Does love prove the existence of God?

[izzy88]

I watched a great movie recently called The Ninth Configuration, made by William Peter Blatty (of Exorcist fame). I won't give away any spoilers, but one of the topics it explores is whether the existence of love proves the existence of God. The story posits that love cannot be explained naturally, that true love is self-sacrifice, and self-sacrifice goes against our natural instincts.

What are your thoughts? Do you believe this is a convincing line of reasoning? Do you believe love can be explained naturalistically? Or do you believe that love doesn't actually exist?

 

[Polymath257]

I watched a great movie recently called The Ninth Configuration, made by William Peter Blatty (of Exorcist fame). I won't give away any spoilers, but one of the topics it explores is whether the existence of love proves the existence of God. The story posits that love cannot be explained naturally, that true love is self-sacrifice, and self-sacrifice goes against our natural instincts.

What are your thoughts? Do you believe this is a convincing line of reasoning? Do you believe love can be explained naturalistically? Or do you believe that love doesn't actually exist?

Love is an emotion. Yes, it happens naturally. Self-sacrifice certainly does NOT go against our 'natural instincts' since, among those instincts are those promoting social behavior, including self-sacrifice.

This is certainly a LONG way from proving the existence of anything like a God.

 

[izzy88]

Self-sacrifice certainly does NOT go against our 'natural instincts' since, among those instincts are those promoting social behavior, including self-sacrifice.

Can you provide proof of this? Or of anything you said? All you did was make a bunch of claims without providing any evidence.

 

[Polymath257]

Can you provide proof of this? Or of anything you said? All you did was make a bunch of claims without providing any evidence.

Absolutely. Love is an emotion: commonly understood, but we can point to the areas of the brain that mediate it.

Humans are social creatures: again, clear evidence from a variety of sources showing our tendency to build social structures.

Self-sacrifice is a pro-social behavior: by allowing for the survival of the society, it promotes the survival of more individuals in the society.

We see 'self-sacrifice' in other species, usually associated with children, but often with other social structures.

I also note that you asked whether the existence of love proves that a God exists. Since the existence of an emotion cannot prove the existence of a supernatural, I don't see how it could. Could you give a more detailed argument?

 

[Nimos]

What are your thoughts? Do you believe this is a convincing line of reasoning? Do you believe love can be explained naturalistically? Or do you believe that love doesn't actually exist?

I think love makes rather good sense from a natural perspective, compared to a non one.

From a Naturalistic perspective (This is just me guessing)
What could the general purpose of love be? To form a connection between two or more individuals.

Why would love be important? It gives comfort, which ultimately give security.

If the purpose of lifeforms is to survive, it would make sense in certain species to form strong bonds, as it makes the procreation a lot easier. The reason for that it that offspring within certain species, like humans, take a long time to be able to survive on their own, mainly due to our brain, that requires a long time to develop.

Now if we imagine that humans felt no love. First of all, any woman being late in her pregnancy would be extremely vulnerable, as the man or group would leave her behind, so to the point where I would personally expect a death rate of almost 95%, assuming we are talking early humans here, where we were not top of the food chain. A pregnant women, unable to run very easily, having to spend a lot of energy to simply gather food and dealing with all the other things and complications that comes with pregnancy, would make them easy prey for anything that would eat us.

Now assuming that a woman managed to survive long enough to give birth and doesn't die during it, they now have to carry around a small baby, which cries etc. Not making it any easier to gather food than when she were pregnant. The chance of her baby giving her away to a predator is huge in this whole period, so the chance of her or the child to survive long enough for her to not having to take care of it, is very slim.

Having humans and other types of animals share and work together in this whole process greatly increases the chance of our species ability to survive. Now, if we had no love for each other, first all, the woman would leave the baby behind and not even look back, so it would die very fast. The man would leave the moment he got bored of the woman.

So love, as I see it, is a mechanism for survival, it binds individuals together and therefore increases their chance of survival.

That as I see it, would be the naturalistic explanation, purely based on me guessing.

From a non Naturalistic perspective (Religious) that love is something from God. What is the purpose of it?
No clue to be honest.

 

[izzy88]

Love is an emotion: commonly understood, but we can point to the areas of the brain that mediate it.

I'm not talking about an emotion; you're referring to something like fondness or attachment or the pleasure one may feel in relation to a specific person.

By love I mean a voluntary self-sacrifice, where a person consciously chooses to place the good of another individual above their own.

Self-sacrifice is a pro-social behavior: by allowing for the survival of the society, it promotes the survival of more individuals in the society.

Then why do we also see selfishness? How can both selfishness and selflessness be a product of our nature?

Since the existence of an emotion cannot prove the existence of a supernatural, I don't see how it could. Could you give a more detailed argument?

I haven't given an argument at all; I've presented a concept that I thought would make an interesting topic of discussion. I did not post this topic in the religious debates forum, I posted it in the theological concepts forum.

