Finally, concerning morality, you mention God and satan. And if I understand you correctly, you are asking why is God the good and satan the evil. Let me ask you this: is it good to kill? Is it good to steal? Is it good to destroy? Is …it evil to love? is it evil to feed someone who is hungry? Is it evil to give a cup of water to someone who is thirsty? I think that you and I would both agree on these things that it is NOT good to kill, it is not good to steal, it is not good to destroy. All of these things take life away. We see all around us in nature the reproduction of life in the plants, trees, everywhere. Nature screams that LIFE and living and producing is good and fruitful. Therefore, even outside of “god”, we can conclude that morality that is life-producing is good, no? And I believe that we would agree that those same things, killing, stealing and destroying are evil. Thus anything and anyone who functions in these ways has an evil influence on or in or acting upon them. But you see, as an atheist, you MUST, if you are logical, conclude that there is no standard of morality. You cannot ever, and remain truly logical to atheism, say that morality has somehow “evolved” because if there is morality, then the logical conclusion is that there is an ultimate standard of morality, an ultimate standard of good and therefore that had to start somewhere….it didn’t simply “pop into being” out of nowhere, out of water and nitrogen and oxygen….someone sometime made a decision that “this” is the good thing to do in this situation….it did not come from chemical reactions withing them, but rather morality that is outside of them and acting upon the chemicals within them. I know you will want to argue this point again, but I strongly encourage you to get the book I first mentioned, Genetic Entropy, which will really cause you to reexamine your arguments about our chemical make-up and therefore all of this. Ok, I really need to run….thanks for your patience.

Boy you got fired up about the comments. I read through them, but won’t really address them…I respect what each of them has to say, but I’d rather, at this point, stay focused on our discussion. So, if I understand you correctly, You believe (which, by the way is a manifestation of what I would deem ‘faith’ because whether you want to accept it or not, you DO have faith…you have faith in science and only that which can be seen), so, you believe that Love, in all of it’s manifestations, is nothing more than chemical reactions in the brain and there is absolutely NO CHOICE involved in love? I conclude this from your rationalism because first, if everything is chemical, then you have no control over it, unless you accept that you actually have choice, which implies that even though the chemicals are shooting off, they don’t completely control you and every single aspect about you, so you choose to love so and so more than so and so or differently than you do your parents. A true scientist and rationalist would argue that there is not choice in the matter, it is simply a matter of the chemicals firing in our brains and we just react to those firings rather than having choice in who we love. To say you have choice is to acknowledge that there is something ‘more’ than simply chemical reactions because you are making a conscious decision.

You mention loving parents is completely instinctual. I agree to a point, but not completely. If my dad chooses to abuse me physically or emotionally, then that “instinctive” bond is affected in a major way and it will affect everything else that takes place in my life regarding relationships with men in general, and quite possibly, with my future husband or even wife (in the case of boys who are abused by fathers) and so they make choices based on the demonstrations of love they received or didn’t receive.

To me and many others (even non-believers), there is much, much more to love and any emotion than simply chemical reactions and chemical firings in the brain. I would even venture to propose that if you conclude it’s all chemicals, then you are copping out on taking responsibility for your own choices and your own behaviors. You begin to fall into the slippery slope that we see rampant today of those not taking responsibility for their own actions and behaviors and “blaming” it on the “chemicals” in their bodies. I keep hearing you say that people created god to ease their own consciousnesses. that is the conclusion you have reached based on what? Your limited scientific reality?

