Evidence for the Existence of Love

[Twilight Hue]

You gleaned over the second question.

Love exists in the mind. Like God as well.

 

[Windwalker]

"Love is never having to say sorry"

I agree with that statement. They don't say sorry because they have to, they say it because they love them.

I like that. However, in the movie "A Love Story", which is where that line comes from, he was apologizing to her for having just screamed in her face for something he was angry about, she runs off, and finds her crying, and apologizes for what he just did. So her comment in that context, when he should in fact have apologized, seems to suggest because he loves her and she loves him, he doesn't need to apologize for bad behaviors towards her.

Now that is just wrong. If you love someone truly, you should care about having hurt them and let them know that clearly. If he just said nothing instead after having just been a complete jerk to her and hurt her feelings, what the hell message does that send her? It sure isn't love. It says "I'm an insensitive, selfish jerk."

 

[sun rise]

Love is an emotion, as @Evangelicalhumanist says.

I would modify it as "Love is often an emotion".

f you start ascribing love to insensate bodies , you are either implying they have emotions (pass the straitjacket, Alice), or you are pretending love is not an emotion but just anything in nature that attracts, which makes its meaning so woolly that it becomes fairly useless as a term.

Considering the Greeks have 8 words for our word "love" - eros, philia, agape, storge, mania, ludus, pragma and philautia. Other languages have even more words. So based on that, yes the english word "love" is woolly and fairly useless unless qualified somehow.

Meher Baba was the source of my comment and my expression did not carry the full meaning he gave it:
Throughout the progressive stages of the evolution, from the stone form to the animal world up to human and all the human forms, love exhibited its perverse expression in the form of gravitation and attachment. The fact that love throughout the evolutionary period did carry with it an element of repulsion proves that the true and the all embracing love remained genuinely unexpressed. The beginning of unexpressed love is the stone-form, and the culmination of unexpressed love is the human being. The point of genuine expression of love is the opening of the inner sight of man.
...
The law of gravitation, to which all the planets and the stars are subject, is in its own way a dim reflection of the love which pervades every part of the universe. Even the forces of repulsion are in truth expressions of love, since things are repelled from each other because they are more powerfully attracted to some other things. Repulsion is a negative consequence of positive attraction. The forces of cohesion and affinity which prevail in the very constitution of matter are positive expressions of love. A striking example of love at this level is found in the attraction which the magnet exercises for iron. All these forms of love are of the lowest type, since they are necessarily conditioned by the rudimentary consciousness in which they appear.

Furthermore, it creates the wrong idea that the essence of love is attraction. The essence of love, surely, is the urge to take care of someone or something selflessly. Often, e.g in the case of sexual love, but not necessarily, it can be blended with an urge to possess the desired person or thing in some way, which is where the idea of attraction comes in, but nobody would suggest the Earth has an urge to possess an apple, surely?

The highest form of love in sanskrit is "prem" Yogapedia has this to say about the word "prem"
Prem is a concept in another Indian tradition, Sikhism, in which it is pure love for the Divine that is expressed in a number of ways. A Sikh may express prem by wearing spiritual clothing, singing hymns of praise, reading scripture, becoming absorbed in thoughts of the divine object of prem or through selfless service to the community, a concept known as seva.

The devotee expressing prem is not "taking care" of the divine but the concept of selflessness is definitely there.

 

[Trailblazer]

Do you believe love exists? Why or why not?

Are you able to provide evidence of love? If so, please do so here.

I believe that love exists. The evidence of love is the feeling of love and the demonstration of love by our actions.

 

[Trailblazer]

But it does demonstrate that love, like god(s), is a subjective personal experience that cannot be made objectively evident regardless of requests for evidence of its existence, no?

God is not a subjective personal experience for everyone. I have had no personal experience of God, yet I know that God exists based upon evidence of God.

 

[SalixIncendium]

God is not a subjective personal experience for everyone. I have had no personal experience of God, yet I know that God exists based upon evidence of God.

What evidence? If it's in the writings of Baha'u'llah, wouldn't that just be someone else's subjective personal experience?

 

[Trailblazer]

So then, when someone say God exists only in the brain, can we they counter that and say that too is real on the same basis?

Not unless you can demonstrate God acting.

