This is a continued conversation with an ex-girlfriend who asked me if I could believe in love, without the belief in a God.

She said:

Now for the deep stuff: I can't really argue w/ you because at this point I have no idea what I believe. I know that I can care about people a lot, but I'm not sure if I'm capable of real love. Sometimes I care more about strangers than I do my close friends. I understand what you are saying though, especially the part about providing your reasons for loving yourself instead of getting them delivered to you. I don't know. Love just seems like such a vague concept that I don't understand at all. I guess I love my family. I mean I like spending time w/ them and I genuinely care about their happiness as much as if not more than my own; is that love? But love for a boyfriend? I'm not so sure. I think it's all hormones.

He said:

Proceeding to what you dubbed "deep stuff", obviously sharing experiences with someone such as a boyfriend or even just a friend (someone who isn't related to you) you begin to form bonds that have been forged out of shared problems met, conquered, and walked away from. Emotions of rapture and despair are shared and communicated. So through this bond you develop an immense fondness that can only be described as love. This fondness is most often unconditionable (if it's real).

Specifically, romantic love is quite different. You're partially right when you say it's all hormones. Sexually urges are among the most primal of emotions, and quite frequently, the most demanding. It is when we have found resolve with these urges and developed an equally rewarding sexual relationship that is also centrally reliant on intimacy, that we can develop "romantic love". Or at least that's how I believe it happens. For the record, people who have not experienced intimacy are not capable of what you call romantic love in my opinion.

If you're really perplexed about this you should do some research (not saying you haven't already). As far as a belief in God, I can definitely help persuade your opinion if you're interested. If not that's cool.

Then She said (and I sigh as I post this):

I always have to start from the bottom. I wish we could talk face to face too. It's amazing that you're both male and intelligent. It's truly rare...

I guess if that's how you define love then I've experienced it. And I've experienced intimacy. And I've believed I've been in "romantic love" but once it's over it just seems like it was never real. It's like, while I'm experiencing it I feel totally caught up in love and sex and all that, but once I look back I always think I wasn't actually in love.

I don't really know what kind of research to do. I don't think reading other people's definitions of love is going to clear up my confusion. As far as you persuading me, go for it. I don't know exactly what I believe, but I know I have to believe in some kind of higher power. I'm open to all religions. I suppose that's one of my big weaknesses; fear of death. W/ a religion I find comfort in knowing that it's not the end. Also, my logical side can't overlook the absurdity of evolution and the big bang and all that. It doesn't make sense.

As an atheist do you ever feel like you're pointless? I'm not sure I'd be okay walking around believing i was just an insignificant accident, as unimportant as a monkey.

(rubs his head) Then He said:

Okay wow now I have to start from the bottom. To be candid, I'm pretty disapointed that you don't believe in evolution. It's not absurd at all. I'm sure the arguments you've heard that feabily attempt to disprove evolution make perfect sense to you. This does not in the least make them accurate. One of my favorite authors, Sam Harris, summarized this wonderfully in his short book, Letter to a Christian Nation. He said:

All complex life on earth has developed from simpler life-forms over billions of years. This is a fact that no longer admits of intelligent dispute. If you doubt that human beings evolved from prior species, you may as well doubt that the sun is a star. Granted, the sun doesn't seem like an ordinary star, but we know that is a star that just happens to be relatively close to the earth. Imagine your potential for embarassment if your religious faith rested on the presumption that the sun was not a star at all. Imagine millions of Christians in the United States spending hundreds of millions of dollars each year to battle the godless astronomers and astrophysicists on this point. Imagine them working passionately to get their unfounded notions about the sun taught in our nation's schools. This is exactly the situation you are now in with respect to evolution. Christians who doubt the truth of evolution are apt to say things like "Evolution is just a theory, not a fact." Such statements betray a serious misunderstanding of the way the term "theory" is used is scientific discourse. In science, facts must be explained with reference to other facts. These larger explanatory models are "theories". Theories make predictions and can, in principle, be tested. The phrase "the theory of evolution" does not in the least suggest that evolution is not a fact. One can speak about the "germ theory of disease" or the "theory of gravitation" without casting doubt upon disease or gravity as facts of nature.

Evolution is how we got here. Period. You can say that it violates the second law of thermodynamics or it is restricted to "micro evolution" but that would be propaganda, and nothing more. And I'd really like to believe you wouldn't buy into propaganda without checking your facts Dixie, you're far too intelligent for that.

