Talk:Argument from love/Archive 1

Archive 1

This is NPOV as point 3 is not "relatively un-controversial"

How can point 3 be stated as uncontroversial? i.e. "According to Classical Theism in general, and Christianity in particular[1], love is a quality of God and therefore exists in a way which transcends its material manifestations." and then use that claim with the claim that love exists to then propose that God exists. This is NPOV nonsense. Ttiotsw 08:25, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

Hi Ttiotsw. The claim is not that Classical Theism is uncontroversial but that it is uncontroversial that Classical Theism asserts ... I've changed to make this clearer NBeale 12:14, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

Yes I guess its OK - Obviously predicated on what compelling reasons there are to consider love to exist in a way which transcends its material manifestations. This obviously is at odds with point 2 ! Is this a class of teleological argument as well then as with Argument from beauty ?. We also await your reply on the "tough" love that god offers to the Hittite peoples in Deuteronomy:20:17 (read with verse 16 and 18). Ttiotsw 15:42, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

Original research

This page also reeks of WP:OR throughout. I see no evidence of anything called the "Argument from love" which merits an encyclopaedia entry. All I see is one person indulging in some philosophical musing and trying to justify a particular stance on the (super)natural world. I will nominate for deletion as original research unless some evidence can be produced that the "Argument from love" is a concept that has occurred in the literature, or is a phrase widely used as a justification for belief in a god. If the article started with (e.g.) "the Argument from love is a concept that has been widely used in discussions on XXX by several philosophers, including YYY and ZZZ...", I could be convinced. But it jumps straight into a heap of original analysis, then mentions a couple of people who may or may not (no evidence is produced) have used the phrase. It is not sufficient to show that others have used something which equates (in your estimation) to an argument from love; you must show that the phrase itself ("argument from love") has some currency, if it is to merit an article of its own. Compare the discussion on Argument from beauty. This is blog-material, not wikipedia material. Snalwibma 11:34, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

Sorry I didn't notice this in the v busy run-up to and sequel from Christmas. I think in fact we need to show that the argument has been used in notable published sources. The whole of Ch 3 of Tom Wright's book cited is about this but there is lots of other material. Will get back but may take a week just off to the US on Monday. Sorry NBeale 12:22, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

If there is a Stanford encyclopedia article on it, then maybe we could look at it for guidance & direction. I really so no reason why we even need a Philosophy wikipedia when Stanford's is so good. PalindromeKitty (talk) 18:08, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

False dichotomy

I think this article is well written, and since I am myself a materialist, I would simply argue that love does not transcend its material causes in the lines of the neurological basis of emotions rather than evolutionary arguments, but that is not my concern. This argument is indeed valid as establishing "theism over materialism", but as an argument for the existence of God, it can be criticized as being a false dilemma: atheism and idealism are not contradictory, and neither is theism and materialism:

• You can be an atheist idealist, that is, you don't believe in God but you believe that abstract objects exists, this is pointed out by Lowder.
• You can be a theist, but materialist with respect to the mind and emotions, such as the theologians who wrote Whatever Happened to the Soul? Scientific and Theological Portraits of Human Nature.

I don't know where to put this criticism right now, so dumping it on the talk page seemed to make sense :) --Merzul 19:11, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

Hi Merzul. I agree that it is not an argument for theism vs idealism (hence the lead-in) and I was thinking of making this clearer. Of course all arguments for A are (implictly or explicitly) for A vs some finite set of alternatives. On a related point I've adjusted your science objection to: "scientific theories of love might explain the neurological basis of deep emotions in such a way as to make their reduction to materialism more plausible" 'cos (a) at present the theories are a long way from providing an explanation and (b) illuminating the material mechanisms involved in the emotion of love does not necessarily have anything to do with whether or not love exists in a way that transcends its material manifestations. NBeale 06:04, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

PS Although I havent read the book you mention from looking at it on Amazon it's pretty clear that these authors are not materialists but "nonreductive physicalists" which is something very different, pretty much the same as "dual-aspect monism" (though I'm sure you characterised it in good faith, they might look very similar to a materialist, but to a theist they are completely different). To say "X transcends it material manifestations" does not commit you to dualism. NBeale 06:10, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

The section you wrote looks good. --Merzul 14:59, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

It's a violation of NPOV. This is not a medium for Nbeale to express his own views, which is exactly what that edit does. Your claims A and B are not only disputed, but are just your personal views. Right now this and the beauty article are slanted in favor of the arguments, and are severely lacking in criticism, instead they have these watered down versions. Also, what's with putting John P. everywhere? You may love him, but he's not exactly noteworthy enough to be inserted willy nilly into so many articles, especially when they're missing basic arguments posed from both sides form much more well known philosophers. Nathan J. Yoder 03:54, 12 March 2007 (UTC)

