Hey, Gaudere – OP!
Anyway, God is Love (xtian god). Therefore, God has to love Lib. If God didn’t, God would not be love and therefore, God would not be God anymore (xtian god) and thus, the xtian God would not exist. No point loving something which did not exist.
Yes, but if God is Perfect Love, does that mean Lib would cease loving if he did not believe in the existence of a conciousness that was Perfect Love? Remember, he considers me a Christian because I love, even though I do not believe in the existence of a consciousness that is Perfect Love.
And you started this OT stuff. 
…and another thing, Lib sais “if I am presented with compelling arguments that God does not love me” not “…that God is not perfectly loving.” Admittedly, if God does not love him, God is not perfectly loving; but if God loves Lib but does not love person X, God is not perfectly loving either, and that’s not mentioned. But I think I will let Lib explain what he meant, rather than have us try to tell him what he meant. 
Gaudere
Because contradictions do not exist.
(Enjoyed all the speculation, by the way…)
Satan
Or a book, I might add.
I don’t think science is a religion, but I do think its conclusions are necessarily faith-based for reasons I have enumerated, and I do think it is infested with politics, just like religion is.
Yes they do. 
So would you stop loving if you thought Love/God did not exist?
Yeah, I know I’ve been OT for a while.
Well, as you know, I’d disagree that any of the three of us express the perfect love taught by Christ, or are even attempting to do so. But, that not withstanding, I don’t think we can comprehend the nature of God (per consciousness(?)) anymore than we can comprehend the nature of Perfect Love. Maybe you don’t love – you just really really like 
Gaudere
I’m afraid they don’t, because if they did they wouldn’t.
If A is not A, then all language is meaningless, and whether anything exists at all is moot. And we could just go ahead and move all this over to MPSIMS.
I can’t give a sensible answer without removing “you thought”. May I? If so, the answer is yes. Otherwise, the answer is far more long-winded, but ends up being yes all the same. (Long version provided on request…)
pldennison sez:
Did I say I doubt them? No. I just meant that you can doubt those assumptions without being ignorant. And that if you don’t have any doubt in those assumptions, that’s faith.
Yes they do. See, I just contradicted you, therefore contradictions exist. QED. I was jus’ teasin’ ya, Lib.
So when you were an atheist, Lib, you did not love? Or you just hadn’t thought it through fully enough to realize that (IYHO) any love at all requires a conscious Perfect Love?
Can you love without believing in Love?
Hmm… I mean, with God all thing are possible – that doesn’t mean without God all things still aren’t possible, right?
Oh well. Anyway, Gaudere, have you read Porete’s book Mirror of Simple Souls yet? I think you would like it. It is mostly presented as a dialog between Love and Reason.
Can you hate without believing in Hate? Can you like without believing in Like? Can a thing be blue without the existence of the Perfect Blue? I certainly recognize the existence of Perfect Love, Like, Hate, and Blue as concepts, but that doesn’t mean I think they have to exist in fact. ::shrug::
No, I haven’t read the book. A dialogue between Love and Reason, eh? Nice to know they’re still on speaking terms; some people seem convinced that they’re mortal enemies, rather than helpmeets.
Gaudere
Okay, sorry. You forgot that I am a Melancholy.
I was one of those hard-ass hand-stabbing atheists.
It was in a moment of utter dispair that I begged God for mercy (having already moved from atheism to buddhism to Satanism) … [long epic story] … which mercy I accepted finally when I read, “Before Abraham was, I am.”
It wasn’t until God spoke to me recently, admonishing me for saying you’re in hell, that I fully comprehended what is meant by God is Love.
There are some new people now. Perhaps I ought to share for their sake that recent moment (which I’m sure you will recall.)
God said, “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 theists and atheists, 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.”
It was humbling, to say the least.
One busy day and look what happens. Teaches me to do experiments when good debates are ongoing. So what follows may make no sense whatsoever, because I have almost no background in philosophy (even though I am getting a doctorate in it.)
One word in here : proof.
We have established that faith is belief without proof, and that science seeks to establish proof. IMHO the definition of proof used above again falls back onto the original assumptions we make in a system. The definition of proof we use is the definition arrived at by using scientific assumptions : proof by deduction, proof by induction, etc. Religion never has to use these assumptions – it is a different system.
For religion, we can define a new “proof” based on religious assumptions. Lets call it proof_r. To play devil’s advocate again, proof_r of the existence of God and the truth of the Bible is the fact that the universe and man exists. You see, it is all inherent in the system.
Science and logic, as has been said before, is a house of cards. Granted, it has lots of cross-supports and internal stabilizing reinforcements. It is probably the sturdiest house of cards that man could build.
Proof is only based on observation, at least for science. Proof_r depends on none of this, and therefore, if you accept the religious assumptions, is much more powerful. Since we assume God exists, we can build a far, far sturdier structure than science ever can, because we can extend our predictions into non-observable phenomena. This, I believe, is much easier to accept. Our brains are built to accept stability and constancy, and man strives for a higher meaning in the universe. This is something only religion can give us.
Therefore, I envy those who are truly religious, for they have a sense of inner peace which I know I can never fully accept.
Ed
Yeah, but can you have perfect blue without believing in perfect blue?
Lib, your conversion story is very touching. And I think you are right – there are those who love and those who do not. But, oh, those misguided souls who think they love but do not!
Now, edwino makes an interesting argument. Now, I would wonder whether you can prove something is moral or not. Probably not without using the Golden Rule as an axiom.
You might need Jesus’ other moral imperative, the categorical one: Be Perfect.
Well, presumably “real” things exist whether you believe in them or not. Therefore perfect blue could exist even if you did not believe in it. And I would say a person could possibly be perfectly loving without believing in perfect love, just as an entity could be perfectly blue without believing that it was perfectly blue (or that perfect blue could exist).
You must be perfect, as even your heavenly father is perfect.
[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by Gaudere *
**
“Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away” as Phillip K. Dick said.
When you stop believing in Love, does Love go away?
I think you are possibly right. But this would be like a blind man who can tell you what playing card you are holding up all the time. Really lucky.
If it really exists, I would say no. The fact that I accept the existence of Perfect Love as only a concept does not mean that Perfect Love cannot exist as an objective fact.
But we were not arguing whether it is easy to be Perfectly Loving without believing in it, just whether it was necessary to personally believe in Perfect Love for Perfect Love to exist, or whether one can love at all without the existence/belief in Perfect Love. I say if Perfect Love objectively exists, it exists whether or not anyone believes in it, and that one can both love and Love without believing in the existence of Perfect Love. Nor do I see the difference bewteen believing in Perfect Love as a fact and Perfect Love as a concept when it comes to a person’s capability of Perfect Love.
Let’s say X is the perfectly loving act. Person A thinks Perfect Love is only a concept, but based on that concept knows X is right and does X. Person B thinks Perfect Love truly exists, and based on his concept of Perfect Love knows X is right and does X. Presumably if Person A ever managed to achieve Perfect Love completely, he would then believe that Perfect Love has manifested. You can strive to achieve Perfect Love without having to think it currently exists as more than a concept.