I am still working on compiling some scientists for you to read. Sorry for my busyness is keeping me from doing that with any fervor. Let me address you…I believe your argument about finding the divine everywhere is good on one level: you have reached the conclusion that the divine exists. Now, does it matter “which” divine? You may think no, but I believe it does because I’m sure as he will “argue”, not all of them can be correct. That you sense and know the divine demonstrates what I already pointed out regarding the God-shaped vacuum inside every person. Now, because we are living creatures, that God must be a living god, not a dead god like so many religions worship. Otherwise, it would make no sense. So right away, one can pretty much toss out religions that worship dead gods or even concepts. That’s where the argument about the Truth of the Living God, as manifested in our human form in the person of Jesus Christ rises to the surface. If Jesus lived a human life, died and rose again from the dead, then everyone on the planet needs to grapple with that claim. Taking it one step further, you really only have three options regarding Jesus: he was either a liar and deceived multitudes in his day and in subsequent milleniums, a lunatic (which would be evidenced by inconsistencies and irrational behavior) or he was who he said he was, the son of God. You cannot simply say he was a great teacher because then you have to dismiss the miracles (both then and today) and you have to call him a liar because he claimed to be God, which would also mean he’s a lunatic and delusional. I do want to say to Aron about your description of love….this is good and right. Love is not simply a chemical reaction based on biology because as you have noted, there are different kinds of love. I’m assuming that you, Bence, will say that different chemical reactions occur and so different “feelings” of love come forth in the different situations but we call them all ‘love’. I think that is a huge stretch and more probable is that the emotion of love is a spiritual thing that manifests chemically and then physically. Let me toss out another question:  where do morals stem from? (by the way, this is so much fun for me!)

Pro: love and relationships are “chemical reactions in the brain”, as you put it, and not planted in everyone by some intelligent creator. you just believe that – probably because you read it in a book which is nonsense in a thousand different scientific ways, and was written thousands of years ago by simple, primitive men – and it’s all well and good, but believing in something, no matter how strong, doesn’t make it true. As far as evidence goes, we were not created by an intelligent, loving creator, but exist because of a chain of coincidences, and the idea of love is merely a trick of the brain to make us reproduce, and by no means a seed by an all-loving creator.

Con: I guess we will have to agree to disagree. I feel sorry for your family, friends and girlfriend. Because now you must say to them: “I am having a chemical reaction in my brain toward you right now.” You can never say “I love you” because you would not be honest or truthful because you really don’t know what love is because love is about relationship, not about chemicals. I am sad that you have not encountered the love of God in your heart, nor have you seen the miraculous, like the formation of a baby in the womb or the formation of the eyeball, or the formation of the universe first-hand. You have bought into some scientists theories which many, many scientists today, if you choose to read widely, are realizing are incorrect and many scientists are concluding that the universe had to be created by an intelligent designer. But as I said, more importantly, I am sad that you say to your girlfriend, “I’m having a chemical reaction in my brain right now toward you.”….

Pro: suppose these chemicals are removed from both of our bodies. do you think you could still feel love because you encountered the love of god, and i couldn’t because i didn’t?
knowing for real what love is doesn’t make it less of an emotion for people who acknowledge where it comes from. i am fully aware of the reasons that make me feel the way i feel, and i learned to accept them; i can cope with them without having to invent an imaginary concept that will make me feel more comfortable with the world and my feelings. When people say “i love you”, they mean they feel the sensation of love, and they don’t think about how or why they feel it, they just do. At the end of the day, if someone feels it, it doesn’t matter where it comes from. people who are not religious simply learned to accept the truth.
I can assure you that your experience of love is the exact same sensation as everyone else’s, you just believe that it comes from somewhere else because it comforts you.

Con: I can understand your reasoning. The very fact that you have had to “accept” and “cope” with the conclusions you have reached indicate that there is something more and bigger than you behind it all. Let me ask you this question: Why couldn’t there be something or someone bigger than all of this and all of us? What do you fear about the fact that indeed there could be an intelligent designer behind it all?

Pro: Don’t tell me that only religious people know what love and relationships are.

Con: I consider myself a follower of Jesus. But that said, the reason you or anyone knows anything about relationships and love is because whether you believe it or not, you were made by a loving creator who is the author of relationships. Just as you cannot get an apple tree from a peach seed, you cannot get relationships from non-relationship. We don’t love people, you, me or anyone else, without something being planted IN us to know how to be in relationship and how to love, even at the most basic level. Therefore, atheism falls apart on the level of love and relationships because at its root it has no concept of relationship or love, unless you say that love and relationships are nothing more than chemical reactions in the brain and not a matter of choosing to love someone and choosing to be in relationships with people. So, one does not have to “be religious” as you have said to be able to experience love and relationships because every person was created to be in relationship, first with the Creator, then with other people. Even atheists have relationships with other people which testifies to the fact that “someone” planted that ability in them since that is at the core of everything, really.

P.S. They, (atheists) just don’t want to acknowledge that the seed was planted in them by a loving creator who has given them free will to choose.