Can God love?

Discussion in 'Religion Archives' started by Greatest I am, Apr 27, 2012.

  1. wynn ˙ Valued Senior Member

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    Uh. :bugeye:

    I think that fantasy films like that are very good at triggering our hidden assumptions and beliefs about love.
    Not that they are a good representation of what a mature love would be like.

    I think this is obvious.
     
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  3. wynn ˙ Valued Senior Member

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    Repetitio est mater studiorum!
     
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  5. wynn ˙ Valued Senior Member

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    I think we agree that out of sight is not out of mind.
     
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  7. Syne Sine qua non Valued Senior Member

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    Then it follows that love can exist where the ability to express it does not.
     
  8. wynn ˙ Valued Senior Member

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    It depends on what you mean by "expression."

    For example, in many countries in Europe, it is customary to bring flowers and candles to graves of family and friends.
    Some people have in their homes altars to their living or deceased family and friends.
    Then there are fanclubs for famous actors (living or dead) where people express their appreciation in words, pictures, in other ways.


    I do not think though that a one-sided, non-reciprocated emotion can really be considered "love."
    One can certianly be unilaterally infatuated, unilaterally "in love." But, as Aragorn tells Eowyn in "The Lord of the Rings" as he rejects her: "You love a phantom."
     
  9. Syne Sine qua non Valued Senior Member

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    Again with the movies as your only frame of reference?! :bugeye:

    You're really just a silly, shut-in teenage girl, aren't you?

    I would argue that the person who requires reciprocation to feel love for someone is self-serving and not demonstrating love at all. Does a parent love an infant any less for that infants inability to express any reciprocity? Do they "love a phantom"? :bugeye:
     
  10. Greatest I am Valued Senior Member

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    3,740
    Thanks for the advertising.
    Let me know if you want a complete list.

    Do you respect these of your fellow believers?

    African witches and Jesus
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MlRG9gXriVI&feature=related

    Jesus Camp 1of 9
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rBv8tv62yGM

    Promoting death to Gays.
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RMw2Zg_BVzw&feature=related

    Regards
    DL
     
  11. Greatest I am Valued Senior Member

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    3,740
    True but I have many kudos on this one and it may be deserved if the number of theist, conspicuous in their absence is an indicator.

    Regards
    DL
     
  12. Greatest I am Valued Senior Member

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    3,740
    Do the 9 million who needlessly die and starve to death yearly not need as well?
    Why are you not asking in their name?

    Regards
    DL
     
  13. Greatest I am Valued Senior Member

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    3,740

    I do not understand this last.
    How can you say something is reciprocity when it has been demonstrated not to be there?

    Regards
    DL
     
  14. Greatest I am Valued Senior Member

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    Is God not interfering with nature all the numerous times he is shown to kill us?

    Regards
    DL
     
  15. Greatest I am Valued Senior Member

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    3,740
    Is a movie a better or worse frame of reference than a 3,000 year old book of myths?

    Regards
    DL
     
  16. Syne Sine qua non Valued Senior Member

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    3,515
    @GIA

    Learn how to use quotes already. Are you just online forum illiterate?

    So by your own reasoning, a simple unexpressed desire is sufficient. That would apply to a god as well. Since an infant cannot reciprocate and has no former history, does that mean it cannot love? How does a person first come to love, if they have no history of reciprocity with anyone?

    That is where your argument fails. If reciprocity is a necessity for love, then how do people magically initially reciprocate simultaneously? If one person cannot love without reciprocity, then how does love even begin? It is trivially obvious that what one person feels cannot be instantly reciprocated. (Unless you assume we are all psychic or something.)

    Have you had this subjective experience yourself, by which to judge?

    Of course you don't understand. If love requires reciprocity, then only people who love a god could possibly experience the love of that god. And this is all by your own given reasoning.

    And what demonstration are you talking about? The imaginary one you foist off as having any grounding in empirical fact?

    That's the logical fallacy of the false dilemma, as those are not the only options.
     
  17. wynn ˙ Valued Senior Member

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    15,058
    You're so closed-minded sometimes, it hurts.


    I think that without reciprocity, one can have goodwill, compassion, sympathetic joy. Love includes all these, and reciprocity.

    Often, when someone claims to love another, what they actually feel is goodwill, compassion, sympathetic joy. These can be unilateral. Love can only be when mutual.
     
  18. Syne Sine qua non Valued Senior Member

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    3,515
    I know the difference between fiction and reality.


    So perhaps you can answer the question I just put to GIA. If love doesn't exist without reciprocity, then how did love ever come to exist? Are we psychic, that we can instantaneously and mutually reciprocate? :bugeye: Seems to defeat the definition of reciprocating.

    So no one can ever love first? It's always some magical (and for you, theatrical) thing?


    And since you didn't reply to my earlier question, I'll just have to assume that you don't believe parental love exists at all until a child is developed enough to reciprocate.

    Nonsense.
     
  19. Greatest I am Valued Senior Member

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    When it has history to the relationship behind it, yes.

    Are you saying you do not agree?

    Regards
    DL
     
  20. Syne Sine qua non Valued Senior Member

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    3,515

    Are you seriously going to ignore the bulk of my post for this weak straw man? I'm clearly saying that love can exist without reciprocity. Period.
     
  21. Greatest I am Valued Senior Member

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    3,740
    Then show an example of how that would work.

    Regards
    DL
     
  22. keith1 Guest

    It is understandable for a primitive people to go to water over a sacrifice of siblings to prove love.
    Yet it would be no proof or great loss for a deity to lose a sibling, since they would have such abilities to pump them out with cookie-cutter speed (the human surrogate virgins only increasing those numbers to valueless frivolity).

    A deity that truly loved his people would therefore likely be self-sacrificing, so therefore likely self-exterminated, leaving the paradox of belief, to worship, collect alms, (a religious "toll" so to speak-for unwarranted privileges that an "available" deity could otherwise demand) reduced to a voluntary act, and the logic of a deity-less state once again confirmed.

    A modern people must remain vigilant of the gullibility of reading truth into the ancient texts of a nonviable, uneducated, and primitive viewpoints.
     
  23. wynn ˙ Valued Senior Member

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    15,058
    Good for you! Someone needs to nominate you for the Nobel Prize.


    I guess Richard Dawkins can help you with that ... or not.


    Sort of, yes.


    Actually, it's unilateral "love" that is theatrical.


    One of the characteristics of parental-filial love is that it can set in the moment the two are aware of eachother; further, an infant simply looking at the parent can be interpreted by the parent as reciprocation from the infant.

    The terms of reciprocation vary, depending on the kind of love.
    The terms of reciprocation in parental-filial love are different from the terms of reciprocation in romantic love between a man and a woman, and again different from the terms of reciprocation between friends, for example.
     

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