claremont:

@OP: Pardon me for having penile erections whenever I see intellectually challenging topics like this in the romance section, quite a sweet departure from the drivel we are used to on here!

Now to answer your questions, there are two mutually exclusive (in my opinion) issues you have raised here. The concept of love, faith, and the inter-relationship between the two concepts. Firstly, most scientific studies on the "love" concept have proven that love does NOT exist. The feeling most people misconstrue as love is mere infatuation, or at most unbridled passion; there has never been any study that irrevocably proved that a concept of "love" exists. Therefore, love is a misnomer.

This brings me to the other issue which is faith. I do agree that there may be a rational behind faith in such things like the sun rising in the morning, or the moon shining at night, but scientifically, faith lacks reason. Faith is a belief in the unseen, the unheard; on the other hand, science lives on hard facts/proof. Does a belief in the existence of a God somewhere make some people better in relationships? Of course not! If it does then Atheists wouldn't have long-lasting relationships, which would then mean that long-lasting relationships will be the exclusive preserve of the religious adherents, this in itself is absolutely ludicrous!

In summary, there is no documented scientific correlation between a belief in a God, and ability to maintain a long-lasting relationship. It may be just another myth perpetuated by religious goons to promote the perceived benefits of being in a religion.

emofine:

I respectfully disagree. I would never use science to define love nor measure it. Following the nature of the purpose of this thread, and if I was to heed onto a particular faith for counselling such as the Bible. The Bible states that God is love so thus "God" and "Love" are interchangeable. So I asked such a question as God (well at least according to Christianity) is marked as the source, so I wondered if loving Him and being a partaker of his love would affect an individuals personal relationship. . . I guess you are directed by science I was inspired by faith

claremont:

Permit me to take you up on the above-highlighted. If God=Love according to the religious adherents; it then follows logically that if "love" exists, therefore, persons who are God-less e.g. Atheists, are incapable of such physical love. The mere fact that God-less persons have nurtured long-lasting relationships which rival that of the religious goons has put to jeopardy your hypothesis.

Moreover, I don't believe there is any statistical report which has proven beyond doubt that religious adherents are better relationship-wise as compared to non-religious people. I will argue that the reverse may be the case due to the narrow-minded way in which religion defines how a "true" relationship should be conducted.

claremont:
BTW, science can measure everything; if "love" can't be measured by science, that in itself lends credence to the "love does not exist" theory.

Pweety4me:

^^You exagerrate your own personality, [size128pt]i actually KNOW you from eye.[/size]

emofine:

I deliberately made a distinction between spiritual relationships (presence of God) and a physical one to see if one affects the other or could create a perfect compund but I guess it's the way I behold love. I see it as spiritual element. so I've obviously assumed (rightly or wrongly) whether the presence of a spiritual bond via ones faith amplify such a person's physical manifestation of love.

Can love be dissected by science? I am not talking about "hormones" and "chemistry". . love is translated via actions not physics

Pweety4me:

^^^Did you post fake pics on the site?

Why should I? You miss 'em?

claremont:

Firstly, I strongly doubt if there is any connection between faith and "love". In fact, any assumption that there is such a connection tends to raise more questions than answers e.g. How do we explain relationship break-ups that occur between two religious people? Surely, their mutual belief in the existence of a "loving" deity should have sustained their physical relationship with each other, How do we explain the long-lasting mutually compatible relationships enjoyed by two people who don't believe in the existence of a "loving" deity? Surely, their non-belief in God should have spelt doom from the onset for them since like you say God=Love.

Secondly, all human emotions have been objectively explored by science. Emotions such as anger, happiness, joy, sadness e.t.c have all passed the objective test of science. Love on the other hand has never been conclusively proven to exist; the few scientists who tried to prove the existence of love used the word interchangeably with obsessive lust/unbridled passion/irrational desire e.t.c. Therefore, except love is defined in some way to mean an obsessive lust for someone/something, it's existence as an independent concept is yet to be proven.

claremont:

