Love has a subjective existence, not an objective one; meaning it only exists in your head. Love's existence is as real as your thoughts and feelings are. How is love accessed? Via your thoughts and imagination.
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Love has a subjective existence, not an objective one; meaning it only exists in your head. Love's existence is as real as your thoughts and feelings are. How is love accessed? Via your thoughts and imagination.I know that everyone here have an array of belief levels and how they perceive things. So I wanted to know, based on your methods of reasoning, can you prove that love exist? How would you access it, if you would at all?
There is a good book that explains love very well: "The Attributes of Love" by Charles Finney. His use of language takes a bit to master, but he shows clearly how God loves us, and how, in turn, we can love one another.This seems to be a bit circular. You say that love is shown by being loving. That's like saying the quality of schleem is shown by being schleemy.
There is a good book that explains love very well: "The Attributes of Love" by Charles Finney. His use of language takes a bit to master, but he shows clearly how God loves us, and how, in turn, we can love one another.
Oh, I didn't realise you are an athiest. That explains why you have no understanding of what love is in the way I have been explaining it.However, since I have not read that book and don't have the book available to read, and also since I don't have a belief in God and thus telling me what God does means nothing to me, your argument is not convincing.
Oh, I didn't realise you are an athiest. That explains why you have no understanding of what love is in the way I have been explaining it.
In fact, you are not able to understand anything concerning God and His ways in your present state because God has not decided to show grace and mercy to you, and that is the only way you will gain any insight into God and the Christian faith, other than some type of superficial view of what churches are like.
So I am not going to take the trouble of trying to explain it to you because you would be unable to "get" it. This is not a put down of you, or any comment on your intelligence or knowledge. But when it comes to anything that needs to be spiritually discerned, because only God can give you that insight and capability, you will be largely blind to it.
That is why, after many Christians, I guess, have tried to show you what the Christian faith is all about, you have not been able to see it.
Seeing that the Bible is the only way God has communicated to mankind, and you not believing it, then you will have no way of knowing anything about God.
I am not trying to be unkind to you. I'm just being honest and realistic. I would love to be able to convince you that God is really there and that the Bible is true, but I am helpless to do that because the insight has to come from God Himself, and if He doesn't give it to you, there is nothing I can do about it.
There is no doubt that you are capable of love from the "phileo" human perspective. This means that you are able to love those who love you. But loving those who don't love you at all, or who are unlovely people may be somewhat of a challenge. I know there are social workers and others in community organisations who work with unlovely people of all descriptions but this is done more of selfish motives.Do you think that I, as an atheist, am incapable of love?
There is no doubt that you are capable of love from the "phileo" human perspective. This means that you are able to love those who love you. But loving those who don't love you at all, or who are unlovely people may be somewhat of a challenge. I know there are social workers and others in community organisations who work with unlovely people of all descriptions but this is done more of selfish motives.
I don't mean to be judgmental. What I am trying to explain is that phileo love is ordinary human love that we have for each other. There is another type of love called agape love which is an advanced type of love that only God can give, and it comes only from God to Christian believers. So when Christian believers speak about the love of God and how believers must love one another, it is agape love they are speaking about.This sounds rather judgemental.
You are judging that I would have trouble loving people who don't love me. You are judging that if I do so, it is done with selfish motives.
Could you tell me please what it says in the Bible about judging people?
I don't mean to be judgmental. What I am trying to explain is that phileo love is ordinary human love that we have for each other. There is another type of love called agape love which is an advanced type of love that only God can give, and it comes only from God to Christian believers. So when Christian believers speak about the love of God and how believers must love one another, it is agape love they are speaking about.
If the OP is a Christian believer then it is agape love that is being referred to, not phileo.Okay, but two things...
First, the OP didn't say it was only agape love, just love.
Secondly, this agape love is like magic from Harry Potter. I can say magic is real and only wizards can do it, just the same way you can say agape love is real, but only God can feel it. But that doesn't make it real. And if only God can have agape love, then you can't have any experience of it, you are only taking someone's word that this is what God feels for you.
If the OP is a Christian believer then it is agape love that is being referred to, not phileo.
Your comment about agape being "magic" is in total harmony with the pagan Greeks who could not imagine believing in a God who was crucified. It was foolishness to their intellectual minds. Being an athiest, the whole concept of God dying on a Roman cross and through that death as a criminal brought salvation to those who put their faith and trust in Him is absolute foolishness. You are saying this yourself.
The fact is that God has deliberately allowed your mind to be blinded so that you are unable to see the light of the gospel of Christ and this is why you cannot accept what I am saying.
I am not saying that you will not, but that you cannot because you are locked into atheism and you will not be able to believe that the Christian gospel is anything but foolishness to you.
Therefore unless God through His grace and mercy does something different for you, you are destined to go out into an eternity where there is nothing for you.
That is the ideal which Christians aspire to with God's help.So for a Christian, all love is agape love?
