Love exists as much as any other feeling - anger, hate, happiness, whatever. And I'm sure it can be scientifically proven just by looking at the endorphins etc that are released into a person's body when they feel love. Anyway, "love" is just a word we use for a certain feeling that we (sometimes) feel, if the feeling didn't exist then we wouldn't have found a word for it.
The same endorphins are released when you eat dark chocolate. I'm sure that different endorphins are released when someone prays, so by that logic G-d exists. Omg...are you supposed to smoke it? I've been growing some of the best buds in my area. Frosty, quality genetics. Never crossed my mind I should smoke the stuff. And on a cannabis forum too, wtf am I all about?
Love is a relationship bond between two people. When you get really close to someone you start to care for them and feel their pains. Love can be between brothers, sisters, parents, wives, daughters, sons, moms, dads, any two people can love. You can even love your dog. Animals can love too. Dogs love their owners(on most occasions). Dogs can get close with others dogs and become companions. Love is an emotion just a is any other emotion. How do you prove happiness? Is it be the chemicals released in your brain or is it by how you react to those chemicals. Or does it have nothing to do with chemicals at all. Love is real. I know cause i feel it at this very moment. Thats enough physical evidence for me to believe it. And every human being can relate. Unlike god. Who you cant "experience" and no one has ever felt him. Other then a certain few who have apperently had dreams where god spoke to them or their toaster toasted a jesus on their toast therefore god is real.
but love can be scientifically proven through examination of the endocrine system on the biological side of things as well as the psychological based on how it affects the body (stimulus -> reaction.) granted, love, when you look at it from a biological perspective is merely a chain of events that release hormones and other chemicals into your bloodstream to be recieved by various parts of the body and used in such a way as to ensure pair-bonding between members of the opposite sex (or same sex depending on your bent) to ensure procreation and protection of the new life that is created biologically through sexual intercourse. without 'love' humanity would have died off millions of years ago... granted, if you're talking about the romanticized version of love, that's a little trickier because it's a subjective and abstract concept that defies a lot of logical explanations and often leads people to act in a way which isn't biologically condusive to survival (such as a mother sacrificing herself to protect her child.) so, love does exist and it is very provable through both psychological and biological examination. if this was a veiled snub towards people trying to prove/disprove a higher power, it fails. it fails big time.
That depends on how you define love. Love, to me, is a behavior. The act of selflessness towards others.
[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F4j2Nmd2ypk]Z-Ro - Never Had Love [Prod. by Beanz N Kornbread] - YouTube[/ame]
What. You can say that the praying causes an emotional reaction but you can't say with certainty that god was the cause.
I think the OP's point is that so many people slam those of us who believe in god because we believe based on experience rather than scientific evidence. And the OP is right. Love cannot be fully explained by science, and yet many of us feel it daily. I have no scientific proof that my wife honestly loves me in her heart, but I do have experiences that help support the idea. Same with god, at least on my part.
So a child born out of rape is a child born out of love. I fail to see the logic behind that. Re-read the bold part. If then statements, must be lost on you. Being 'in' love will affect the endocrine system but love in general will not. You can not prove that I love my parents by checking hormone levels. Or like Nisim later goes on about...his wife. Once the 'in' love period is over that's it, endocrine system has returned to normal. If it were so simple to check hormone levels to quantify love, then instead of having talk shows where people take lie detector tests to prove fidelity, or dna tests to prove paternity we would be taking blood samples from people and assessing their love quantitatively. If you were to test someone psychologically for love, then you would be identifying madness for being in love is akin to madness. So without love humanity would have died off millions of years ago? I'll give you the benefit of the doubt (something you don't seem too keen on giving others) and assume you mean thousands of years ago. So all these wars, slavery, religious battles, all in the name of love? I don't love you, but that does not mean that I want to kill you. There remains no scientific proof for love's existence. It remains subjective. This is not a veiled snub at people who believe in a higher power, if anything it's a snub at people who require scientific proof to validate their beliefs. You could measure a jilted lover's hormone levels and 'prove' love, yet in that madness they may be stalking someone, causing them suffering so that 'love' that you measured isn't really love. You see, while you may feel love, that feeling will always be subjective to you and there is no way that you can scientifically prove that what you are feeling is love. Spot on!
I don't know how emotions are detected. But I just did a quick search and found how an MRI scan can detect the parts of the brain being activated when a person verifies that they feel emotion. Through reason we can conclude that emotions are the result of some physical process. But you seem to be going on about the exact emotion love so... [/quote] Love is a pretty general term for any feelings of affection, deep relational bonds, romantic/sexual bonds etc. I'm not sure what you're getting at when you say our feelings are subjective. They obviously are as they pertain to the individual. Regardless of this we can verify that we are capable of feeling these strong emotions referred to as 'love'. Our direct experiences of emotions, consciousness, and our perception of reality through our five senses are self-evident matters. The existence of god is not a self-evident matter. You can claim to have emotions, or experiences, or perceptions that are caused by god but it takes a leap of faith to say your direct experiences (emotion/perception through 5 senses/consciousness) are a result of some external cause without being able to verify this relationship between cause(god) and effect(emotion/experience) empirically.
You could also argue that the physical process is the result of an emotion. Ahh...all the romantic poets who have tried to capture the essence of love. There is nothing general about love. How you experience that emotion, why one person means so much more to you than any other, and that's if you get to feel that emotion. Love can not be scientifically proven. How would you even calibrate that love machine? My love is bigger than your love? Empirically? I love (freudian slip) the double standards. Can you empirically prove love? Nope. You can be vague when you say that "Through reason we can conclude that emotions are the result of some physical process." By the same logic, through reason I can conclude that my experiences (I do not limit myself to 5 senses) and perceptions are caused by G-d. If you are not capable of seeing what is self-evident then there is nothing much I can do about that.
The "generalness" I am speaking of is the braod use of the word. We say we love our dog, our family, our spouse...even inanimate objects. Our love for our spouse isn't quite the same as our love for our dog. Regardless, these emotions can be shown to manifest from physical processes. I am saying that we can directly observe the object/person that causes an emotional response and we can conclude through reason that the response was caused by the object/person. Show me that god is the source of your emotional experiences, otherwise all we can say with certainty is that you experience emotions. And I said "some physical process" because I do not know the specific mechanics behind how the human body operates.