If humans have no soul, and are merely evolutionary advanced animals, is ‘love’ anything more than instinct or hormones?
Pretty much. And nothing wrong with that.
When mommy says to her one year old, “I love you,” the atheist says she is not expressing anything metaphysical or spiritual. In fact, says the atheist, the mother is verbalizing the instinct to preserve her species, just as a mommy zebra protects and fosters the growth of the baby zebra. That’s it. Nothing more. It is instinct combined with verbal tags. When a parent “loves” her child, she is just adding a verbal cue to an advanced evolutionary instinct to carry on the species.
Yup.
When a man says, “I love you,” to his wife, he is simply expressing something about his hormonal levels toward her as a mate. What he is really saying is, “My hormones surge for you,” not “You are my soul mate,” because the atheist doesn’t believe in souls or metaphysical connections between humans.
Unless you're speaking to a Buddhist, who are atheists, but i'm assuming the writer meant people who question everything and anything spiritual and supernatural.
But in any case: uh huh.
Incidentally, a man’s hormones might start surging for another woman (or several women) at some point. The same man might also be ready to say, “I love you,” to these new women, too.
Which happens all the time, to both the religious and so-called "godless heathens".
If there is no soul, then there is only the bubbling of the brain. There is only the response to stimuli and hormones. Yet Catholics root love in the soul. The problem for atheists, of course, is that the soul is a metaphysical reality that assumes the existence of God, or at least the supernatural.
Not really a problem, more like a reality the writer has a hard time accepting (that the soul does not exist).
When I love a friend, as a Christian, I mean, “I love you, body and soul.” But for an atheist, friendship is an evolved behavior related to living in a pack or herd or tribe. At root it has to do with self-protection and food acquisition.
Yup, but we can all pretend we're much more important than that if it makes you feel better.
We can pretend we live on after death despite no such evidence for that. We can believe our amazing ways to figure out space travel and physics is "divine" instead of a really complex series of abilities that is inherit of our evolutionary process. We can all believe that our time here on earth is "special" despite the fact we are all doomed to be worm food like many of the other animals that come and go at a more rapid pace on this earth.
Or we can treat phrases like "love you, body and soul" as nothing more than beautiful metaphorical prose to enhance our brief time on this earth and make it more special than take it literally. Like believing in a fairytale literally instead of taking away the beautiful message it has to help enrich our own lives.
I'd be interested in hearing how other atheists, besides Dawkins, would describe “love” to their daughters. I'd also like someone to help clarify Dawkins' claim that, “There are outside things to back up the inside feeling: looks in the eye, tender notes in the voice, little favors and kindnesses; this is all real evidence.”
What is this “inside/outside” dichotomy? It sure sounds like what we Christians have called “soul/body” for over 2,000 years.
It's actually stimuli, but you can pretend it's celestial if it makes you sleep at night.
Stuff like this reminds me of "Movie Poop Shoot.com" from Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back.
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