And I do not feel pointless. If anything, as an atheist I appreciate the value of life more than you because I realize this is the only time I'm alloted. I don't have to seek enternal happiness to realize that the time I spend here on earth is precious.

As far as the "big bang" goes, why not? At least it is a explanation that is physically feasible, unlike the one you provide, which is that an invisible man created the earth with the snap of a finger. If the beauty and compexity of our planet is a reflection of a creator, then how could something so divine and so infinite be created spontaneously? In theory, you also believe in a "big bang", your big bang comes in the form of an omniscient, omnipotent deity. So I guess what I'm trying to say is: If God created everything and nothing can occure spontaneously, then what created God? Did He occur spontaneously? Or did he just always exist? This is how atheists view space and time, as something that is infinite, that has always been. (The biologist Richard Dawkins has repeatedly asserted that the only known process that could possibly form such a being as God, is evolution.)

Back to love, I can't tell you if you were in love with that dude or not. That's something that you are going to have to determine for yourself. But let me ask you this: If you have enough faith to believe in something that provides zero empirical evidence, then why can't you believe in something that is as present as your belief in God? To be honest I can't answer that my damn self. If you can't see love and touch it, much like with God, how do you know it exists? Well my first thought is that love can be experienced between two phyiscal people, not between a person and an imaginary friend. I don't know. You'll have to figure this one out on your own. My guess: you probably didn't love that guy. Not to say that your relationship wasn't significant, it was just probably closer to we is called "puppy love" than anything. Like I said I don't know and if you think I'm wrong, I probably am.

Don't lose faith in men. I know that the vast majority of us are masoginistic, narrcisists who aren't honest with themselves or their women (I've been guilty of this myself, more than once) but believe me when I say that you are indeed a catch, and you shouldn't settle for anyone who doesn't meet the standards that you have set for yourself.

And She said:

I've read a lot about evolution and it raises some of the same questions as the creation theory: maybe things did evolve, but where did those things start? There's one theory that God started the world, then let it evolve (because he created it in 6 days and one part of the Bible says a day to him is a thousand to us, so you could interpret the world as being created in 6000 days...). But that stuff hardly matters. I don't know where God came from or what he is really. But I just feel like he's real. That's what makes sense to me, and that's what comforts me. Without a god how can you explain emotions? Are human emotions part of evolution?

I know I wasn't in love with him, and I haven't given up on the opposite sex, I'm just beyond caring now. I'm just going to date whoever I feel like, girls or guys, completely non-exclusively. The word "slut" just came to my mind...but I'm pretty sure you're open-minded enough to realize that maybe I'm just not relationship material.

As to the whole comparing not believing in evolutioin to not believing the sun is a star...WHOA! There are so many fallacies there I just don't know where to begin. It is impossible to compare the two beliefs. It just doesn't make sense. You can't compare what someone believes about space to what they believe about evolution. The two beliefs are completely unrelated.

(His head hurts) And he concluded:

So finals are approaching and I've been a little pressed for time to respond or post anything. Thanksgiving (a secular holdiay by the way) took away from my motivation to write anything that wasn't related to football or the finer points of leftover turkey and ham.

What you're failing to grasp with the analogy is the validity of what is being compared. The sun is a star, it's a big-ass star, but a star noneltheless. We know it's a star because it shares the same qualities as the other "stars" in the universe. We make this conclusion based on facts we draw from research. This is, technically, a "theory", much like evolution. You don't object when someone mentions this "theory" because it doesn't interfere with your religious beliefs. So obviously you didn't understand what Harris was saying.

What I'm having trouble understanding is what you truly believe. If you "just feel like he's real" then wouldn't it be okay for me to feel like there's a giant doughboy in the sky that controls the weather with chocolate sprinkles? If I feel this is true and it comforts me then isn't that okay? In a more realistic analogy, what if the extremist Muslims in Afganistan believed it perfectly alright to strap a bomb to themselves, walk into a daycare, and press a detonator? He, no doubt, "feels" that Allah will bless him with 72 virgins in the afterlife. He is comforted with the fact that he is killing hundreds of innocent children. And, as you hopefully know, this is not an unrealistic scenario. You and he are using the same logic. What do you see wrong with that?

I think you're holding on to an unecessary superstition that there is no evidence for. I believe you are thinking like a lazy person, and I believe you need to examine what it is you're saying. It is a fact that the world is tremendously older than any interpretation of the Bible states. You learned that in high school, if you payed attention in biology class.

How can I explain emotions without a God? I thought I'd been doing a descent job of that throughout this dialogue. Again, you need to think about what it is you're saying and get back to me.