This is a message I wrote to an ex-girlfriend when she asked me if I believed in love, because I didn't believe in God.

I remembered you wrote me a message asking if I believed in love and I never wrote you back. This is a subject that I have taken alot of my time tossing over. To answer your question, yes of course I believe in love. I have an immeasurable amount of love for my family and my close friends (The number of those has dwindled over the years). To me, love is the emotion that emerges when you care about someone's well being as much or more than your own. This emotion can easily be triggered without a belief in a God or Gods. One of the most basic of human instincts is the protective attitude mothers have toward their children. And likewise for emotions felt for the mother by the child. The saying "motherly instincts" did not come about by accident. Mothers have an innate disposition to feed, clothe and shelter their children. This is love in its purest form. Of course there are many different forms of love and the arising complications from this emotion are almost unlistable. (e.g. falling in love, falling out of love, platonic love, love of hobbies, love of possessions ect.)

I won't pretend to be able to tell you the best ways of resolving any of these issues. I will say that loving someone without having to believe that I should love them because God wants me to, or that He loves us all and we should love eachother as a unification of His love, or that you just love everybody because the creator of the universe is on your side and hell, why shouldn't you love everybody, is much truer and endearing and lgitimate to me. To me, "atheist love" is a more pure form of theist love because it requires a ligitimate explanation of the love, not a dogmatic one. In other words I have to provide reasons for why I love someone and you are provided with yours. Compulsory love is a harmful emotion, and you should read some Christopher Hitchens on that subject. I can send you some specific pieces if you like.