No need, as Erika explained, but no great difficulty either.

“The difficulty is that we are talking about Love, and there is no rational explanation for Love.”

Yes there is.

“Why should a mother love her child?”

That’s actually the easiest one to explain. Anyone with a decent understanding of evolution should realise that. (Hint: It’s all about the genes, not individuals.)

“Reason has no place in the discussion.”

Ha! I’d like to see you *try* to defend that stance rationally. Okay, seriously though, no valid argument can have an imperative conclusion (whether selfish or altruistic) without an imperative premise. So where do these motivations come from? Instinct. Emotion.

I find it weird that so many people assume that selfishness is somehow the default state of a mind. So much bad sci-fi has been written with selfish robots – shouldn’t they be programmed to serve? And evolved beings are programmed to serve their genes – whether it’s an ant sacrificing itself for the security of its nest, or a human helping a family member.

What about love for people we’re not related to? Well, firstly, evolution hasn’t really caught up to how often people in cities run into complete strangers, and secondly – humanity isn’t really all that genetically diverse. By the standards of some species, we’re all practically siblings anyway.

“God is Love, it is as simple as that.”

Really? You seem to have some respect for the book of Matthew. How about chapter 10, verses 35 and 36? “For I am come to set a man at variance against his father, and the daughter against her mother, and the daughter in law against her mother in law. And a man’s foes shall be they of his own household.”

If Dr Bowdler had rewritten the Bible, he would have been the best prophet ever.

You say Yet I suspect that the atheist has a need to validate the origin of his love for others with Reason, rather than Faith.

I ask, why do you think this? Why should an atheist need to justify everything rationally any more than a religious person? I am an atheist, and I have no need to justify everything rationally. Why do I love people? Because I do. I feel no need to rationally justify it.

Implying that atheists must always be rational implies that you think one cannot be emotional without a belief in God. Why do you think this? Does believing in God justify emotions? If so, aren’t you just falling into the same rationality trap that you accuse atheists of falling into? You say atheists cannot love without rationalizing their love, but then you are implying that your rational for love is that there is a God who told you to love.

Where rationality comes in, for me, is determining whether or not a particular belief is a good one that I should keep or one that I should work to change. I do not need to justify that I love someone. I do need to justify that that love is a good thing to continue. If I were to continue passionately loving someone after he was married, I would feel that I needed to change that because I can see that that love has the potential for negative effects.

I believe in God without any empirical knowledge, I practice my Christian Faith in my daily life and relationships/interactions with others. In the book of Matthew, chapter 22, Jesus is asked about the most important of God’s laws. Jesus replies that the most important is to love God, and is quick to add that the second most important is to love others as yourself. Everything else is derived from that.

I would submit that this is a pretty good philosophy for anyone, and an atheist can leave out the “love God” part and still get along just fine. Yet I suspect that the atheist has a need to validate the origin of his love for others with Reason, rather than Faith. The difficulty is that we are talking about Love, and there is no rational explanation for Love.
Why should a mother love her child? Reason has no place in the discussion. The lengths to which people will go because of Love cannot withstand rational scrutiny.

Yet these things happen every day. God is Love, it is as simple as that.

My point is simply that most theistic arguments that God exists fail rational scrutiny. There is an uncertainty that allows God to exist, but rational arguments certainly create room for doubt.

That said, humans are believing machines and we are quite good at formulating internal hypothesis without rational means. That is why I am arguing for atheism from an emotional, not just a rational perspective and why I believe we can have a meaningful discussion about it.

-Scott

To me, more things make logical sense, whether anyone can prove them or not, that a ‘Higher Intelligence’ exists. As humans, our understanding and ability to explain anything, is puny in the grand scheme of things.