Sorry, NBeale, but there are serious issues here with undue weight. PalindromeKitty (talk) 18:10, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

Still a POV blog

I nominated this for deletion two months ago, on the grounds that it is original research, more like a blog item than an encyclopaedia entry, and written in order to persuade (POV-pushing), rather than to explain and describe. Seems to me that my arguments still hold true. I'm growing softer in my old age, so I'm not (yet) going to submit another AfD, but the article really does need working on. I want to know - who came up with this nonsense way of arguing for the existence of a god, when, where, how? Which other writers have used the argument? How has it been received? Some of this is there (sort of), hidden somewhere in the fotnotes - but it really needs a careful exposition. Please enlighten me! Snalwibma 19:47, 26 February 2007 (UTC)

Yes, it does appear to be original research in its current state. I googled the argument from love and haven't come across a single form that matches this one. Plus, it has an obvious POV slant, which includes only citing "pro-" sources.

The form I've seen on the internet is basically predicated on the controversial premise that God is love and that love exists, therefore God exists. I can't find one that mentions materialism. Furthermore, this form and the "suggestions" supporting it seem to all be original research created by Nbeale and given his edits on other articles, I don't trust his interpretation of sources, even ones which are explicitly arguing the "pro-" stance.

3 is definitely controversial, considering theists don't necessarily consider love to transcend physical reality, nor do they necessarily consider God to literally be love. I don't see a need for mentioning Christianity in there either. Many religions consider their God to be a manifestation of love.

Plus, #3, even if it were part of the proper form of the argument, would just be question begging. Obviously, if you assume that theism is true, then, by definition, God exists. It negates the need for the rest of the argument (1,2 & 4).

-Njyoder 72.75.49.245 09:13, 11 March 2007 (UTC)

Noncompliant tag

As mentioned above (under "original research", December 2006, and "still a POV blog", February 2007), and as supported by others, I believe that this article falls seriously short of the required standards in terms of WP:OR, WP:ATT and WP:NPOV. It is presented as original analysis, with a few "sources" mentioned in footnotes, the function of which seems to be to lend support to the author's personal views. If there really is something called the "argument from love", then the existence of that subject out there in the big wide world (as opposed to in what looks like the blogosphere of the article's principal author) needs to be clearly established. The article really needs to start with a reference to where and by whom the argument as presented has been used. I cannot find any such thing "out there", and I strongly suspect that what is presented is in fact original research by the author of this article. I am not qualified to do the work on it - but I would be very interested to see the article developed properly. If its current state is as good as it gets, then I'm afraid it becomes a candidate for deletion. Can anyone either (a) confirm me in my suspicions that there is in fact (in the terms of WP as a tertiary source) no such thing as the "argument from love", in which case we move to deletion, or (b) find and describe the sources for the argument as presented, and present the "argument from love" as WP should? Thanks! Snalwibma 20:33, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

Merge?

At the very least, I think this should be merged into argument from consciousness, which is currently a stub. There is no way these articles will be sufficiently expanded on their own. (If they do, we can move them back). Love is just one aspect of human consciousness, the and the general idea is the same. Since we can do subsection redirects I don't see why this can't be treated as a part of consciousness. --Merzul 02:11, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

You know what really bothers me about this article? The fact that it is not trying to be an encyclopedia article explaining the argument and actually discussing the sources. This article only tries to say "I'm a notable argument, look how many sources are devoted to me, please don't let those evil atheist delete me!" And this is precisely why evil atheists like myself want to delete it ;) --Merzul 21:23, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

Indeed... My attitude is nothing to do with my status or otherwise as an Evil A****** - in fact I came here wanting to learn something - but I didn't, and I have been saying ever since then that the article fails to do anything other than assert "here's an argument which I think is pretty impressive ... oh, and by the way, here are a few people who, in my opinion, have used something like it in their writings." Nothing but musings from the author's blogosphere. Argument from beauty, from the same source, is much better - this one has just languished, unloved. I suspect that's because the "argument from love" is in fact a non-existent entity. AfD, I reckon. Snalwibma 21:41, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

No I don't think you have quite got the point. The basic arguments have similar logical forms, but they are different arguments. I've been pretty busy (as you will know since you seem to enjoy reading my blog :-) ) but I'll try to do some more work on these. NBeale 17:59, 31 March 2007 (UTC)

I'm fine with whatever you decide on this issue. My concern is mainly that this will maintained, I do want an article on this subject. And what is there to argue? This topic clearly meets our #1 notability criteria: "The subject has criticized or was criticized by Richard Dawkins" :D --Merzul 01:49, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

The hard-headed response to this kind of argument is that it just based on the way things seem, which could be illusory. That kind of argument could be used against a lot of targets, but not against consciousness, because you need consciousness in order to be subject to have illusions ITFP. So there is a tendency for this kind of argument to lead into the Argument from Consciousness.1Z 13:02, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

Is it time for an AfD?

