*The theists co-opted love and attributed it to their god.
*They stole the sense of awe and wonderment.
*They stole hope from humanity and asserted it was only available through their god.
*They stole all forms of enjoyment, sex, music, dance, and all forms of entertainment so that joyful bliss could only come from their worship, their songs, and their ceremonies.
*They stole morality and attributed it to moral dictates of their imaginary God, who happens to be one of the least moral characters in all history.
Iâm certain the theists stole all of these as well as many others.
Recently the presuppositionalists have asserted âOne can not be logical without God.â
Once a person puts on the âGod Glassesâ there is no limit to the inane attributions they make to their God thing.
Heâs convinced he wants debate, but that we are unwilling to debate on his terms, or as he puts, he is not playing our game. However reciprocity is an integral part of honest debate, if one only wants to make claims, but never openly address questions or objections, as @Sidâs posts have done from the start, then that doesnât seem like seeking honest debate, it seems as @Cognostic suggested, just another way to proselytise.
. Science cannot explain Love .
Science can explain Mass , Spin, Momentum etc .Science has nothing to comment on except the quantitative- FACT
Saying Love is a scientific view is nothing more than fashioning the truth to fit your beliefs , which in this case is a non belief as I understand it .
I have decided on reflection not to respond to your latest lies there @Sid , I will simply repost what I said, as you either ignored it completely, or misrepresented it utterly. Some of my post highlighted previous lies as well. For someone who baulked at being labelled dishonest, you seem determined to be relentlessly dishonest nonetheless.
Try again @Sid , and try and muster some integrity and address what I actually said, no straw men lies will be responded to anymore. My patience is almost at an end with your relentless dishonesty.
Neither can you. Neither can any person. There are some attempts at describing âloveâ but it is not measurable in the sense of âemotional qualityâ. Neither is anger, grief, hate, or any other of the emotions.
There are physical responses that can be used as identifiers - say tears with sadness BUT tears are not a reliable measure of the emotion of a person experiencing sadness because they may not cry.
What is your fascination with this one emotion. WHICH by the way is demonstrated through actions (depending on its usage) because I love my morning coffee . AND words donât necessarily mean there is a bond or someone may say they love you BUT they actually love what you do for them⌠blah blah blah.
Are you trying to pick an emotional state descriptor and say thatâs god? Why only that emotional response?
@Sid doesnât evidence or explain his beliefs and claims, heâs here to tell us weâre wrong, with endless argumentum ad ignorantiam fallacies like that one.
EnjoyâŚ
Watch:
@sid, please explain why you think the existence of human emotions like love is sufficient reason to believe deity exists, as you claimed?
Iâll bet a years salary he either ignores this completely, or tries to use an argumentum ad ignorantiam fallacy, and insist I explain how love can exist without a deity. Oh and when I point out this irrational he will ignore it and roll on, and when several posters point out that the scientific theory of evolution explains the existence of evolved human emotions like love, he will resort to handwaving, then a go back to lying that science canât explain itâs existence.
Itâs an needless loop of dishonesty from him, and I have exhausted my patience to give him a chance to show otherwise, but must admit defeat at this point. As each time he just cherry picks your responses and misrepresents them anew, with short repetitions of the same unevidenced claims, and logical fallacies. Itâs now just the occasional drive by proselytising from him.
My guess is heâs too emotionally invested in the belief to be honest with himself, so honest debate is impossible.
If you can show how a lifeless universe that consists solely of Mass, Spin , Momentum etc -Quantitative-can produce the non quantitative- Qualitative (Love) -and how this benefits the Quantitative then we have a conversation.
The laws of causation say that something must have a cause - what caused the Quantitative to produce the Qualitative ?
I did find this about Vasopressin Oxytocin and âPair Bondingâ on this medical website that describes âloveâ and âreward centersâ with the brain. I thought it was interesting.
Pair bonding is a very bland scientific term for enduring (romantic) relationships (attachment) and is seen in <5% of the mammalian species.[17] Pair bonding across species is defined as an enduring preferential association formed between two sexually mature adults and is characterized by selective contact, affiliation, and copulation with the partner over a stranger.[18] These are associated with other complex behaviors including mate guarding and biparental care of the young.
