Love

Great Debates
41

You called?

If any possible experience, spiritual or otherwise, is due solely to synaptic discharge, how on earth would it follow that “spiritual” experiences are dismissable, or somehow less valid, than “non-spiritual” experiences?

Experiences of: drinking water, a chair, Aunt Matilda’s face, calculating taxes.
**Source: **Synaptic discharge
Experiences of: love, communion with God, peace and transcendence.
**Source: **Synaptic discharge

Reducing experience to synaptic discharge levels the playing field; all experience does indeed seem to be correlated with gurgling neuronal activity, but if you’re claiming that neuronal activity itself demonstrates that “spiritual” experience is fictitious, then all experience is fictitious.

Yeah, but context is everything. The giddy adrenal rush of plummeting down the first dip in a rollercoaster is almost identical to the giddy adrenal rush of spinning out on a crowded, ice-covered highway - the neurochemicals involved are the same, but the experiences most certainly are not.

I’m beginning to suspect that spiritualesque aspects of “ingested substances” are analogous to the following:

Suppose my friend and I want to run a marathon. She trains by logging miles, optimizing nutrition, and lifting weights. I train by sitting on the couch eating nachos. On the day of the race, she stretches lightly, and takes off. I strap an oxygen tank on my back, fill my pockets with amphetamines and pain-killers, and take off.

While we both do indeed have the experience of running a marathon, the experience is not the same. Certain *aspects * will be the same, but our individual contextual experience before, during (and especially after) the marathon will be utterly different.

Same with “ingested substances”: anyone can gulp down a 5-HT[sub]2A[/sub] receptor agonist and experience “spiritual” aspects as part of the event, but I doubt seriously that the experience bears more than a passing resemblance to the spiritual experiences described by some of the posters.

and

This is like someone explaining that the Mona Lisa consists entirely of pigment on canvas. The explanation is not incorrect, and any aesthetic consideration would, in fact, be an unnecessary component of the explanation. However, aesthetic considerations are a necessary component of the phenomena.

42

Fair do’s - I will therefore say that yes, I believe atheists can perform actions and attain an outlook/attitude which is consistent with Christ’s description of Agape.

43

The above is in reply to Libertarian

other-wise, I made it clear that the non-supernatural explanation of conscious experience is by no means “satisfactory” as yet. My point was that, once such an explanation existed there would be no fundamental reason it could not be applied to religious or spiritual experiences just as easily as any other romantic/uplifting/auxilarating ones. (FWIW, one trip beats being slain in the spirit by several orders of magnitude, although they’re both great “hits”).

44

Other-wise wrote:

I recall a study involving two pairs of volunteers. One pair was given an amphetamine, and was told that it was an amphetamine. Another pair was given the same amphetamine, but was told that it was a sugar pill.

When the pills kicked in, the first pair had quite an enjoyable experience, each singing, laughing, and merrily making himself busy with his room’s contents. But with the second pair, each person had a miserable time, felt agitated, and impatiently waited for the experiment to end while he fidgeted and complained.

According to researchers, the brains were discharging the same chemicals in both cases, but the experiences were remarkably different.

45

Lib, a few questions if you please.

  1. If I can be one with God through love but yet not believe, what role does faith play?

  2. If I claim to love out of fear of retribution and eternal torture, is it really love?

  3. Why should one believe in your simple gospel of love over the preaching of others here who couple that gospel of love with a gospel of faith, fear and retribution?

  4. Does love have rules?

46

SentientMeat, I may be thoroughly misunderstanding your point or missing it’s implications; please bear with me here.

I think you’re saying that in the future, “spiritual” experience might reasonably be shown to reduce entirely to synaptic discharge, hence “spiritual” experience would be essentially no different in kind than any uplifting, exhilarating experience. What I’m asking is, how would a “spiritual”, or “uplifting” experience be different in kind from any and all experience? Why would any given synaptic discharge be more valid than any other?

47

Love has one rule that I can think of: you must love in spite of yourself.

If we are to live by a principle, any principle, at some point we are going to have put that principle ahead of personal desires and fears.

It ain’t easy. I know hate and anger well. Too well.

48

other-wise

My point entirely. No difference. I never used the word “valid” throughout, or implied any inferiority. Apols for my spelling.