[b]The major problem with the love concept lies in an absence of an objective definition for it, therein lies the problem. The lack of a holistic definition of what love is, basically means that we end up with 1001 subjective definitions. Like you rightly asked "what kind of love did science try to evaluate?"; it was actually romantic love, a love between 2 people in a relationship; a scientific evaluation of romantic love concluded that a belief in love is NOT necessary to sustain a relationship, but rather, what was necessary for sustaining long-term relationships is mutual compatibility between both parties. When this conclusion is viewed logically, we would realize that there is an element of truth in it; our ancestors in Africa never knew what love was, they married on the basis of both parties recognizing what their mutual roles are in a relationship, yet their marriages lasted the test of time. In this modern age which has been awash with the love dogma, there has equally been an upsurge in divorce rates and short-term relationships, is it not logical for us to conclude that there is a strong positive correlation between the "practise" of love in a society, and the high rate of divorce present therein? We would be in denial of the facts staring at us in the face to suggest otherwise.[/b]

Let me attempt to view this issue from your point of view, and work on the assumption that love does exists. Does a belief in a deity grant religious adherents the exclusive privilege to experience and practise such love as compared to non-religious adherents? In attempting to answer such a question, we need to look at it from 2 subjective definitions of love. Firstly, the love that occurs between a religious adherent and his/her deity cannot be experienced by unbelievers because such love stems from a faith in the unseen. It is impracticable for an unbeliever to exercise love for a God(s) when he/she has in fact not exercised faith in the first instance. Therefore, there is no basis for a logical comparison of that in the first place since we cannot compare something-ness with nothing-ness.

Secondly, the love that exists between 2 religious adherents in a relationship is totally different from that between a creator and his supposed creation. 2 religious adherents in a relationship are guided by the way they believe love should be practised, it doesn't involve faith, but rather, they are guided by the very same earthly principles non-religious people use to sustain their own relationships. How is a "believers" relationship with his/her partner different from that of a non-believer? Surely, there cannot be any difference, since if they both believe in love, it follows that they would practise the same societal tenets of the concept they believe in.

claremont:
When you say "love surely must exist since it's the epitome of all human emotion", this random phrase may be your personal opinion about "love", but we all know that it is not backed by any scientific evidence whatsoever. If you have a study that explicitly states that a misnomer such as love is the "epitome" of all human emotion, kindly paste the link here so we can read the conclusions ourselves. I strongly believe such a study does not exist!

Nayah:

Hello Emofine and Claremont
Well, such an interesting topic I would just say that science and studies have nothing to do with human beings' feelings, sometimes science can give us some clues to understand some acts but I don't really think it's the key to understand people in general since people are different according to their personality

Life is not science else everything would be black or white but we know that things happen even you don't plan it, so Claremont for me you should be careful with science and do not be confused between technical progress and what I call "school of life"

sexkillz:

Emofine & Nayah!

Pls STOP wasting your time on this ATHEIST! HE DOESNT EVEN KNOW WHERE THE LIFE HE IS LIVING CAME FROM! Not to talk of EMOTIONS or LOVE!

You'll find this thread interesting! ATHEISTS ARE REALLY DUMB!

https://www.nairaland.com/nigeria/topic-743212.0.html

emofine:


. . . if science were to prove the existence of love would you buy into it? would you reflect love? Would that begin to thaw your stance on the non-existence of God?

claremont:
Firstly, let's stick to some form of romantic connotation in this dialogue; and leave out the biblical verses and religious dogma, otherwise the MODs will not hesitate to fling this thread from the romance section to the religion section.

The concept of God=Love is a myth anyway which any avid reader of the bible will diagnose, except you are not talking about the God of the bible. The biblical God is certainly NOT love, there are enormous amounts of biblical passages which unequivocally show that the biblical God is quite the opposite of love. I shudder to think how "loving" a God is when words such as jealous, vile, murderous, are being used to describe him in the same bible.

1.Really?

2. Agape Love-Yes, but Romantic Love- Not all believers do because if they did, then why do we have a large number of singleton believers?

3. False, Atheists don't believe in a god. A belief in a god is not necessary to function as a normal rational thinking human being.

5.Where is the evidence that God and god exists? Our belief in a God or gods may be borne out of our upbringing and societal influence, but that in itself doesn't absolve such beliefs from the test of proof.

6.Maybe you are talking about another God here, but the God of the bible is clearly not love.

Actually, I will argue that it is the media that has actively propagated the "love myth". The images on our TVs, Newspapers e.t.c. all point to the illusion that romantic love is a concept which people should imbibe in order to sustain their relationship.

This is as far apart from the truth that it can be, it totally goes against the scientific evidence. I do agree that people have a right to believe in such things like "love" and "faith", but attempting to say that there is some form of objective rationale for such a belief system is not only mischievous, but it is also an unforgivable sin to humanity for anyone to knowingly/unknowingly give people irrational hope.