I did understand what you were saying, and I said to you that you can know nothing of God and His ways, because they are hidden from you. You might be able to learn something of religion and what it means to people, but you will see it only on the intellectual level, but have no real knowledge of it at the spiritual level, which is only discerned by those who are genuinely converted to Christ.I think you need to read what I said again. I don't think you really understood what I was saying.
That is the ideal which Christians aspire to with God's help.
I did understand what you were saying
Sorry, I can't think like an atheist, because I ain't one. I don't think that we can harmonise our thinking on these issues because we are existing on two different "planets" as it were.Yet you have said that only God can experience agape love. You said, "agape love ... is an advanced type of love that only God can give..." So if only God can give it, why are humans trying to give it when they are apparently doomed to failure?
No you didn't.
You thought I was saying that agape love was magical: "Your comment about agape being "magic" is in total harmony with the pagan Greeks who could not imagine believing in a God who was crucified."
I never said that agape was magical. I was comparing it to magic in Harry Potter in the sense that both are things invented for the use of characters which do not apply to us. And in both cases they are fictional. You say agape love is real because you've got a book that talks about it. I can say with equal justification that magic is real because I've got books that talk about it.
Sorry, I can't think like an atheist, because I ain't one. I don't think that we can harmonise our thinking on these issues because we are existing on two different "planets" as it were.
I believe that God is really there, and He has communicated with mankind through the Bible. I also believe that becoming a Christian is initiated by God, who enlightens and gives insight into what the gospel of Christ really means. Then He gives the faith to believe it and live by it.
You don't believe any of this, and so we will never come to any workable compromise. So, our discussions will keep going around the same old mountain because we see life, the universe and everything in totally different ways.
You will never come to any understanding of who I am and why I believe what I do because I am someone who is totally outside of your frame of reference. It is as if I am living in another dimension and there is an impassable barrier between us so whatever we say to each other is going to bounce off the barrier.
Whether atheists are going to hell is not for me to say. Maybe one day you will find out what will happen to you in eternity, so you have that to look forward to.I'm not asking you to think like an atheist. I don't see anyone asking you that.
So, lemme get this straight...
Christians are outside the frame of reference to the woman who is married to a Christian? Outside the frame of reference to the woman who has read the Bible all the way through? Who has been discussing Christianity with countless believers for about twenty years?
Or perhaps you just say that so you can dismiss whatever I say, justifying it with, "Her point doesn't really matter, since she doesn't understand what she's talking about."
It's a mistake to think that someone who disagrees with you must not understand what they are talking about simply because they disagree with you.
(Also, you didn't answer my question. Do you think atheists are going to Hell?)
It depends on what one means by love existing.
To me, love is a label we place on a category of actions and emotions. If a person's behavior falls within the parameters we set for this category, we say that he/she loves. In part, we can identify this as a human construct since few humans would agree in all circumstances that an action is loving or not. What makes the idea tenable is that for most members of the human race the things we call love overlap.
If there were no sapient/sentient beings, there would be no love. It does not exist beyond the minds of sentient beings.
This is the way with labels humans make. Morality doesn't exist if one never interacts with another being. It is the interaction between people that defines moral behavior. It, too, is a mental construct. No sentient beings, no moral/immoral behavior.
To push it some more, "flerg" is meaningless (at least in English). But if I say that flerg comprises the actions {x1, x2, x3, ...} then flerg has meaning. And it would exist as a human construct even if no one had thought of it before.
Define love.
Whether atheists are going to hell is not for me to say. Maybe one day you will find out what will happen to you in eternity, so you have that to look forward to.
This is not about me, agreeing or disagreeing with you. All I am saying is that you may very well have some conception of Christianity from an intellectual level, and know the Bible from cover to cover on an intellectual level as well. It is said that the demons in hell know the Bible better than any of us!
I just know that it would be a fruitless discussion, and would probably just a rehash of all the discussions you have had over the years anyway. What could I add to all the input from Christian people, including your husband? Nothing.
I'm just being honest and realistic.
If you don't believe in your heart that God exists, and that He has communicated to mankind through the Bible, then we are blocked at that point, unable to go any further in any discussion. This is because if you don't believe there is a God, we can't discuss what He is like - His nature and character. And if you believe that the Bible is just a jumble of different authors and not God communicating to mankind, then discussing the bible would generate more questions than answers.
I have already had lengthy discussions on CF with atheists and have told them the same thing - that the bottom line is coming to the realisation that God really does exist and that He has communicated to mankind. I have discussed at length about the primary cause, that for our universe to exist there needs to be a primary cause. But we couldn't get beyond that point, because the ones I was discussing with would not accept that there is a primary cause and that cause is an intelligent one who designed the universe. So all the discussions ended in a stalemate and didn't get anywhere - just like our present discussion - and I encountered pretty defensive personal tit for tat comments which made me decide to withdraw from the discussion.
That would be your responsibility to define love ( if you believe it exist or not) in accordance to the post, and then how you come to that conclusion through your method of reasoning.
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