disagree.

love has a distinct and identifiable pattern of hormonal and neural correlates.

who decides when it's "love"?

well for example I can tell with decent accuracy from your brain activity whether you are loving or hating what you are looking at. it doesn't only exist subjectively.

but the distinction is subjective, no?

i think it just seems that way because we use words to describe it. describe it in terms of whats going on in your body biologically and it becomes objective.

is it any different if we measure an individual's bio-chemistry as they think about divinity?

get to what youre getting at before you trick me into saying something stupid

i'm getting at that we can't "prove" love. we can say that humans experience emotions, but any distinction regarding such emotion is more-or-less arbitrary. and yet love is something that most of us feel and experience. to the completely objective scientist there is no such thing as love, there are just -bio-chemical reactions to stimulus.

this is like theism vs. atheism. the theist often experiences god on a personal level while the atheist believes there is no scientific proof only bio-chemical reactions to stimulus.

edit: i believe the athiest also experiences the work of god, but they fail to recognize it or they call it something else.

No, someone in love will behave towards their loved one in an objectively identifiable way. It's independently verifiable whether you love or hate someone. There's no such thing as "feeling" detached from a behavior, but even if they were, feelings can be observed from the outside too (that's how we win at poker).



I'm still working on that one.



This could be said about any cognitive state, but its just a matter of level of description. For example, we can talk about "water" while a chemist can tell us that water is really two hydrogens and an oxygen. Its really just two ways of talking about the same thing. You can talk about "pleasure" or about the pattern of neurons firing in your nucleus accumbens -- again, its two ways of talking about the same thing. Water is "just" H20.

When we explain something scientifically we don't necessarily lose the original level of description. Love is still love even when it is biochemical.

we certainly can if you define specifically what you mean by love instead of just using the term in a vague
manner that presupposes it's something metaphysical.




obviously false.



to any completely objective person there is no reason to think love is something beyond a word we use to describe bio-chemical/behavioral reactions. convincing
yourself it has to be something metaphysical is just another manifestation of religious egocentrism.

is it possible that saying "god" is another way of saying "universe?"

edit: i shouldn't have tried to rename God. I believe it's more accurate to say "unvierse" is a portion of "God's work."




define love.



if we plotted the emotions of 1000 people, you believe there would be a way to objectively distinguish differences and label them?

if you like.

but most people use 'god' to mean something more than just 'universe'

i just said what love is. certain biochemical reactions and the behavior that emerges from it. you're the one being vague.
i'm assuming you think it would lessen it in some way if that's all there is to it, so there has to be something more.



absolutely. in fact scientists can predict what a person is "feeling" just by looking at
various patterns of brain stimulation.

This is quickly deteriorating into semantic stupidity.

We've been down this road before, navy.

Your Socratic nebulous ambiguous floating definition questions game isn't quite as profound, clever, insightful or thought provoking as you may think.

if you were given this chart, how would you objectively distinguish where love is?

this is mostly in response to saying that distinction is not arbitrary. i realize at this point, i'm getting silly, and admittedly, this debate has not gone as i would have hoped. i try to stay out of religious debate where little can be learned. and any further debate along this course will probably result in language deconstruction games.

my main point is that with regards to many things, emotion being one, we believe in them because we experience them first hand. their title and distinction are arbitrary even if your mind is still too tightly bound by language to see so. "universe" vs. "god" falls along the same lines. one person's distinctions could be way different than another's.

and my main goal is to encourage the curious not to let the dogma of a certain religion sour your search for something higher.

i agree that this game has not been very profound, clever, or insightful. but it remains that you seemingly dislike people and i love everyone. you seem angry while i feel at peace.

shouldn't that be thought provoking?

No.

As everything is not always as it seems.

For one who projects a "meanings behind words" kind of image, you sure are missing a lot of the meaning.

I can tell you that being "at peace" is what I do best.

I can tell you that most people are relatively stupid. That does not necessitate dislike.

I can tell you that when people say they "love everyone" I am unimpressed with their concept of love, since their love is so obtuse and general as to include people they don't know. Including, you know, child rapists and people who change lanes without signaling.

the idea of universal compassion is a nice one

the idea of loving everybody...even i'm not that slutty

that's what i try to do best.



i love those i don't know not for who they are but for their potential. i do not need to have first hand knowledge of someone's actions to know of what they are capable of. i believe that each individual is as biologically capable as the buddha or aristotle and i can love them for that potential.




whoops, sorry.