49

Actually, Lib, that brings up a question I’ve been meaning to ask you:

You’ve experienced love as God (that statement can be read two ways; I mean both).
I’ve experienced love, but not as God. (Again, both ways).

I’ve had the awe-full sensation of love and thought: “Whoa… so this is love”.
I haven’t thought “Whoa… so this is God”, nor, in hindsight, does “this is God” seem appropriate to the experience.

Our “…experiences were remarkably different”, but why? Let’s assume the hormones, neurotransmitters, yadda, yadda, are reasonably similar in each experience. What is the difference between our experiences of love that renders you a passionate Christian who knows (and has an ongoing experience of) God with an intensity and clarity beyond mere conviction, and renders me an “Agnostic-who-used-to-lean-heavily-towards-Atheism-but-now-thinks-Atheism-is-untenable” (but still hasn’t experienced anything identifiable as “God”)?

50

ThunderBug wrote:

The brain believes what it sees with its eyes; the spirit believes what it sees with its heart. The eyes see with vision; the heart sees with faith.

It is impossible to love and not believe. The brain might believe a lie, but the spirit will not. If you are one with God through love, and a man presents to you a petty god of vengeance and calls it “Jesus”, your spirit rightfully recoils and denounces the “Jesus” he has presented you. God is not known by a sound from the mouth, but by a yearning from the soul.

You make an important distinction. A claim might be an illusion of reality. A hoax. Love and fear cannot coexist, any more than darkness can coexist with light.

Love is the conduit of goodness. Faith is the acceptance of love. Fear and retribution have no rooms in God’s mansion.

No. Love is the rule. It is the command. It is eternal, and is all that is real. All else is temporary, and will die.

51

I might be able to field this. A decision. Or faith, depending upon your perspective. Or surrender (which I do not mean in a negative way at all). All of those being the same entirely personal thing. At least, that’s my intellectual understanding, FWIW.

Apologies if I’m out of line.

52

Ah, hyphen power. Oops.

53

It’s hard to say, my friend. Time, probably. As my sainted mother used to say, you never know what’s around the corner.

Each of our moral journeys is unique, and is not known or experienced by anyone else. This chronosynclasticinfundibulum provides a temporality and a spatial realization for you to act out your moral play.

If you and I were holding this discussion in another place and time, you would be hearing from a self-avowed sworn enemy of God, a hard atheist who delights in ridiculing people of faith.

But time has passed, and here we are. Maybe we will meet again and discuss Godly things, and when we do, you will inspire me, and I will find comfort in your words.

I suppose I could advise you to take a lesson from the experiment that raised your question. What pill do you believe you’re taking? Perhaps it might bear upon your experience.

On preview, I see that Fatwater has made an even better suggestion. Why don’t you simply decide what pill you’re taking? :slight_smile: I suppose that, when all is said and done, that is what I did.

54

—I define God as love. He is the expression of His own goodness. I have no dispute with non-believers who love.—

Yes, but you also believe in a being that does things and embodies loves somehow, whereas non-believers simply love. Love, for me, is not a being that is an expression of it’s won goodness: it’s an emotion that I express.

—I can see where you might say that I am presumptuous if I hold that intellectual knowledge is something of value.—

The presumption is still that, by loving, non-believers are experiencing something but not realizing what it “really” is, according to you. Whether you think intellectual realization is important or not, the statement remains a presumptuous. If it’s so unimportant, then why slip in a mention of it at every juncture? If you’re pulling a Tillich, then why not do away with the distinction between believer and non-believer entirely?

55

Apos wrote:

My belief, from my experience, is that Love is the Being — the Supreme Being, or the Necessary Existence.

I, too, understand the emotion of love. I feel it for my wife, for my sainted mother, and for my sister. I even feel it for our cat, and (sometimes) for my work.

But that love is only a pale reflection in a dark mirror of the Love that lives, a love that brings goodness to everything it touches. It arches over sadness and loneliness. It shines through the darkest of times. It is there, bringing comfort, even when my emotional love is drained and empty.

In fact, that is exactly what God told me to do:

“I am the Love Everlasting. Whatever men say about me with their minds is vapor. I cannot be known by the mind, but only by the heart. Stop dividing the world between atheists and theists, and start dividing it rightly, as I do. There are those who love, and those who don’t. Those who love, they are my disciples.”

The reason I stress often that intellectual belief is irrelevant is so that a man might have assurance, even if he is unsure.