Pair bonding evolved most likely, as an adaptive response to the need of additional parental investment in the rearing of the young and mechanisms through which this relationship was preserved (mate guarding). In other words, romantic relationships and their persistence (through monogamy) was an evolutionary necessity in species in which bi-parental care of the offspring was critical. There are clear benefits to both partners of the relationships as well. In humans, individuals in stable marital relationships live longer than single individuals cross demographic groups. High levels of intimacy correlate negatively with depression and positively with immune function and cardiovascular health.[19]
Most of our knowledge on the neuroendocrinology of intimacy is based on the work on the prairie vole (Microtus ochrogaster) a humble but socially monogamous model from the grasslands of the central United States. In this harsh grassland with scarce resources, the prairie vole evolved into a monogamous animal with breeding pairs living together until one partner dies; the surviving partner does not find another mate. The male prairie vole is highly paternal, helps with nest building guards the nest from conspecific strangers. In general, an animal with low levels of aggression, the male displays enhanced levels of aggression toward strange males. It displays high levels of paternal behavior to litters; this extends to juveniles even after a second litter is born.
Arginine vasopressin (AVP) OT and dopamine (DA) have been reported to be important in regulating social behavior including sexual behavior, aggression, and maternal care. While there are no differences in AVP and OT neurons or their distribution between the monogamous prairie voles and their polygamous cousins, remarkable differences are seen in the receptor distribution (the V1aR and OT receptor [OTR]) and their densities. Interestingly, these densities are stable across the lifespan of the vole. These differences may explain by subtle differences in the promoter region the V1aR and the OTR.[20] The human version of this gene has similar polymorphisms. It is possible that epigenetic modifications of the OTR are also involved.[21]
In the male prairie vole, cohabitation with mating appears to increase AVP synthesis in the bed nucleus of the stria terminalis and AVP release in the limbic system. In the female chemosensory clues altered OTR density in the AOB. Activation of the OT and vasopressin receptors in these centers might result in the development of a conditioned partner preference in prairie voles. Antagonism of the OTR impairs the formation of pair bonds. This effect appears to be larger in the female.
Knockdown of VP production in the paraventricular nucleus of the hypothalamus in the zebra finch increases aggressiveness in the male decreases it the female and reduces gregariousness in both. Knockdown of OT reduces gregariousness, pair bonding, nest cup ownership and side by side perching in females and induces hyperphagia in males.[22] An association between arginine vasopressin receptor 1A polymorphism and human pair bonding behavior analogous to voles has been reported.
AVP activity in the ventral palladium affects partner preference. V1aR activation in this region is necessary for pair bond formation.[23] Similarly, activation of the OT in the nucleus accumbent (NA) also contributes to partner preference and pair bonding.
Functional MRI studies of human partners in long-term relationships show activation the ventral palladium putamen the anterior cingulate cortex and the mid-insular cortex.[24] The ventral putamen/palladium region in particular corresponds to the distribution of V1a receptors in the prairie vole. The areas appear, and connections appear to be distinct but related to those for maternal love. Maternal love activated specific different areas including the lateral orbit frontal cortex but also some same areas as (romantic) love including medial insula, the anterior cingulate gyrus, and caudate nucleus. Both appear to share areas rich in OT and AVP receptors.
Love as a Reward
From the very beginning of our efforts, in understanding the biologic basis of love it has been clear that it involves reward centers in the brains. In this love and addictions (such as by drugs) are somewhat interconnected the one key difference is that naturally rewarding activities such as love are controlled by feedback mechanisms that activate aversive centers that limit the destructive qualities of addiction seen with drugs.[25] Love activates specific regions in the reward system. The effects include a reduction in emotional judgment and reduced fear and also reduced depression and enhanced mood. It also leads to a reduced need to assess the social validity of that person.[26] It thus appears to deactivate areas mediating negative emotions, avoidance behavior critical social assessment and, on the other hand, triggers mechanisms involved in pleasure reward and appetitive motivation
Studies which have examined the OT and AVP receptors strongly suggest that the activation of these receptors in the reward circuitry is important for the development of pair bonding. As a critical part of the reward process, DA appears to be central to the maintenance of love. Differences in DA and its receptor distribution densities have been reported in vole studies (vide above). Dopaminergic pathways appear to be more specific for partner preference that attachment.[28]
While several DA systems exist in the brain, the mesolimbic DA system appears to be the most important in this respect. Both D1 and D2 receptors though partially functional antagonists are both significantly expressed in the NA. Other DA receptors (D3-5) are also linked to the limbic system and are substantially present in the amygdala and the hippocampus. Their functions include reward and motivation and appear to share common morphologic evolutionary and molecular roots. Endogenous opioids may also be involved in this process.
