Not since the restraining order I can’t.
You can observe it from 100 feet away, per court order.
None. But then … I can’t PROVE the Sun exists either. Every day I’m confronted with a great deal of EVIDENCE that the Sun exists, but I’m willing to concede that there is a very slight chance the Sun is just an elaborate ruse constructed for my benefit.
Do you believe in the Sun? Can you PROVE it?
If I pretended to be an atheist for a day, could you then discuss the issue? Will no one accept that I am not engaged in some sort of stealth witnessing?
I want to know if you apply the same criteria of logical evidence to your love that you demand of me. I have never once claimed to believe in God for logical or rational cause. Never on any post (safe claim now, eh? 
) in Great Debates. I have in fact warned Christians on the board against that very idea. I believe it to be spiritually unsound. But that isn’t what I wanted to talk about. No, really. It isn’t.
Do you believe in love? If you do, do you believe in it because you find it rational, and you find the evidence of it convincing? Is it a rational, logical decision to love?
Tris
Well, I am not entirely convinced, but it seems I am a semi-stable standing wave pattern. Or, alternately, if I am a mind only, the jar and brain seem . . . redundant.
Tris
BELIEF in the existence of love is not the same thing as experiencing love itself. I can rationally believe that love exists and, at the same time, irrationally experience love for a particular individual. Or you can have one without the other. I can believe in love without experiencing it. Or a person could experience the emotion without labelling or understanding it.
I am not doubting your faith.
I am doubting that you have something to have faith in.
Oh, by the way, I have not said that my professions of faith, which by the way have not happened in this tread, are more valid than your profession of love. The point of discussion was to be where your profession of love was based.
Tris
Based on words and actions exchanged between my Beloved and myself, some of which having been witnessed by independent observers. Does that count as evidence?
But what you are not doing is responding to my posts at all. I don’t mind if you doubt my faith. You can believe me to be a charlatan, if you wish. I am not asking you to believe in anything. I am asking whether you believe in love. And so far, the evidence is that you don’t believe in anything but the mutual declaration of love as the entire existence of it as a phenomenon.
Is there more?
Tris
Define the love you would wish me to provide evidence for. I would put the needs, and indeed the life, of my Beloved over my own needs and life. I value her opinions, and would rather die than bring her pain.
Is that what convinced you? Is that why you love your wife? Is it entirely based on her behavior, and her words? Was there a . . . internal debate, comparison, or evaluation that met criteria you have established for what is love, and what is not?
Did you consciously decide to love your wife?
I need to stop. Reading this has made me feel that I am prosecuting you for not feeling something, and I actually don’t think that is true. I believe you love your wife. Why is none of my business.
I cannot think how this discussion can continue, without that level of antagonism, and I do not wish to foster that. I am sorry.
Tris
I believe in love because I find there is a rational, logical and convincing explanation for its existence (that it is a chemical reward system for maintaining strong social ties) supported by firsthand experience and secondhand evidence. It doesn’t have to be a “rational, logical decision to love” for there to be a rational, logical **explanation **for it.
[/QUOTE]
Will that love cease to exist if one of you dies?
[QUOTE]
People keep loving the memories and thoughts of dead loved ones. The love that manifests itself through interaction–that’s gone by definition (but unless you’re hiding something from us, you’ve never had that with your god to start with).
:sigh:
I’m sorry, but I do get tired of repeating this-I do not doubt your faith. I doubt that you have something real to have faith in.
Your faith->real
Your god->I’ve got my doubts
It doesn’t have to be strictly about the love Czarcasm has for his wife. For the benefit of the masses we can continue talking about the love I’ve got for my girlfriend, whom I wish I were old enough to marry, the love I have for my dog, who died 3 months ago, or the love I have for my best friend, who currently lives on the other side of the earth from me.
Well, I have faith in God, even if He isn’t real. But, that’s a whole different thread! And, also, you have in the past made it clear that you don’t doubt my faith, I was in the grip of a rhetoric frenzy, since it seems that I cannot get into a thread without having it perceived that I am proselytizing. While I won’t claim that I don’t try to bring the message of faith where it is appropriate, I really don’t want to convince anyone to believe in God.
I am sure the subject will come up again.
Tris
Dude, I am a brain in a jar… a jar made of bone… /pothead_philosopher
There is evidence for love in my relationship with my wife. I do things that are against my best interests and desires to make her happy. She certainly does the same for me. Every day I gather more and more evidence that she and I feel a reciprocated love for one another. Someday I may find out she’s a robot from the future that’s using me to insure that a supercomputer will be invented that will destroy humanity. But it isn’t the most elegant answer to fit the available facts. So I believe that we feel love based on the evidence I’ve been able to amass.
Say for instance that my wife were invisible, intangible and inaudible and I could only talk to her telepathically and she never, ever in my whole life talked back or even did one single solitary fucking thing to suggest that she even existed. Never showed herself, wrote me a letter or even appeared to me for an instant. I just *know *that she’s there and she feels romantic love for me.
Wouldn’t you think I was a fucking loon for suggesting that she loves me.
So I personally think someone who says god loves them is a fucking loon. Isn’t that fair?
You can’t suggest that god’s love for you is the same as the love of two people. Because you can observe the two people.
Thanks. But, confession time!
Czarcasm and I have a long history of speaking at cross purposes, with . . . inconsistent mutual enlightenment. This particular point looked to me like a way to move into a different realm to examine rationality vs . . . My peculiar way of thinking. I neglected to take into account the fact that in this case countering his philosophic argument would necessarily involve attacking his person. It was wrong. I at least on some level wanted to denigrate his, well, his spirit. It was a really bad thing to do.
Tris
Insult not felt or taken.
Thanks. You know, I knew that.
Ok, Love fest is over, you Godless . . . atheist, you!
Tris