. The reason why you ask it, is because the books that explain these things are not in the Bible. That's the sad fact. You don't know, because your religion limits you to only read books that agree with your belief. To learn these things, you have to admit that there might be an answer, but you just haven't seen it or read about it yet, and it might be outside of your religious reading curriculum. Hans, that is simply the most brilliant thing I've read all day! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fweethawt Posted November 29, 2007 Share Posted November 29, 2007 Love is, when your mommy spanks you. And when she's done, she lets you spank her back. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HuaiDan Posted November 29, 2007 Share Posted November 29, 2007 I see Fwee's had some wine tonight. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fweethawt Posted November 29, 2007 Share Posted November 29, 2007 I see Fwee's had some wine tonight. Nah. But she made me whine, and that's why she let me spank her back. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
white_raven23 Posted November 29, 2007 Share Posted November 29, 2007 If evolution works towards survival, then wouldn't the love mechanism had to have been there from the beginning? Not in the way I think you mean. Han answered this question in detail. The summary of that is this: What humans recognize and identify as feelings and emotions (including love), evolved into what is recognized today from something much simpler. Evolution doesn't just cover the physical makeup of a living being, but that as the brain develops physically, so too does the mind. That mental development comes from a certain level of physical disadvantage. Say the predecessor of what we know today as a tiger needed food. It's mind says "get food". It's physical development is at a point where it's got claw-like appendages. So it uses those claws to get food. The creature's evolution simply becomes geared to make physical development the higher priority that the mental. The creature becomes faster, stronger, and it's claws get sharper, but the thought process hasn't really changed a lot from "get food". The early hominid did not have obvious physical advantages for taking care of basic needs, so for survival, the thought "get food" had to develop into "how to get food". And the answer to that question was never the same. Unlike the tiger predecessor's answer to "get food" was hardwired as run-it-down-and-kill-it. So hominid development was geared more for mental development than physical. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ouroboros Posted November 29, 2007 Share Posted November 29, 2007 Madam M brought up a very good point. If only Christians can love, then does that mean that love didn't exist in this world until the first Christians came about? Can't a Jew love? If not, then the whole Old Testament has to be thrown out immediately. Or if I Jew can love, well then, the answer is... love is not based on Christianity but on something else. And that "something else" is what we explained in the earlier posts. And what White Raven points out is that mind, biology, brain, emotions, awareness... all of it, co-developes, or co-evolve. It's not one before the other. They come fairly simulatenous, just because of the function of the biology, and the rules of the game, only the actors with the right tools can win. Evolution of Life is like a game, where the ultimate chess-mate is when you survive and have offspring that in turn survive and have offspring. The ultimate loss in the game of life is to die without offspring. So the winners... they survive... because they win... because surviving is winning. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SWIM Posted November 29, 2007 Share Posted November 29, 2007 How/where do you classify love from the ex-Christian standpoint? OK so god is love eh? Would you tell someone you love, believe what I say or I will torture you for all eternity? Would you, if you ruled the world, and claimed you loved everyone, ask anyone to kill innocent people because they didn't believe you, but believed in something that didn't even exist? Like say, another imaginary ruler? Would you distribute a "manual" and "allow" people to re-write it and alter it, include chapters here and there, and exclude some as well? I think love is a deep "feeling" we get, from taking comfort in the person you are with, or the child you are raising. A feeling of fellowship and belonging. It is a bond deeper then conscious, strong feelings of what we call "like". A great empathy for another, a feeling of oneness. I get no such feelings like this from xtian god. I get the feeling god from the bible is petty, jealous and sadistic. Giving his "son" to knowingly get brutalized, for what? To take away the sins of the world? WRONG the sins of the world still abound everywhere, it took nothing away. There is nothing even remotely close to "love" in the xtian god. If I beat the livin snot out of you, then later say "I did it cause I loved you" would that make you say, "oh, ok thats alrright then, thank you very much!"... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GraphicsGuy Posted November 29, 2007 Share Posted November 29, 2007 "I can love", says the ex-Christian...."I have Love", says the Christian.............. The reason people jumped all over you is because MANY Xians say that non-believers don't have "real" love. They have a pseudo-love that is actually from the devil. I have actually heard that taught in various circles. Most Xians live in a little tiny box and they're so damn afraid of being wrong that they criticize everything they don't understand. They criticize and make assumptions and never ask legitimate questions without an ulterior motive. The fact is, PEOPLE love. They can love, they have love, they give love, they receive love. Regardless of what they believe, what they're faith is, they love. What is love? Is God love? What is God? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Antlerman Posted November 29, 2007 Share Posted November 29, 2007 "I can love", says the ex-Christian...."I have Love", says the Christian..............if Christianity defines Love as God, I can rationalize that side. My question is: How/where do you classify love from the ex-Christian standpoint? Before ya'll remove my head, I am really looking for an answer that clearly separates this from Christianity and explains the reasons for where it belongs and why it has evolved. Let me please express the definition I am referring to, as there are many........Love - a deep, tender, ineffable feeling and solicitude towards a person, such as that arising from kinship, recongnition of attractive qualities, or a sense of underlying oneness. I'd be happy to offer my thoughts. The Christian can claim all he wants that he has love because he has God, but this is an empty claim. Actions define the reality of things like love in our hearts. I would say the Christian who says he has love because he has God, but acts contrary to love has neither. I would rather love not believing in a God, than not love claiming to believe in Him. I define love as valuing and respecting yourself, others, and the world we live in with reverent regard. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sojourner Posted November 29, 2007 Share Posted November 29, 2007 This topic is such a hotspot for me right now but maybe here I can let off steam. I am really angry inside. I am so pissed off!!!! (I came back to say why Im pissed off - at all the crap that is passed off as love in christianity) I personally dont believe in a sadistic, hateful, vengeful, god. Anywhere I see that god in the bible I rack it up to those that are writing an inpart knowing only seeing a god in their own image and labeling it God. When it is anything but the real God. I no longer accept that god at all and in fact I owe some of being set free from that to the wonderful folks here at this forum. Love is everywhere just as God is everwhere to me. I see love all the time in folks that dont even believe in a god. Believe me speaking as one that still believes in a form of christianity I also know that christians do not contain all the love in the world and in fact I would say very little of it if it were measured!! We can be the coldest hatefulest people there are on this planet, all in the name of God. What a crock. sojourner Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Alice Posted November 29, 2007 Share Posted November 29, 2007 I was raised to believe that outside of a relationship with the the christian god it was not possible to know 'real love'. Not that there wasn't a recognition that non christians experience strong feelings of love for their nearest and dearest ... but this love was viewed as 'fallen', tainted by sin and motivated from selfish desires. If you filter the information you have about the world outside your 'group' enough, it is possible to only 'see' things that support the view that buys membership of the group. All the unloving actions humans sometimes perpetuate against other humans are attributed to those outside of the group - when unloving things occur within christian communities these are explained away as the individuals concerned not being 'true believers'. I believe that love is an emotion that has evolved but it is non the less amazing for this. I am interested in the fact that the apparent need people have to feel love and to love others, seems to vary so much. I don't yet have an 'explanation' for this. Despite the crazy beliefs some christians have - they can be just as loving and lovable as non christians. Its good to be free of the feeling that only my 'group' really know how to love. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ouroboros Posted November 29, 2007 Share Posted November 29, 2007 Here's another thought I had about this subject: If Love (and emotions) originated in God, this means emotions are a spiritual mechanism. If medication can create eupohoria, love, anger, frustration, anxiousness, peace, calm, happiness... etc, then medication and biological and chemical stimuli contain spiritual essence. Is there any argument in the Bible that pills contain spiritual energy? On the other hand if medication does not contain spiritual essence, then emotions are not a spiritual mechanism If it's not a spiritual mechanism, then why does it have to be created by a spiritual being? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sojourner Posted November 29, 2007 Share Posted November 29, 2007 Hans I dont think love is just an emotion, I think emotions are a part of us that expresses love but to define love as an emotion to me is lacking Love to me is the highest thing that exists and in bible speak it is God but love is expressed in all kinds of ways that dont necessarily involve just emotion love is life in action to me if I could define it for instance have you ever really gazed at a plant reaching towards the sun and become in touch with the life in that? To me that is love expressed in nature and our emotions will get touched by that expression but that doesnt change that the love we have sensed is just an emotion but rather a life force that is all around us encompassing everything that lives to me I know Im simple in my words here but that is just how I see it Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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