 

[Evangelicalhumanist]

And by that demonstration, we know there is something real behind it. Something tangle, something demonstrable, even those love is a sense, a feeling, an attitude, and not a solid object. Is it then any different to speak of the reality of God that same way?

Can't God be demonstrated through the actions and effects it has in others, the same way we can see love demonstrated? Isn't that evidence of the reality of God, just as love has evidence of its reality?

Consider what you're saying, then. If, as you seem to have agreed, love demonstrates itself by the behaviours that it prompts in us, how often have you seem that expressed as, "because I love you, I will have to burn you at the stake, or excommunicate you from the congregation because your beliefs aren't orthodox," or cause you to shout from the pulpit and denounce to death those who happen to be different, like gays and lesbians?

Apparently, if you want to put it as you have, God then does that.

 

[RestlessSoul]

Love exists in the mind. Like God as well.

Everything we know of exists in the mind. If it didn’t, we wouldn’t know of it.

 

[Trailblazer]

Another thought as occurred to me: One who has never experienced love may be as inclined to say love does not exist as one who has never experienced god(s) may be inclined to say god(s) does not exist. Since love is as objectively evident as god(s), one who hasn't experienced one, the other, or both may be inclined to deny their existence.

Agree? Disagree? Why?

I have experienced love, but that is not why I believe that love exists. Love could exist even if I never experienced love.
I have never experienced God but I am inclined to say that God exists, on a different basis.

 

[Trailblazer]

Everything we know of exists in the mind. If it didn’t, we wouldn’t know of it.

I don't think that everything we know 'exists' in the mind. If God exists, God exists independently of the human mind.

 

[Trailblazer]

So like God, it always is sourced back to the brain and nowhere else.

No, God is nowhere where you can locate Him with a GPS, but God certainly does not exist in anyone's mind.
Belief in God is all that exists in the mind.

 

[RestlessSoul]

I don't think that everything we know 'exists' in the mind. If God exists, God exists independently of the human mind.

I didn’t say exists only in the mind. But your conception of God (and mine, and everyone else’s) certainly exists in the mind.

 

[Trailblazer]

You'll have to explain how the experience of love is love, but the experience of god is not god.

The experience of love might not be love, just as the experience of God might not be God...
A person might just imagine they are experiencing love just like a person might just imagine they are experiencing God.

 

[Trailblazer]

I didn’t say exists only in the mind. But your conception of God (and mine, and everyone else’s) certainly exists in the mind.

Yes, that's true and I knew that is what you meant.

 

[Trailblazer]

There is no such thing as subjective evidence.

Subjective evidence is evidence that we cannot evaluate. In fact, we have two choices; to accept what somebody says or reject it. ...
Objective evidence is evidence that we can examine and evaluate for ourselves.
Objective evidence - definition and meaning - Market ...

 

[Twilight Hue]

No, God is nowhere where you can locate Him with a GPS, but God certainly does not exist in anyone's mind.
Belief in God is all that exists in the mind.

True. But the reality experienced in one's own mind is substantial enough to say God exists in his or her own mental realm if that person desires it.

 

[Trailblazer]

What evidence? If it's in the writings of Baha'u'llah, wouldn't that just be someone else's subjective personal experience?

The evidence is not only the writings of Baha'u'llah. Although those constitute evidence, the evidence for God's existence is everything that surrounds the life of Baha'u'llah. All the other Messengers of God, their life and the scriptures that are attributed to them, also constitute evidence for God's existence.

Yes, what Baha'u'llah experienced was a subjective personal experience that cannot be verified objectively.....
The reason I believe He was telling the truth in His writings is because of all the evidence that 'indicates' to me that He was who He claimed to be.

 

[Alien826]

Typically when I've heard people say God only exists in the mind, they are trying to say it's not real. But when you look at love, it seems to be operating the same way, but a skeptic doesn't generally deny the existence of love. What is the difference? Why is one real and the other seen as a make believe non-reality?

The problem is that most people that say they believe in god don't see the object of that belief as existing only in their minds. Though their concept of god may vary, "god" is still seen as something external to themselves that exists objectively. And that's what "skeptics" say doesn't exist. I doubt anyone denies the existence of a god that is simply an idea in someone's mind.

 

[Trailblazer]

True. But the reality experienced in one's own mind is substantial enough to say God exists in his or her own mental realm if that person desires it.

True. But that does not mean God does not also exist outside of the mind.