 

[izzy88]

I think love makes rather good sense from a natural perspective, compared to a non one.

From a Naturalistic perspective (This is just me guessing)
What could the general purpose of love be? To form a connection between two or more individuals.

Why would love be important? It gives comfort, which ultimately give security.

If the purpose of lifeforms is to survive, it would make sense in certain species to form strong bonds, as it makes the procreation a lot easier. The reason for that it that offspring within certain species, like humans, take a long time to be able to survive on their own, mainly due to our brain, that requires a long time to develop.

Now if we imagine that humans felt no love. First of all, a woman being late in her pregnancy would be extremely vulnerable, as the man or group would leave her behind, so to the point where I would personally expect a death rate of almost 95%, assuming we are talking early humans here, where we were not top of the food chain. A pregnant women, unable to run very easily, having to spend a lot of energy to simply gather food and dealing with all the other things and complications that comes with pregnancy, would make them easy prey for anything that would eat us.

Now assuming that a woman managed to survive long enough to give birth and doesn't die during it, they now have to carry around a small baby, which cries etc. Not making it any easier to gather food than when she were pregnant. The chance of her baby giving her away to a predator is huge in this whole period, so the chance of her or the child to survive long enough for her to not having to take care of it, is very slim.

Having humans and other types of animals share and work together in this whole process greatly increases the chance of our species ability to survive. Now, if we had no love for each other, first all, the woman would leave the baby behind and not even look back, so it would die very fast. The man would leave the moment he got bored of the woman.

So love, as I see it, is a mechanism for survival, it binds individuals together and therefore increases their chance of survival.

That as I see it, would be the naturalistic explanation, purely based on me guessing.

From a non Naturalistic perspective (Religious) that love is something from God. What is the purpose of it?
No clue to be honest.

You seem to be doing what Polymath did and talking about an emotion one feels, but that's not what's meant by "love". As I said in the OP:

"The story posits that love cannot be explained naturally, that true love is self-sacrifice, and self-sacrifice goes against our natural instincts."

Love is an act of the will, where you consciously will the good of another instead of your own - even to the point of giving up your own life.

 

[Polymath257]

I'm not talking about an emotion; you're referring to something like fondness or attachment or the pleasure one may feel in relation to a specific person.

By love I mean a voluntary self-sacrifice, where a person consciously chooses to place the good of another individual above their own.

Yes, that is an emotion encouraging social behavior. It isn't even that uncommon among other scial species (wolves, for example).

Then why do we also see selfishness? How can both selfishness and selflessness be a product of our nature?

Different circumstances. Also, you have to allow for social training and the values communicated by society encouraging such sacrifice.

I haven't given an argument at all; I've presented a concept that I thought would make an interesting topic of discussion. I did not post this topic in the religious debates forum, I posted it in the theological concepts forum.

Fair enough. I find it to be one of the worst suggestions for a proof of the existence of a deity.

 

[Nimos]

You seem to be doing what Polymath did and talking about an emotion one feels, but that's not what's meant by "love". As I said in the OP:

"The story posits that love cannot be explained naturally, that true love is self-sacrifice, and self-sacrifice goes against our natural instincts."

Love is an act of the will, where you consciously will the good of another instead of your own - even to the point of giving up your own life.

Well in that case I don't really think its a whole lot different than what I already wrote. I still think that the overall structure as presented in the first post, basically applies to self sacrifice as well.

If these bonds gets strong enough you could have self sacrifice, however I think one has to add our ability to feel emotions as well. Meaning our capabilities to feel other people state of mind so to speak.

So just as we can feel if someone is happy or not, we can also feel if they are in great suffering or sadness. To me, this makes us able to react to the pain and suffering of others, even to the point where we can feel it for another species.

Maybe our emotional system simply goes into overdrive and the feelings of someone else suffering, makes it so we are willing to take the chance or accept the consequence of our actions as a better option than the feeling we are having at that very moment.

Sort of like a battle between "survival" and "emotions". If the survival instincts are stronger, we tend to not prefer self sacrifice. Whereas if the emotions are stronger, we might be willing to attack the bear trying to eat a friend, even though one knows that the risk of getting killed is there.

At least that is how I see it. But again, without love creating the bonds as I talked about in the first post, there would be no self sacrifice at all.

 

[izzy88]

Yes, that is an emotion encouraging social behavior. It isn't even that uncommon among other scial species (wolves, for example).

Wolves do not have free will, and therefore cannot love in the sense that we're talking about.

As I said in the OP:

"The story posits that love cannot be explained naturally, that true love is self-sacrifice, and self-sacrifice goes against our natural instincts."

What we're talking about is an act of the will, whereby a person voluntarily chooses to place the good of another above their own - even to the point of giving their own life.

