Atheists - can you define love for me please

I would like to see one of the extreme atheists please define love for me. Not the respectful atheists who dont redicule the beliefs of other but the "evangalizing atheists"

Please define romantic love such as seeing that person and knowing they are your destiny. Where does it come from? The brain , the nerves, chemical attraction. Id like an exaplanation of your beliefs about this kind of love and why do you believe that you feel this way. Married atheists are also more then welcomed to answer.

 

I guess some of them will say evolution

Please do not take it seriously

 

Well maybe they will say that her chemicals will match my chemicals, or her personality will match mine, or maybe its " she treated me this way and i would like to treat her back the same way". Or maybe evolved ganglions were made for this purpose. I personally never asked this question to an extremist atheist but im curious and open to hear their opinions.

 

I don't know if I'm extreme or an "evangelist" so I'm not sure if my opinion is welcomed. Do I qualify, pong?

 

You extreme? You rediculing towards others? Logicflux, come on. Of all people you are one of the most humble and respectful atheists I have ever met. Your a beacon of hope for humanity. Normally You wouldnt qualify but ill make an exception for you since you are so good hearted.
Go right on ahead and explain

 

Watch this video ten times a day, every day for ten years and as a reward you will be given the answers to all of life's mysteries.

 

• There are no atheists who do not ridicule the beliefs, and least not with themselves. It comes with the job description. sorry m8.
• One can not define "love", as "love" is already nothing but a definition. It is one of the words humans use in their very limited spoken language to define an abstract thing: the set of chemical and psychological phenomena which are involved in the process also termed as "falling in love", which they not understand yet in full, just a little. This process is not different than "hunger", "jealousy", and any human invented name for a chemical and psychological process in the brain. This is EXACTLY the abuse of words and language in religion that I was referring to in my "religion and science" post which you chose to conveniently ignore (see bottom of post)
• Besides, considering that 50% of the couples in the west have a divorce, I guess that what is called "love" in the very developed monkey - homo sapiens - us, is less intense to the parallel "love" in some other species of animals, who never separate after they "fall in love" and live a whole life together. With animals, as with humans, it just kicks in instantly, because it is a natural, chemically driven brain effect.

Read more: wikipedia and don't miss the cross references.

NOW THATS A HUGE SURPRISE! HERE IS THE RIGHT ANSWER:

That's correct dodara. Love, like hunger, like jealousy, like sadness, like rage, like shame, like human language, are all "evolutional adaptations". In simple words, they evolved and remained - because they are better for our survival. Now close your eyes and Imagine people living in the woods 15,000 years ago with mamooths, and try to think for yourself if love could be a good or bad thing for their survival and the survival of their children. no need to be a biology professor to make the right guess.

It is not a "belief", it is reality.

So I did answer

 

Chaos thank you for at least answering it without a link to some video and instead giving your own opinion. Logicflux, I didnt ask for a video, I asked for your opinion. If you are too lazy to answer with a post then im too lazy to watch some video.

Chaos then love is just a shallow physical need just like hunger? So an atheist would tell the person that he has fallen in love with that he feels this incredible chemical connection and that she gives him a chemical feeling of euphoria that is similar to a runners high?

At least im starting to understand the depth some atheists feel. So if we all basically have almost the same chemicals genetically in us then I can basically understand the love each person feels for the other person, So one day when we understand all the chemicals enduced in this feeling then we can truely tell a married couple that we know exactly how they feel.

This is romance beyond anything any poet could comprehend

I can see khalil Gibran doing a cheer for you guys right now

So you would essentially say you love a woman with all of your chemicals, all of your nerve endings and all of the ganglions that you have been blessed with.

Chaos, I didnt ask for your opinion on religion and how it pertains to science in this thread. I simply asked for your opinion on love and how an atheist perceives it. I notice that you have used links also from wikipedia. See, nothing bad with wikipedia. Im not like some of the atheists that will jump up and down and say wikipedia is unreliable. They actually have some usefull info.

I think atheists should get together and write books on how to romance the right chemical reactions to get a woman, or if they allready have teh chemical connection, on how to enhance it.

I really believe we should do away with all poetry as it delves into areas that we cannot prove that exist within us.
What do you say folks.

If i started a petition to outlaw poetry since its rediculous and unprovable by science would you guys vote on it?

 

I'd rather just post that video for you to watch rather than reenacting it with you.
I'll just take the easy way out; the parrot is alive and Jesus is love.

 

Exactly. And for exactly this reason, religions add a lot of artificial layers to the marriage ceremony. All kinds of stuff that we keep a couple together long after love is gone. To make them just get used to each other, a ring, a ceremony, etc'. To say, because love is not a natural everlasting institution - if not artificially enhanced, it will "pass". For this same reason sex before marriage is not allowed - to artificially associate in the brains of the believers another monkey human urge that we have, sex, with "love" (or what religions make out of love - the institte of marriage).
In secular Tel Aviv - 55% of the marriages end with a divorce. In the orthodox communities in Jerusalem - 2.5%. These two distant worlds are just 50 minutes apart by car. Israel is a fascinating place, I encourage you (and all the rest) to come for a visit. drop me a line!

