Why, thank you!
:eek:
If you weren’t lucky enough to be there, dvds are available for the low price of $19.99(21 and older only, please.)
See “restraining order” above.
How is it that you came to know that love exists if it wasn’t via logic or rationality? Do you know that love exists but only know this irrationally? Only illogically? Of what value is such knowledge?
I would assert that everything I know (or any human knows) and all thoughts I possess have been acquired either rationality or irrationality. “Complex” thoughts may have been formed by considering many different and distinct factors, some of which were considered rationally, some irrationally. But even the most complex thoughts and ideas I possess are reducible to basic rational/irrational assumptions I have made. I don’t believe there is a third, forth, or any other option.
The existence or “Love” is difficult if not impossible to prove for the same reason that the existence of “God” is difficult if not impossible to prove. In both cases people are pretty much free to define either one in any way that they care to. That’s what makes the whole “existence of God issue” so thorny. How can you tell me my God doesn’t exist if I point to a fly and the wall and say, “behold! there is my God right there.”
How can you say that God doesn’t exist if someone’s definition of God is “everything is existence–the Universe.” (Which BTW, is the closest I personally can come to any concept like"God". I suppose I’m pantheist it’s just that I don’t find it useful to call the Cosmos “God” because it needlessly confuses the issue.)
You’ll never convince a believer that God doesn’t exist because the believer’s concept of God is entirely personal. They might have gotten a head-start from various myths and legends like the Christian and Muslim myths but from that seed they have unconsciously designed it to be vividly real in every way within their own thought-system, even if it’s not in anybody else’s.
I think most Atheists (I include myself in that group because it is just word play to call the Universe “God”) would be happy if theists would do one of two things: either provide an exact definition of their God so it could be positively proven/disproven or simply admit that their concept of God is personal and undefinable and therefore has absolutely no meaning or existence outside of their own head. (Except as their own, personal idea which they can tell others about just as you would tell someone that you miss your father).
Two people sitting next to each other on a pew during a Sunday Christian service (for example) are thinking of completely different and undefinable things when they pray to their respective “Gods”. Maybe a church is a good place for individuals to gather to collectively worship completely separately.
Yet if I’m thinking reverently of a Flying Candy-Cane when I pray and the guy next to me is thinking of a old, bearded, white dude then each view is equally valid to each of us and equally invalid to the world at large.
I would suggest again as I have in other posts that God is x.
No more, no less. If you place any universal value in your idea of God, or any value at all other than it being your idea of God then you are deluding yourself.
I do not limit my entire being to that which is logical, and rational. I have no particular difficulty being characterized as irrational, if that means not limited by rational. Of course it usually is intended to mean stupid, and ignorant. I am not stupid, and recognize that ignorance is a relative thing.
I came to know of love only by loving, and by being loved. I gave the matter very little philosophic analysis. I don’t even really define it often, and then only in a negative way. Love is not what you feel, or what you think. Love is an aspect of what you do, and what you are. But it falls outside of those limits as well.
I have no authority to place “universal value” on anything. I doubt that you do. You certainly have none that I acknowledge, or even perceive. However, I find that the love of God is not so elusive a quality to speak of, if one is willing to do so without expectation of reverence. In the great drama that is the world, my part is “the ordinary sinner.” Most of the time, it’s not even a speaking part.
Tris
That she is your wife has not been entered into evidence. We need to see a copy of the marriage certificate and photo ID for each of you.
Not until you define love.
The existence of the person referred to has been stipulated, without request for evidence. Since the sole referent for that person is “wife” it stands to reason that the stipulation includes the usual social recognition of the state of marriage.
Tris
If the “prove love” argument is never brought up again, it will be too soon.
You can never prove anything like this. But there is a massive amount of evidence for love existing as a concept and a driver of human actions. Is there any serious doubt of that?
Now for any particular instance of love, one needs to look at the evidence. Was Mrs. Spitzer correct in her assumption that Eliot loved her? And how about John Hinckley’s faith that Jodie Foster loved him?
It’s a bull moose stupid argument, and really has nothing to do with God.
I read the OP as a proxy examination of faith, not of God. The “prove love” line of discussion was offered to examine love as a
because -in an argument concerning faith- the point was made by Czarcasm that whereas he could offer a photograph of the object of his love, Tris could not do so for the object of his faith.
It is that comparison, combined with Czar’s statement that he has no doubt regarding Tris’ faith but doubts instead that to which Tris is faithful which prompted the OP. The OP attempts to question that distinction by focusing on the logical argument for love itself, which by implication Czar considers dependent on the physical actors involved. It appears to me that Tris wishes to examine that relationship phenomenologically to enable inductive conclusions regarding both love and faith.
As such the request to “prove love” has some utility for those who wish to examine faith.
But for that line of reasoning to work, you have to ask if you can examine love by asking someone to “prove” their faith. I’m not sure it that is an approach that can yield a useful response.
Frankly, I’m not sure that would be a useful approach to examining love either. But it’s not my thread. I merely find the approach interesting and wanted to comment regarding its relative level of bull moose stupidity.
Missed the 5 minute Edit window…
I’m not sure how much utility the approach has in either direction, but I do agree that what one discovers through questioning “faith” would have implications concerning “love” as well.
Not if the question is whether or not there is something or someone to have faith in in the first place. Love between two people can be examines from two sides. Religious faith-not so much.
Don’t you think that beyond your own subjective experience of it an examination of someone else’s love has to be suppositional? In other words, you have your experience, your wife has her experience, both experiences are valid, but can we say that both experiences may be examined together as the same phenomenon?
The difference is, an examination of the other person’s love can be done by directly asking the other person about it, and receiving a direct response from that other person.
These threads always confuse me. Is Triskadecamus trying to ask Czarcasm out on a date?
Is the other person’s communication of their experience relevant to the phenomenon you experience? If so, how do you establish that relevance? And how does a comparison between two people of their love for each other differ fundamentally from a similar comparison of their faith in a third party or concept?