Animals cannot do this, because they cannot make choices, because they do not have free will.

But I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that you likely reject the very existence of free will - and if so there's really nothing more to discuss on the topic of this thread.

 

[izzy88]

Well in that case I don't really think its a whole lot different than what I already wrote. I still think that the overall structure as presented in the first post, basically applies to self sacrifice as well.

If these bonds gets strong enough you could have self sacrifice, however I think one has to add our ability to feel emotions as well. Meaning our capabilities to feel other people state of mind so to speak.

So just as we can feel if someone is happy or not, we can also feel if they are in great suffering or sadness. To me, this makes us able to react to the pain and suffering of others, even to the point where we can feel it for another species.

Maybe our emotional system simply goes into overdrive and the feelings of someone else suffering, makes it so we are willing to take the chance or accept the consequence of our actions as a better option than the feeling we are having at that very moment.

Sort of like a battle between "survival" and "emotions". If the survival instincts are stronger, we tend to not prefer self sacrifice. Whereas if the emotions are stronger, we might be willing to attack the bear trying to eat a friend, even though one knows that the risk of getting killed is there.

At least that is how I see it. But again, without love creating the bonds as I talked about in the first post, there would be no self sacrifice at all.

I see what you're saying, but we really aren't talking about the same thing because the way you're using the term "love" is not the same way that I am. You're still talking about an emotion, I'm talking about a free act of the will.

Are you saying that our natural instinct is for self-preservation, and self-sacrifice only happens when our emotions cloud our judgement?

 

[Revoltingest]

I watched a great movie recently called The Ninth Configuration, made by William Peter Blatty (of Exorcist fame). I won't give away any spoilers, but one of the topics it explores is whether the existence of love proves the existence of God. The story posits that love cannot be explained naturally, that true love is self-sacrifice, and self-sacrifice goes against our natural instincts.

What are your thoughts? Do you believe this is a convincing line of reasoning? Do you believe love can be explained naturalistically? Or do you believe that love doesn't actually exist?

The underlined portion is the error.

 

[izzy88]

The underlined portion is the error.

Care to elaborate?

 

[Revoltingest]

Care to elaborate?

Consider what parents will do for children & family,
& what people will do in defense of their tribe.
Altruism is arguably useful, & resulting from evolution.
So it's not reasonable to presume that it's not a "natural instinct".

 

[izzy88]

Consider what parents will do for children & family.
Altruism is arguably useful, & resulting from evolution.
So it's not reasonable to presume that it's not a "natural instinct".

So, what you're saying seems to be that because we see people behaving in such a way, it necessarily means they're acting on instinct, because you assume from the beginning that all human behavior is instinctual.

Am I understanding you correctly?

If so, you simply reject the notion of love being presented in the movie because you don't believe in free will. According to how the movie uses the term love (and therefore how it's used in the OP), it is an act of free will, and so without free will it cannot exist.

 

[Koldo]

Care to elaborate?

We see honey bees doing self-sacrifice really often. Is that an act of love? Does it go against their natural instincts?

 

[Revoltingest]

So, what you're saying seems to be that because we see people behaving in such a way, it necessarily means they're acting on instinct, because you assume from the beginning that all human behavior is instinctual.

Am I understanding you correctly?

Not quite that. Observing such behavior isn't proof that it's natural & instinctive.
But evolution is a testable theory explaining this behavior.
Using "God" as the explanation is not testable....just a belief.
To reason from an untestable belief proves nothing.

If so, you simply reject the notion of love being presented in the movie because you don't believe in free will. According to how the movie uses the term love (and therefore how it's used in the OP), it is an act of free will, and so without free will it cannot exist.

I haven't seen the movie, & can only address what you post.

 

[izzy88]

We see honey bees doing self-sacrifice really often. Is that an act of love? Does it go against their natural instincts?

They aren't doing it voluntarily; self-sacrifice, as properly understood, requires an act of the will. Bees do not have free will; they are simply acting according to their "programming".

 

[randix]

Can you provide proof of this? Or of anything you said? All you did was make a bunch of claims without providing any evidence.

That sounds an awful lot like what many religious people often do.

In fact, people who make religious claims that are unproven or which (for all we know) cannot be proved, often demand or require of differently-minded people a much stricter burden of proof than they are willing to place upon themselves.

 

[izzy88]

Observing such behavior isn't proof that it's natural & instinctive.
But evolution is a testable theory explaining this behavior.
Using "God" as the explanation is not testable....just a belief.
To reason from an untestable belief proves nothing.

You haven't proven anything simply by stating that evolution is true, though; you haven't shown how evolution proves that a voluntary act of self-sacrifice is simply natural instinct.

I haven't seen the movie, & can only address what you post.

I thought that the term "self-sacrifice" implied a free act of the will; apparently I was mistaken, since everyone who had replied so far has misunderstood what I meant by it.