A platitude: god is love

[Trailblazer]

Well, you've pulled up all the weaponry! But I am going to focus only on this one sentence: "All I care about is what is actually true." And nothing that you have said here, or in 40,000+ other posts, actually makes any case at all for "what is actually true." Only for what you think it might be.

Through this whole dialogue, that has been my only point.

I have made my case. Whether or not you or anyone else believes it is actually true is at their own discretion.
When it comes to God and religion, nobody can ever prove "what is actually true." We can only believe.

Through this whole dialogue, that has been my point.

 

[The Hammer]

The statement “God is love”... is it a platitude?

A platitude and a falsity.

 

[The Hammer]

To add, as a polytheist maybe I find it particularly benign because the gods are more or less all aspects and phenomena. Love is a god, Fear is a god, Moon is a god, Decay is a god, and so on and so on. So it'd be weird to say "god is love" because everything else is also a god or divine/sacred phenomena? Just equating it to love is leaving out the vast majority of the gods/universe. It's weird.

How do I conquer the God/dess of Fear? She's a ***** and tormenting me.

I'm not one to work with mine enemies usually.

 

[The Hammer]

If that's not a platitude than "There's no hate like Christian love." isn't either.

I'm stealing this fyi

 

[The Hammer]

When it comes to God and religion, nobody can ever prove "what is actually true." We can only believe.

I can't prove. But I also don't believe.

I "know".

 

[Trailblazer]

I can't prove. But I also don't believe.

I "know".

Same here.

 

[The Hammer]

Same here.

Yup. Now the trick is to be quiet and stop telling others, eh?

 

[siti]

To be fair, you have to take it in context...that passage in 1 John 4 is talking about the central theme of the Christian belief system - i.e. the sin-atoning sacrifice of Christ in behalf of fallen humanity...when it says "God is love" it means God is the epitome (the supreme example) of love...and then encourages believers to follow that example in their dealings with one another...after all - according to the passage - god let his son die out of love for you...ought you not in return love your brother?

It becomes a platitude if it is overused out of context, but to an informed Christian (not that you get many of those to the dozen), it is a pillar of their faith.

 

[The Hammer]

according to the passage - god let his son die out of love for you...ought you not in return love your brother?

What emotionally manipulative bull****.

I didn't ask for that. Let me sin and die in peace.

Much better ways to get ones love and respect, besides murdering their child.

 

[Heyo]

I'm stealing this fyi

You can't steal that, I stole it myself.

 

[RestlessSoul]

It probably is a platitude, to those who are deaf to it's simple beauty and profound veracity.

 

[RestlessSoul]

I rather think the phrase is more of a deepity. A deepity is

“A statement that is apparently profound but actually asserts a triviality on one level and something meaningless on another. Generally, a deepity has (at least) two meanings: one that is true but trivial, and another that sounds profound, but is essentially false or meaningless and would be “earth-shattering” if true.”​

So, “God is love” appeals to emotions, and so it seems to make some real sense to a lot of people. But it is still a deepity, because:

• It is false on the face of it - God cannot be reduced to an emotion
• Looking deeper, you cannot, by any stretch of the imagination, call the God of the Bible, who would burn and drown people, and give his own followers plagues for any rule-infringement, "Love."

Allow me to offer an alternative definition of 'deepity';

A disparaging term which allows the cynic to sneer at something he doesn't understand, thereby protecting the boundaries of his own ego.

 

[Evangelicalhumanist]

Allow me to offer an alternative definition of 'deepity';

A disparaging term which allows the cynic to sneer at something he doesn't understand, thereby protecting the boundaries of his own ego.

Be my guest. You can rewrite the entire OED to suit your own preferences, if you'd like. It won't change the reality.

 

[siti]

What emotionally manipulative bull****.

I didn't ask for that. Let me sin and die in peace.

Much better ways to get ones love and respect, besides murdering their child.

Well yes! I was just explaining where the phrase "God is love" comes from and how it is far more than a platitude when taken in context. Taken in context, it is the completely paradoxical and contradictory notion that an omnipotent and omnibenevolent God who epitomizes love could think of no more loving (or just) way to save his creation than approving of the gratuitous murder of the most innocent of all humans that has ever lived.

Its far worse than a mere "platitude" or even "emotionally manipulative bull****" - it is a huge part of the foundation on which a deceitful and murderous religious movement still enveloping a quarter of the human population was built.

 

[Evangelicalhumanist]

Allow me to offer an alternative definition of 'deepity';

A disparaging term which allows the cynic to sneer at something he doesn't understand, thereby protecting the boundaries of his own ego.

Look, when religious people say "God is love," I think they are expressing, as honestly as they are able, a fundamental aspect of their theological and spiritual beliefs -- without any particular regard for a philosophical argument about the nature of God. The phrase is often rooted in Christian teachings, most especially in the Bible, where it is mentioned in verses such as 1 John 4:8, which states, "Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love."

The idea, in my (very un-Christian) view is that love, as understood in a divine and perfect sense, is a fundamental attribute of God's nature. It conveys the concept that God's essence is characterized by boundless, selfless, and unconditional love. This perspective suggests that the nature of God is not only loving but also encompasses compassion, mercy, and benevolence.