When trying to understand the nature, i am not trying to be "deep" or to "feel" anything. I clean my head. Look at the evidence and use my logic and knowledge to see where this all leads to. I am ready for every result. Every result is just as good for me as the other.

 

Chaos, I didnt ask for stats from any country or group. I simply asked for your personal definition of what love means to you. Your basically saying that everything a husband or wife are doing for each other within the marriage is to keep that chemical connection strong and actually try to enhance it.

If you are correct , id imagine one day we will be able to inject our spouses with a chemical formula to keep that chemical and electrical connection going for a long time.

So basically we care for our family, our loved ones and our friends because their chemical and electrical connections meld with ours and if they didnt we would have no need to be there for them.

Id imagine one day we will be able to calculate teh exact formula for love.
This is going to be a great day for all of us and im excited about this.
I can get basically what I want without forcing myself to do anything for my loved ones because that chemical formula will will do the work for me.

Imagine an E=MC squared formula for love.

This is the day that poetry will be eliminated, compassion will be eliminated, empathy will be eliminated and unselfishness will be eliminated because we basically do things for the ones we love because of how they make us feel (literally and chemically) for us. I was really getting tired of that idiot Khalil Gibran saying that true love is special and comes from deep within our hearts. I mean come on folks, the heart is an organ, how the heck can it love.

Poets are some of the most rediculous , foogee-bogees I have ever seen.
Do you really believe that anyone believes their nonsense?

So its finaly LOVE IS A CHEMICAL REACTION (and maybe electrical) that 2 people feel for each other.

I cant wait to try that on my soulmate (oops no such thing, forgive me lol)

Logicflux I specifically asked for your own opinion (if you have one of your own that is) but if you dont have one thats ok. The jesus remark is typical of someone trying to change the subject. At least chaos understand the original question and can actually think for himself. This world has followers and sheep. Your post shows me which category you fall into. Chaos seems to be more of a leader and even though we share different opinions, I still respect him on being able to have enough of a mind of his own not to post a video.

Would any other evangalizing atheist like to answer this?

 

There are all kinds of "husbands and wife". My definition of what love means, again, is:
One can not define "love", as "love" is already a definition in itself. An abstract human language definition of what I describe in part below.

This is because you received religious education and you can not even for a moment consider the other, more likely, scenario: marriage will be completely abolished and outdated. Only religious people will continue to marry, and the society will no longer expect for couples to last more than 10 years, which are according to some studies the average duration of the "love" chemical reactions for a specific partner.

This paragraph is meaningless. Formulas relate measurable, well defined, entities. Love is still not well defined (just an abstract name to a certain, not fully understood, phenomena within our brain), and certainly not measurable.

yea, ok, I try to imagine this nonsense just because I like you.

Now this really sounds like the christian TV channels. Man. you need to get your own DVD label.

No. The scientific approach is that we love do not "because of". Its an urge like thirst jealousy envy etc', we do not control it. We just love, we currently don't understand the finest details of why this or that person, only in very general lines. This void in our knowledge is again a playground for your God of the gaps. But this gap shrinks every day, your sandclock is ticking.
I don't see how compassion, empathy and unselfishness and especially poetry fit into the discussion, try to rephrase your argument. You can be a total hater of everything and still have compassion and empathy to some things. Hitler's dream was to be a painter (=poetry). Maybe they should have let him be..... bringing them up was completely off topic, but would sound great on a missionary DVD.

Usually, its a one sided effect, but sometimes its 2-sided, in the nice cases. It is not just a chemical reaction, but a combination of chemical and psychological effects. nothing more than that.

For hunger, a hormone called ghrelin is manufactured in the pancreas and is responsible for a chain of reactions which lead to what our limited human language call: "hunger". We know a lot about this process: because other animals have it pretty much the same and pancreas are easier to examine and investigate.

For love, just in the same manner, a hormone is released, this time in the human brain, and the resulting chain of reactions is making you "fall in love". But here its a different story: the chain is much more complicated as it involved cognitive aspects (=psychology), other animals don't have a brain that matches with ours, and the researchers just don't get every day a free supply of fresh 12 year old brains to experiment with. For these reasons, our knowledge on the specifics is limited, much less than the hunger case. But the general framework is established and clear. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Love#Chemical_basis Read ! For hunger, there are already pills. Probably, someday, there will be "more love" and "less love" pills. That's not very "romatic" or "Utopian", but that's life buddy.



What is your model for love?

 

As we have evolved to be a generally monogamous social species we have developed a emotional connection which makes us deeply long to be with our partners, family, children and friends.

You do see how this emotion is beneficial to our survival and the survival of our offspring, right? We have evolved a lot of emotions, some pleasant, some unpleasant, all for the purpose of prolonging our lives and ensuring our progeny mature.

Or it could be something made by a magic man in the sky... i'm torn between these two explanations.

Saying this fact invalidates poetry is as an inane point as saying because eyes evolved it makes paintings redundant. Art is an appeal to emotion, much like your arguments, it doesn't care how these emotions originated and their origins have no effect on how art touches us. A poem about love is no less moving just because our emotions have a natural origin. it still invokes a feeling and that feeling is just as real, perhaps more so, than what is experienced by someone who thinks "magic man done it".

