I will accept religious witnessing for what it is(unsubstantiated opinion) and respond accordingly.
“Love” is a word with widely variant definitions. There was a point in my life where I tried to nail down what I thought the word meant, to me, and it was harder to do than I expected. Here’s what I came up with:
Love is when the happiness of another person is essential to your own.
Yes, you can quibble with this - I could see replacing “essential to” with “facilitates”, because it’s possible to still be happy while somebody you live is unhappy, possibly by tuning it out or something. But in any case I’m of the opinion that love is when your emotional center has decided to invest itself in another person. (Or animal, I suppose.) It’s basically a specific form of empathy.
In my opinion.
I wanted to add to this thread, but this ear worm keeps coming back.
[QUOTE] And if I may conjecture a further objection Love is nothing to do with destined perfection The connection is strengthened The affection simply grows over timeLike a flower
Or a mushroom
Or a guinea pig
Or a vine
Or a sponge
Or bigotry
…or a banana
And love is made more powerful
By the ongoing drama of shared experience
And synergy, and symbiotic empathy, or something
[/QUOTE]
If God is love, then God is not God, and we can just say Love instead, each time we would have said God.
It could clear up a lot of problems actually, such as a person thinking twice before saying “Love told me to bomb the stadium”.
I’m not sure. I know that the greeks had different forms of words for love, but I am referring to the love that is romantic or to be specific that in romantic partnerships.
When people say I love you, what does that mean exactly? What do they love? Thinking about it conjures bits I have read about selfhood, most of it from eastern philosophy. Of course it just leaves me confused.
I’m afraid all I have to go on for that sort of love is what you find in the books and media.
“What do they love?” You. They just said they love you, so it’s you that they love.
Having actually dabbled in love, I can say with some confidence that it actually occurs, and when it does it is directed toward the person it’s directed towards.
…bless your heart.
But then my head wanders into what is “me”. The looks of the body, certain characteristics and traits that I show at that time. Or perhaps the hobbies and interest someone else has. This is why i referenced eastern philosophy. What is the me they love, or is it more the ethereal concepts like kindness, strength, intelligence? If I don’t have those traits then do they still love me? What if I change?
Even recent research into neuroscience and the self has me questioning the “you” they refer to.
Yeah, I figured this was where you were going with this.
There are three things to keep in mind. One: people aren’t usually too closed-off, particularly if they’re not trying to be. Your words, actions, and expressions reveal your inner self. So your inner self is generally exposed to viewers as part of the overall package.
Two: People don’t change all that fast. If you’re in reasonably frequent contact with a person their awareness of you will note and track with any changes to you, and they’ll react accordingly.
Three: I dunno what anybody else means when they talk about love, but I’m talking about an empathic connection to the whole package. It’s not about your hobbies or little details like that - it’s more that ‘unconditional’ variety you hear mentioned now and then. Minor alterations to the person will not cause them to ‘drift out of target’ for that sort of affection, since it’s not conditional like that.
What they love is any number of qualities (tangible and non-tangible) that make up the whole of the person that is the object of one’s affection/love.
More importantly, “romantic love” is a feeling. One of many aspects directly related to human experience of connection to another human. There are exceptions, of course. But those are rare. If you truly do not/have not/cannot feel love for another human, and if love is truly a foreign concept to you, then you may well be one of the anomalous exceptions destined to be confused by love, no matter what kind of explanation is offered for your consideration.
Now, do you really lack the capacity for feeling or understanding love? Or are you simply determined to dissect it into something more fundamental, like in a Biology101 lab class? Because if it’s the latter then there is nothing new to be learned from another dissection, and the frog dies of it.
I don’t think that gets at the heart of my concerns. More like how recent theories say that there is no core or “real” you. That the self is little more than brain activity or collection of mental states.
That sort of messes up the whole “I love you” bit for me.
Additionally, what do they mean by I love you. That they have feelings for me? But doesn’t everyone have feelings? Why is that so valuable?
Isn’t love also kind of selfish though? Also about it being unconditional, doesn’t the fact that one has to work to get to that point mean it isn’t?
Let’s not do this. Let’s not have that fucking conversation about the definition of “you” & “me”.
If people change sufficiently, then it’s entirely possible to fall out of love. Happens all the time.
Or, more accurately, you can show him a close approximation of the experience of love. In 30 minutes or less. 
To me it sounds like you are using the concept of “God” as a catch-all for concepts that are impossible for you to fully understand. Can’t grok it? It’s god. It’s been the role (among others) of religion since it’s inception.
I think one concrete difference in different forms of love comes in the “unconditional vs conditional” aspect. Familial love usually runs unconditionally, there isn’t much a person could do to erase that love in the person’s heart who loves them. But romantic love cannot and should not be unconditional. If you love your partner unconditionally, what does that say about your bond? There is nothing that could break that romantic love? What is the foundation of that romantic love then? I would never want a partner of mine to love me unconditionally as a romantic partner. That’s not to say unconditional love isn’t possible in a situation like this, it’d be like a couple who divorced but remained close friends afterwards.
I addressed this in my above comment but as far as the “real” you, how is it that because there is a neurological map that details the chemical and neurological activity that explains why you have the personal characteristics that you do, you somehow invalidate the concept of a “real” you? You’re just as real and individual as you were before the science was able to explain the nuts and bolts of what goes on in your brain, and you remain that individual afterwards as well.
But it’s a very important aspect of the whole bit on Love.
I’m not to sure about the unconditional love for family. Is that not based upon how they treat you? It’s like the last thread, the remark on how someone would not love their mother if she was cruel.
BUt I’ll bite on the self bit, yet what does it mean to love someone? I have heard a myriad answers to this, but is love just feelings, actions? what does it mean when someone says it?
They fall in love with how they feel around you. Could be they feel some vibe you’re putting out, trying to win them, or it could be that your two selves just jive in some way. Hence partners often remark how being with this person makes them into a better person. Maybe they feel loved, respected or valued or like to laugh. Maybe you just click, or go together well, or bring out the best in each other, or are opposites that balance each other in some way. Maybe they just get each other. Maybe there isn’t one word to cover it, but it’s a powerful connection notwithstanding.
But come down to it, I think you fall in love with how you feel, about yourself, when you’re around that person.
And, of course, through time, things can shift off into wild directions and those feelings can end. Relationships, love, can end.
Basically yes, God and Love are interchangeable. Using Love instead of god in your example may be eye opening, however love has also been implicated in lots of bad stuff.
What a coincidence-so has God.
Yeah and if you think about it, would anything other than this make any sense? Describing romantic love as selfish is jarring and instinctively wrong to many people but it very much is so a selfish thing. And there is nothing wrong with that. Sacrificing your own wants and desires in order to fulfill the wants/needs/desires of someone you love is something that causes good feelings, in both partners. The giver feels good because they feel as though they are capable of positively, tangibly impacting their partners life and the recipient feels good because they feel cared for and worthy of another person’s personal sacrifice, as well as the positive feelings that come directly from the results of the giver’s sacrifice. Now these are by no means the only feelings that can be involved in love, of course. I’m just using them as an example to show that love is a intertwined interaction of selfish feelings.
It is understanding via learning that I have written about, not that it’s not understandable so it’s God. But again no requirement to actually read the post I wrote and you are free to pull a tired old argument out of the atheists playbook and misapply it to a non-religious post.