But this is sadly refuted, throughout the Bible -- both Old and New Testaments -- when God reacts to various human failings with cruel death. You cannot make a claim for "boundless, selfless, and unconditional love" if it has conditions that narrow its effect for your own (God's own Self) reasons. That is where the notion utterly fails for a person of reason.

Further, it seems very clear, to those with some knowledge of animal and human nature, along with neuroscience, that what "love" actually is is an emotion raised in an organism in order to cause the organism to behave in certain ways. Basically, the idea is that organisms are algorithms, and those algorithms generate, from all the sensory and internal information available to them, outputs to guide next actions. And those outputs are very often emotions and feelings, like love, fear, caring, hunger, thirst. They make you close to people, or run away from people, to tend to people who need it (as they may be expected to tend to you when you need it), to eat and to drink....and on and on and on.

And to reduce God to that -- well, is that really where you want to go?

 

[idea]

5: O SON OF BEING! Love Me, that I may love thee. If thou lovest Me not, My love can in no wise reach thee. Know this, O servant.
The Hidden Words of Bahá’u’lláh, p. 4

Love me first - and then I will love thee? This sounds horrible - sounds like self-love.

What is love.

 

[idea]

"boundless, selfless, and unconditional love"

WS:116 Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove.
O no! it is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wand'ring bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come;
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me prov'd,
I never writ, nor no man ever lov'd.

 

[Trailblazer]

Love me first - and then I will love thee? This sounds horrible - sounds like self-love.

What is love.

5: O SON OF BEING! Love Me, that I may love thee. If thou lovest Me not, My love can in no wise reach thee. Know this, O servant.
The Hidden Words of Bahá’u’lláh, p. 4

No, that is not what it means. It means that if we don't love God, God's love cannot reach us, since we close off the channel through which God 's love flows to us.

 

[RestlessSoul]

Look, when religious people say "God is love," I think they are expressing, as honestly as they are able, a fundamental aspect of their theological and spiritual beliefs -- without any particular regard for a philosophical argument about the nature of God. The phrase is often rooted in Christian teachings, most especially in the Bible, where it is mentioned in verses such as 1 John 4:8, which states, "Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love."

The idea, in my (very un-Christian) view is that love, as understood in a divine and perfect sense, is a fundamental attribute of God's nature. It conveys the concept that God's essence is characterized by boundless, selfless, and unconditional love. This perspective suggests that the nature of God is not only loving but also encompasses compassion, mercy, and benevolence.

But this is sadly refuted, throughout the Bible -- both Old and New Testaments -- when God reacts to various human failings with cruel death. You cannot make a claim for "boundless, selfless, and unconditional love" if it has conditions that narrow its effect for your own (God's own Self) reasons. That is where the notion utterly fails for a person of reason.

Further, it seems very clear, to those with some knowledge of animal and human nature, along with neuroscience, that what "love" actually is is an emotion raised in an organism in order to cause the organism to behave in certain ways. Basically, the idea is that organisms are algorithms, and those algorithms generate, from all the sensory and internal information available to them, outputs to guide next actions. And those outputs are very often emotions and feelings, like love, fear, caring, hunger, thirst. They make you close to people, or run away from people, to tend to people who need it (as they may be expected to tend to you when you need it), to eat and to drink....and on and on and on.

And to reduce God to that -- well, is that really where you want to go?

Regardless of whether love is synonymous with God, I wouldn't reduce either to the output of an algorithm. Neither would I reduce all the complexity of human experience to a biological imperative, since mind, body and spirit are of equal significance in my world view.

Is there no message, no insight, no revelation, to which - your intellect offering little clarity - only your spirit is receptive? So it is for me, when I hear the words God is Love; the words strike home somewhere way beyond the level of the restless, chattering mind. As do these words, from Jalalludin Rumi;

Reason, when you speak
I cannot hear the wise one.

And why do you use the Bible, a collection of scripture for which it appears you have little love, to refute your own concept of a loving, compassionate, merciful and benevolent God? That doesn't seem to make much sense.

 

[HonestJoe]

Is the statement just something we say because it sounds nice?

I think it's clear it has become that for many believers but I'd suggest that the roots of the phrase are more significant than just that (and not in a good way).

I see the fundamental concept of saying "God is love" as part of the wider evasion away from the difficult questions of what God actually is, especially in the context of scripture, doctrine and beliefs that are so often unclear and even contradictory on the true nature of God (and indeed, our ability to even know or understand it). It's a bit like a stranger offering you food you don't recognise but, when you ask what's in it, they just reply "It's full of goodness!" (or worse, "Nobody knows, but I've been told it's full of goodness"!). I don't think I'd be eating on that basis.

Even in the kind of context your historic thread put it, it not only doesn't really answer the question in any meaningful way, it doesn't even open the question of God being anything else that this abstract fundamental goodness. "Love" or "good" aren't concrete things that any being simply is or is not, they're abstract concepts that are consequences of what we are and do and they are abstract concepts which are highly subjective, contextual and changeable. It's like saying 12:30pm is dinnertime without any definitions, conditions or context.