 

Stox I didnt ask for your opinion on religion. So basically your opinion the chemicals inside our bodies and our electrical impulses make us want to long for our families. There is nothing else involved right? In case you dont understand poetry it is generally written by people that say that they feel much more then what we can explain with science and basic emotions. It is not an inane point . Saying it is shows your knowledge of poetry to be very weak. I have written poetry myself and have taken courses with poets alongside me. Are you going to say now that poets are idiots that are imagining what they are feeling also?

Atheism creates great robots and one day according to atheists we will evolve to the point where we wont need emotions or feelings for our species to survive. LOOOOOOOOOOOL

Chaos again your bringing religion into this. So what your saying is that when we do understand all the chemical reactions in love that we will be able to bottle it up into a formula. Seems like I touched a nerve in the evangelical atheists in here lol. Love in a bottle. Imagine that.

I can imagine stoc on a date trying to be romantic with a woman. She will ask " how much do you love me and how deep is your love?" Stx will respond. " that depends on how many chemicals are secreted when I look at you and the psychological effect you have on me". Your like robots, you feel that everything you feel can be written down on a sheet of paper. This is why when I was on my quest for what to believe in many years ago that I was so turned off by atheists.

How can an atheist be romantic. lol

 

it doesn't make us want to do anything, it makes us do it. The fact that the sensation is caused by chemicals and electrical activity is neither here nor there, the sensation is just as real.

Like what? we have defined "love" from an atheistic perspective, perhaps you could do us the courtesy of being a bit more specific. At least have the guts to state in plain language and limited vagaries what it is you are trying to avoid saying.

You have just made that up. Poems and poets don't care where the emotion originates, they care that it exists and that it is a powerful emotion.

They aren't imagining it, it's a real emotion, as real as any other, it just happens to be a result of brain activity which has a natural origin, just like any other emotion which effects us profoundly.

your point is ridiculous. It's like saying that because pain is a sensation formed in the brain you should be able to hit your hand with a hammer. The feeling is just as real and effects us just as profoundly regardless what it's origins are.

Why are you having such trouble grasping such a simple point? are you pretending to not understand again to give yourself an argument from ignorance to use?

 

That is your opinion dude, and since we dont fully understand everything about what u call love then u cant say for sure what it is can you. Can u understand that simple fact or are you now a psychic that can predict all emotions that human beings feel.

And i ask again how will u romance someone? You didnt touch on that point man.

"I can imagine stoc on a date trying to be romantic with a woman. She will ask " how much do you love me and how deep is your love?" Stx will respond. " that depends on how many chemicals are secreted when I look at you and the psychological effect you have on me". Your like robots, you feel that everything you feel can be written down on a sheet of paper. This is why when I was on my quest for what to believe in many years ago that I was so turned off by atheists.

How can an atheist be romantic. lol "

A romantic atheist has as much depth as a caveman pulling his would be wife into bed with him.

 

Pong you are still under the impression that the origin of the emotion has any bearing on how profoundly it effects us, how moved we are by it or it's importance. Atheists romance women in the same way you do, well, not you, obviously, but everyone else. Why would the origin of the emotion have any effect on that? The importance of emotions don't stem from their biological (or magical, in your case) origin, they stem from their purpose, the state of mind which invokes them and the effect they have on people.

Again, your point is as ridiculous as saying the sensation of pain is lessened by the admission that it is formed in the brain as a result of stimulus from nerve endings. Hit yourself with a hammer and let us know if you still believe that the importance of sensations are lessened by a knowledge that they are formed in the brain.

I understand that you need to keep making the same fatuous point because, well, even though it is fatuous it's the only thing you have to cling on to. it's just tragic that from this point on you will only serve to make yourself look less educated and more ridiculous.

 

this is the second time you put the same words in my mouth, which I did not say.
If we will have a full understanding of the love mechanism (achievable in 1 year's time provided you lay 10 fresh 18-year-old human brains on the scientists's table every day), it will be pretty much like hunger, which is a chemical phenomena that we understand in full. And there will be even less place for divinity in that niche than the little there is today.

pong buddy, you are not offending me, you are not ridiculing me or the atheists.
You are ridiculing the facts of mother nature, and hence the joke you are pulling is on yourself
I was not educated to have "faith" in my opinions. The moment a better explanation will come along, I will change my views. This is where you can contribute: I ask you (for the 2nd time) to share your views about love, what is the mechanism that will explains it.

 

The simplest answer would be "from God" so it must be correct.

 

"love" is just a word. specifically it is usually taken to mean a certain set of biochemical circumstances giving rise to stong "feelings" towards another.

"feelings" however are internal, only apply to you, and can only be felt while the organism is in that state.

if you change the state (biochemical conditions) or the organism ceases to exist, then the "feelings" are not there any more.

if you alter the chemical state using other chemicals, you can always induce new and different feelings, but taking drugs and having feelings is no more proof of any "gods" than having feelings caused by your own biochemical state.

the nonsense humans will believe never ceases to surprise me