Quote from jefferis:
Do you love anyone? A wife perhaps? A child?
What is logical about love? Yet where would life be without it?
This is like shooting tin cans, I gotta stop after this one.
As a concept, love is perfectly logical when you really think about it, and does not require a cosmic source to explain its existence.
All creatures instinctively act in their own self-interest. All forms of life are essentially gene-propagating machines. This is why documented altruism exists in the animal kingdom, from insects on up. To the degree that altruistic behavior promotes kin selection, i.e. the survival of the gene pool as a whole, certain altruistic behaviors will be enhanced and reinforced via the unguided process of natural selection.
Some animals mate for life based on their particular survival strategy, while others do not. Most animals do not derive pleasure from sex because it isn't necessary; the drive to mate is strong enough on its own.
In man, however, the introduction of self-aware intelligence created a twist. Self-awareness gave birth to contemplation, which in turn fueled a greater emphasis on tangible pleasure aspects of the natural instincts. Once we learned to think, our natural instincts quickly intertwined with our thinking... leading to further development and a path that was wholly new.
This intermingling of contemplation and instinct led to the intense pleasure of sex and, furthermore, to the concept of love as we understand it. Man's capacity for self-awareness and contemplative thought created powerful feedback loops, stimulating pleasure centers in regard to certain activities--such as mating and child-raising--that the rest of the animal kingdom participates in without conscious thought.
So does a human mother love her baby more than a chimpanzee mother loves hers? Sure--few would argue otherwise. But why is that true? Because the human mother has greater capacity for thought, and the intertwining of contemplation and emotion leads to a broader and deeper range of experience, overlaid with countless iterations of culture and tradition. The difference is one of degree, rather than kind.
Love makes logical sense. There is a reason love exists, just as there are reasons why humans have large and ornate genitalia in comparison to the rest of the animal kingdom. Human sexuality also evolved, via natural selection, from a mere method of reproduction to a societally beneficial bonding mechanism. As our minds grew stronger, the conceptual interplay between sex and relationships grew stronger too--which in turn reinforced the concept of love.
Ultimately, love is the glue that holds the family together at the most basic level, and thus holds society together overall.
But just because love enables society doesn't mean it has to be some amazing divine gift. Rather the cultural, conceptual and emotional aspects of love as we understand it evolved in beneficial symbiotic fashion, alongside our brains, our pleasure centers, and our capacity for complex cooperation.
This sounds impersonal as heck, and ultimately it is... but so what? The fact that love evolved via natural selection doesn't make the intrinsic experience of love any less real.
To imply that one must have a philosophical grasp of love's origin to truly love another person is a load of BS. It's no more true than suggesting an intellectual grasp of physiology is necessary to enjoy sex.
Whatever love's origin, it's here, man. It's all around us, as the hippies might say. To know the impersonal origins of love doesn't have to diminish the intensely personal experience of love... the idea that love loses meaning without cosmic validation is just another red herring.
The assumption that all things meaningful--like love--have to have a profound metaphysical source can be traced back to the benevolent creator argument. If one fervently wishes to believe in a benevolent creator--as opposed to an alien intelligence or no creator at all--then one will work hard to find patterns of conjectural evidence supporting that belief.