Heh.



In a nebulous, ambiguous, wishy-washy way maybe.

But so what?

yup.

Yar.

since you have to specifically define love as a certain range on the chart before the word can have any meaning in relation to the chart,
that's a silly question.



which is why to have a meaningful conversation about god you have to choose which person's distinction you're talking about. seems like you're
just stating the obvious.

Spademan, just curious... have you ever experienced love?

What is it with you people and love?

Platonic love? Yes.

I love my mom and my dog.

Love mixed with lust? Nope.

Not yet.

Because it is when this happens that life no longer is black and white.

Thats ridiculous.

For the record, I have experienced all of these things and pretty much agree with Spademan 100% in this subforum.

good thing freud isn't here

My eyes just rolled so far into the back of my head that if I believed in god I'd be thanking him for the fact that I didn't damage any nerves in the process.

Also, I vomited.

OK, I know the romantic approach to any argument would never ever fly on this forum. I am also not arguing any side of any of these debates.

But I do want to say that some people experience something in their lives that changes their perspective of their reality to where you no longer see everything as black and white but you start looking at everything as not so defined.

I was reading another one of these religious threads where one poster felt that there were different variances of atheism and Spademan pointed out that that he does not discount all possibilities and it is rare for an atheist to be that extreme. I have been naive in my assumptions of those who are posting in these threads from the atheist point of view. My thought was that the atheists were coming from such an obstinate stance that in my opinion, they were sounding just as irrational as the extreme religious right. I apologize for my incorrect assumption.

So, I will go ahead and state my beliefs so that anyone who participates in this forum can immediately discount anything I say. I believe that God is Love. That is it. No more, no less. So when someone asks me do I believe in God, the answer is yes. But I do not believe in God the way most people believe in God. There is no magic space dragon zombie in the sky. But I can not call myself an atheist either because my truth is that there is something that unites all of us. That something to me is love, hence love is God and God is Love.

I have many, many issues with organized religion but if someone wants to partake in it, then go ahead. I would never impose on someones freedom of religion. However, I worry when anyone blindly follows anything. I even worry that my simplistic view of God is somehow blind faith, and this is why I recently started reading the religious forum again.

no offense but unless you specifically define what you mean by the terms love, god, and unites that's just a string of extremely vague essentually meaningless statements.

also just because you believe in a metaphysical connection of some kind doesn't make you not an atheist, just as traditional buddhists are considered atheists by any reasonable meaning of the word.

Hehe.



Hehe.



According to what you've stated, which lacks any religion or personal god, you are an atheist because you are without believe in theism. It's ok to say it, nobody is burning us at the stake these days in the U.S.

Also, this "thing" that unites us, this nebulous "something"... do you feel it is something separate from us, something outside of us, or inside of us, or both? You call it love, but what does that mean? If you changed the word "love" with "mind" would it matter? Are you familiar with buddhism? Do you like cream cheese?

Ok, forget that last question, sometimes I just get on a roll.

Your shorter post allowed you to get most of the same questions in first.

Bastard.

Well, that it was shorter and I stopped to eat in the middle of writing mine.

Also, this "thing" that unites us, this nebulous "something"... do you feel it is something separate from us, something outside of us, or inside of us, or both? I think it is both.

If you changed the word "love" with "mind" would it matter? Not sure but I think it would. If you are referring to mind as in the energy of thought, than probably not. But if it were about the actual thought itself, I would say substituting that word would make a difference.

Are you familiar with Buddhism? Yes, I am.

Do you like cream cheese? Only with Nova.

I see.

p.s. What the fuck is "Nova" in regards to edible fare?

Salmon, a type of lox.

Sounds like protein.

De'lish.

:this

not having a degree in Theology.. all I can offer to the dialogue as a whole is this...

JESUS SAVES

Ovechkin scores on the rebound though

Applauding your own joke is lame enuf, but I hope your not trying to pass off a 30 yr old saying as your own.

I hope you aren't trying to pass off this post as a product of an educated adult.

at least he knows where the caps key is

I know, right?

Those stupid ass non-caps users are really retar...

Oh, shit.

So, yea... uhm, how about that fearless society we were talking about elsewhere. Heh. Heh. *nervous and awkward shuffling*