Since Poly hasn’t dropped in yet to let me know, I’ll take your post as confirmation that I succeeding in expressing what he wanted me to. Thanks much, Diogenes.
“I know you as I know myself,” says Love. "When I was hungry, you fed me. When I was sick, you comforted me. When I was in prison, you visited me.
"Give yourself to me, for I offer peace to those who are afraid, affection to those who hate, and resurrection to those without hope. To those who despair, I offer rescue. And to those who dread, I offer courage.
“Close your eyes and trust me. Let me touch your corners and smother them with kisses, that I may fulfill the longings of your soul. And then open your eyes — for behold, the door shall be made new.”
Consulting sources, you will find many definitions for love. One of them is what you say — a brain fart, a synaptic discharge, an electrochemical spasm.
But that isn’t the love we’re talking about here. We’re talking about [symbol]agape[/symbol], a love that is not rational at all. A love that our brains tell us might not be in the best interest of our survival. A love that we act out often in spite of our brains. A love by which we value someone else as much as we do ourselves.
The love you speak of is love of yourself in someone’s nearness, whom you find attracts you, and who offers you validation. Your brain fires, flooding you with chemicals that entice you to connect.
The chemicals will fade in time, and your drunkeness of emotion will be replaced by emptiness and longing for new love. It is like hunger: you will eat and be filled, but you will not be satisfied. You will be hungry again.
I would say that empathy has more impact than love when behaving towards self and others. Empathy is the thing that will allow you to help a person even if you hate them.
Apos wrote:
I define God as love. He is the expression of His own goodness. I have no dispute with non-believers who love. Their terminology is no more wrong than mine. When one man speaks in Russian and another man in English, one is not wrong and the other right.
I can see where you might say that I am presumptuous if I hold that intellectual knowledge is something of value. But since I hold that it is a trivial thing — irrelevant and worthless — the confession or denial of an intellectual truth are equally significant.
How will empathy help a man who is both ignorant and longing to commit suicide? If you empathize with him, that will merely make two of you.
Hamish wrote:
Unlike [symbol]eros[/symbol], [symbol]agape[/symbol] is not a respecter of person; that is, [symbol]agape[/symbol] will treat equally that which we desire and that which repulses us.
It is fine to say that, with [symbol]eros[/symbol], you are expressing goodness to someone or something that you desire. But how, with [symbol]eros[/symbol], will you express goodness to a dying old man with running sores from leprosy? Or how, with [symbol]eros[/symbol], will you surrender that which you most treasure?
[/quote]
a synaptic discharge…isn’t the love we’re talking about here.
[quote]
Surely the point is that * all * kinds of love, even agape, or indeed any possible experience (“spiritual” or otherwise), might be solely due to synaptic discharge? Irrational feelings still manifest themselves as PET-scan activity, the well-being brought about by a selfless act can still result directly from a subtle and low-level release of serotonin.
Indeed, some of the most “spiritual” experiences of my life resulted directly from the ingestion of substances which affected said synapses. I would venture that asserting that certain experiences (no matter how subtle, high-minded or difficult to accurately describe) might require a separate source is adding a further, unecessary assumption to the explanation.
Sentient Meat wrote:
I’m afraid not. 
Before brains ever were, this Love is.
But “spiritual” experiences that are mirages and hallucinations have nothing to do with the Living Love.
Errm, you’re creeping me out a bit. Did your eyes just glaze and your smile widen about 3 feet?
I should clarify, I have also experienced being “slain in the spirit” (as a 15 year old commited Christian with a then intimate relationship with Christ), astral projection, transcendental meditation and any number of Spiritual experiences, all of which I can look back on as solely “mental” processes without any need of a supernatural element.
Then you’ve made a classic logical blunder: Cum hoc ergo propter hoc.
V. S. Ramachandran, MD, Ph.D, Phantoms in the Brain, “God and the Limbic System”
Of course, I agree that a supernatural element can never be precluded, and that since this branch of science is in its infancy it would be folly to declare conclusively that a satisfactory explanation exists. However, I made no mention of or allusion to “inferiority” in any way, merely observing that it might constitute a further, unecessary assumption to be added and that, if there was a supernatural element to my own experiences, I would imagine I could not tell any difference were it removed.
Conversely, a link between neural activity and any experience might also be an unecessary assumption if eg our feelings were generated directly by our immortal, invisible soul, or such like.
No matter how well the Theory of Universal Gravitation works, the planets might still move because angels push them.
Oh, goody. I was going to start my own thread about this.
First question: Is love voluntary? Can you wake up and decide to care for all people selflessly? Can Polycarp wake up and decide to stop?
Sentient Meat wrote:
An equal folly, of course, would be to preclude that an explanation lies within the scope of science and falsification at all, no matter whether the branch is young or old.
Then you didn’t wonder, after all, whether I was sporting glazed eyes and a three-foot-wide smile? 
Indeed.
There might also be an essential ontological difference between the universe and the spirit.
Yes, yes, and yes.
Such as what, beyond the very definition of the word “ontological” (in the same way that there is a “biological” difference between a plant and a computer)? I would suggest the comparison here is between the “planet-pushing angels” and the spirit. Would you agree that these angels constitute an unnecessary assumption in the explanation of the observed phenomena?
OK, but then of course we can just make up our own, so the debate would become IMO somewhat less Great, and I would probably politely excuse myself.
Heh heh, I must admit those responses did seem to consist solely of rather vacant platitudes. Don’t scare me like that!
Sentient Meat wrote:
Such as that one might be eternal and the other might not.
Sure. In fact, the very mention of angels seemed unnecessary when I saw it.
Surely, you’re not suggesting that only falsifiable empiricisms are topics for debate. Merely because something is not Popperian in nature does not mean that it is fantastical.
Typically, men fear most what they do not understand.
A debate about whether or not a supernatural element to conscious experience will in future be viewed as unnecessary an assumption as planet-pushing angels in the explanation of observed phenomena is a debate I happen to be interested in. A debate about the nature of such an element is not, although I would of course never dream of labelling it “NOT a topic for debate”. Apologies if I’ve joined the wrong meeting.
Hmm, you may be right. Country music scares me witless (which, curiously, doesn’t help).
Empathy? Perhaps sometimes. Pity? At times. Compassion? Frequently. I don’t throw the word “love” around loosely in my life. It’s reserved for people who are special to me. However, I have great compassion for people, sometimes people I don’t particularly like. I have a co-worker who is a total pain in the ass. But she is going through a difficult time right now in her marriage. Do I love her? No. Did I express compassion for her? Yes, and in keeping her confidence and saying a prayer for her to get through this time of difficulty, I hope I am DOING love, even though I don’t feel it for her.
Sentient Meat wrote:
Please don’t misunderstand me. I am an advocate for science and reason. But I also understand the epistemological failings of both. Science is based on falsifiability; yet falsifiability is itself not falsifiable. Reason is based on the assumption that logic models reality; therefore, reason itself is petitio principii.
What is under discussion here is love, in the context that Jesus spoke of it, and whether it may manifest without intellectual intent. You’re welcome to participate.