You’re mistaken that I think non-believers who love don’t realize what it is they’re doing. I don’t think that any more than I think that non-speakers of English don’t know what they’re saying. I’m afraid that the presumption, in this instance at least, is yours. :wink:

56

Fatwater, thank you for your input. You’re quite the opposite of “out of line”.

"A decision"- I’m not trying to be dense, really. What decision?. “Or faith, depending upon your perspective”- I don’t understand. Could you expand on this? “Or surrender”- This I kinda understand… the moments of love that have had the most meaning to me were accompanied by a paradoxical sensation of being hyper-present yet, at the same time, I was nowhere to be found.

Lib, in a thread whose OP I cannot recall, you told Latro the story of your encounter with God:

I saved the story to my hard drive because I found it even more moving than it was perplexing.
It doesn’t sound like you decided which pill to take, it sounds more like the pill took you.

I know I’m pushing you on this, but my “spiritual” experiences so far have been the equivalent of glimpsing God out of the corner of my eye, while you’ve met Him personally, speak to Him regularly, and know His hat size.

I can’t just dismiss your claims as outrageous ranting; I’ve lurked around your posts too long not to have developed a prodigious respect for you, both intellectually and personally. If you’re not nutz or lying, what you’re talking about is the most important thing anyone could possibly hear.

I do love. But I Still. Don’t. Get. It.

(Sigh. I have a feeling the response will be “Patience” which, squirming and kicking, I can nonetheless accept. I just HAD to get this off my chest.)

57

—You’re mistaken that I think non-believers who love don’t realize what it is they’re doing.—

Then why say that they, even intellectually, deny something at all?
Why make all sorts of claims about what they are missing (for instance, in the first part of your last post, in which you speak of a particular philosophy that is not shared by all, as well as a conception of love that makes it out to be an actual thing outside fo the minds of people)?

Is this a new feeling of yours, and how recent: how far back should one discount previous statements you’ve made to the effect that non-believers are, for instance, not hearing the knock at the door, not recognizing the existence of an omnipotent being, etc.? If I’m mistaken about you: when did I become mistaken? A few minutes before your most recent post? A few seconds after you’d finished the first part and were starting on the second part?

It’s all well and good to outwardly stress that something is irrelevant… but if you keep making statements about this or that conception being right or wrong, people denying with their intellect, and so on, you can’t very well deny that you’ve raised contentious and accusatory issues about said people, and presumed things about them that would first require conceding to your particular opinion to be true.

58

Other-wise wrote:

The decision that I made, Other-wise, was that I had found His Word. That’s what I decided when I looked at the verse again, and thought of all the other pieces:

I am, that is who I am… Before Abraham existed, I am… In the beginning was the word… And the word was God… And the word became flesh and lived among us… Find my word…

It was at that moment that I let go. I died and was reborn. You are still holding on. When you let go, all will become clear. I love you. And I will see you soon.

59

other-wise said:

The decision to be open and to accept an answer if it appeared is the way I understand it. The decision to be willing.

To me, to make a decision to be willing to accept that which you do not know is an initial act of faith. I don’t [think I] know faith in the personal sense a believer does. Hence, I mention perspective.

As I understand it, to be willing is to surrender.

60

Apos wrote:

To let them know that what they deny with their brains, this thing they’ve heard people call “God”, is utterly deniable. I too, deny the thing with my brain.

:smiley: I’m honestly making every effort to explain that they are missing nothing of significance.

If I love and you love, then you and I are one. But for many men, their brain is a stumbling block to faith. I know that mine was. Therefore, it is for their benefit that I let them know that both what they deny — and what I confess — is irrelevant. While the predicates are irrelevant, I think that the fact itself that they are (a separate matter from the facts themselves) is often significant.

Nonexistence does not exist, and yet it is often important to speak about it.

I’m not sure. Certainly, I’m not a statue carved out of stone. I’m always growing, and I’m sure (at least, I hope) you are as well. There was a time when I thought that it was impossible that an atheist can develop a right morality at all. I can only tell you of my experiences, and what I know. I suppose my best advice is that, if I frustrate you, ignore me. :slight_smile:

On the contrary, I’m saying that whether they agree with my opinion doesn’t matter at all. I suppose that who is intellectually right and who is intellectually wrong would matter only to a man who greatly valued his intellect. In the scheme of things, I don’t ascribe any value mine at all.