Early studies that involved functional MRI, which used the partnerâs photograph as a visual stimuli confirm the involvement of the right ventral segmental area (VTA) which is a central region of the brainâs reward system [29] associated with pleasure, general arousal, focused attention, and motivation to pursue and acquire rewards.[24] The VTA projects into several regions including the caudate nucleus which plays a role in reward detection, expectation, representation of goals, and integration of sensory inputs to prepare for action. These appear to be true of both early intense (7.4 months) and a little later and not so intense love (28.8 months).[30]
Why does it need a deity you canât evidence using magic you canât explain? Occamâs razor applies.
No such thing, this is a lie religious apologists peddle.
*"Carroll purports to convince the layman that causality, although used at any instant of our everyday life, nevertheless is not a law of Nature, but only a practical idea, and it is obsolete as a theoretical tool. On the same lines is the article by J. D. Norton [10], whose title âCausation as folk scienceâ technically means that theorizing in terms of cause and effects is a very primordial way of reasoning in science; however, it does not correspond to a precise law or principle in physics at the very fundamental level
the concepts of cause and effect are not the fundamental concepts of our science and that science is not governed by a law or principle of causality"*
Just some cursory research might help us imagine youâre not just parroting bad apologetics, that youâve absorbed uncritically.
What caused your deity? Since that is the only unevidenced assumption being added to what we already know exists. You keep repeating this same most basic error in reasoning, and it violates Occamâs razor. Accepting things exist, and not knowing why does not violate Occamâs razor, only adding things you canât evidence, or in your case even have the integrity to try and explain.
The universe isnât lifeless genius, how many times? Life exists, so does love, if you want to add a deity you have to have more than unevidenced assumptions and argumentum ad ignorantiam fallacies, again Occamâs razor applies.
Most Christians where I live just do the easy way out and tell me to go read the bible when they canât explain their own religious opinions like @Sid has been doing. Iâm surprised he hasnât used that card on you yet.
Oh for fuckâs sake, this has become a sad masturbatory obsession with you, hasnât it?
And once again, you canât even deliver your snide condescension competently, because wait for it, weâve known that this planet has been occupied by living organisms for over 3 billion years.
But letâs take a look at some actual scientific research on the matter, shall we?
I point everyone to this scientific paper, describing a protocol for experimental test of the effects of oxytocin. Iâll direct everyone to the fact that the references section lists no less than one hundred and forty one peer reviewed scientific papers, documenting earlier work in this field.
Now a fair amount of that cited research is devoted to the role of oxytocin in stress management, because the authors of the paper are interested in possible therapeutic benefits from their research, but three papers of interest from that reference list are this one, this one and this one. In addition, oxytocin is known to be a stress reducing cardiovascular hormone, which means that the effects of oxytocin during pair bonding or maternal care provide a material benefit to the organisms involved.
If youâre incapable of working this out for yourself from first principles, then youâre in no position to sneer at scientific discoveries.
Oh wait, the electromagnetic spectrum is a canonical example. Wavelength of electromagnetic radiation is a quantitative property, but it produces different qualitative effects, such as differential absorption, reflection or transmission from different materials. Visible light wavelengths will pass through standard window glass, but UV is blocked. Indeed, finding materials that do not reflect various wavelengths of electromagnetic radiation is being pressed into service by the military, in the production of stealth aircraft.
Meanwhile, letâs look at one of those papers in detail, shall we? Since Iâve already provided the link in my previous post, Iâll simply start with the citation, viz:
The Neuroscience Of Affiliation: Forging Links Between Basic And Clinical Research On Neuropeptides And Social Behaviour by Jennifer A. Bartz and Eric Hollander, Hormones and Behaviour, 50: 518-528 (2006)
We now move on to the introduction:
Needless to say, the References section is again voluminous, and lists one hundred and seventeen peer reviewed scientific papers as prior art on this topic.
The authors continue with:
After a preamble about the role of oxytocin as a stress reducing hormone in animals, the authors provide this:
Later on, the authors report this:
So, we have experimental data informing us of the effects of oxytocin on human behaviour. As opposed to there being zero experimental data supporting the assertion that âMagic Man did itâ, of course.
. AND words donât necessarily mean there is a bond or someone may say they love you BUT they actually love what you do for them⌠blah blah blah.