Glad to see some work being done on this page, at last, NBeale. Do you now plan to make it more encyclopedic? Or will it continue as it is, only larger? I am struggling to see what the paragraph about Scruton adds - "A variant on the argument is to compare faith in God with loving someone and to suggest that if it is reasonable to love someone then it is reasonable to believe in God." Beg your pardon? What does that mean? How does it show anything, or add anything useful to the article? I suspect, you see, that the real reason you have added Scruton is because it presents you with another opportunity to stuff more anti-Dawkins references into Wikipedia! Can you show me how this addition helps the article along, and helps me to understand the concept of the "argument from love"? When I read this article, all I see is a series of non-sequiturs and self-referential arguments. I feel completely at sea, because I can make no sense of it at all, and I cannot find anything "out there" which connects in any way with it, and which I could turn to myself in an attempt to improve the article. Not being an expert on the subject (I am a biologist, not a philosopher), I am simply stuck. Please can you (or someone - but not me, I simply cannot) try and write an encyclopedia article which explains the concepts? Otherwise, it's for the chop. Snalwibma 08:14, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

Hi Snalwibma - I've been really busy IRL and a bit busy on WP as well! There are essentially three types of argument for the existence of God:

1. Given these premises, the existence of God logically follows. Of course, as with any argument, one can always dispute the premises.
2. It is is agreed that fact X about the world is either Certainly True or very probably True, then, since it is more likely under worldview A than worldview B, it tends to confirm A as against B.
3. Given that almost everything that people reasonably believe does not have Conclusive Scientific Proof, and given that it is reasonable for people to believe A, it is reasonable for people to believe in God because the strength of arguments for A are comparable to those for belief in God.

This third type was key to re-igniting the philosophical debate about the existence of God in western academia by Alvin Plantinga in God and other minds and it is the third type of argument that Scruton makes. NBeale 21:52, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

Thanks! I hope you appreciate that I really am trying to help. I am genuinely lost, however. I think if you can write an article that makes sense to me, then you will have succeeded! Funnily enough, it is just at the very end of your comment there - in those last few lines, "This third type was key to re-igniting the philosophical debate ..." - that I begin to get a glimpse of something that makes sense. I think this is the sort of thing that an encyclopedia article should contain. Idea X is important because it was proposed by philosopher Y and greatly influenced Z. The academic debate and its reignition needs a place alongside (perhaps even ahead of) the detailed analysis of the argument itself. Without this context, without explaining where it came from, who used it, etc, it looks (as I have been saying all along) like no more than your own personal musings. I remain stumped by my almost total inability to find anything actually called the "argument from love" out there in the real world. I therefore remain suspicious that the whole structure exists only inside your own head (WP:OR, or what?). Please persuade me otherwise, within the article. Snalwibma 22:16, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

is it even valid?

NBeale, you really need to follow the formal presentation of one of the proponents of the argument. You are formulating an abductive argument in a logical form claiming that it is formally valid, but I think your formulation has some problems. To simplify, consider the following argument:

1. Materialism does not predict transcendental love.
2. Theism does predict transcendental love.
3. Transcendental love seems to exist.
4. Theism is more plausible, in this regard, than materialism.

But I could of course overload this argument with my theory of love-unicorns:

1. Materialism does not predict transcendental love.
2. The theory of love-unicorns predicts transcendental love.
3. Transcendental love does seem to exist.
4. The theory of love-unicorns is more plausible, in this regard, than materialism.

The key point is the phrase "in this regard". What does it mean to have probability with respect to a certain phenomena? My interpretation was that it is some form of conditional probability, but then the argument is not valid. While my theory of love-unicorns does gain some confirmation by this excellent argument, I would still say materialism is more plausible than these love-creatures, and adding in this regard doesn't help them to be more real! The intended meaning of "in this regard" is probably something like "everything else being equal", but that's a very serious assumption. For the argument to be valid, you would have to add

Assume materialism and theism are otherwise equally probable.

Then your argument is at least valid, but this is a controversial premise of course. --Merzul 22:26, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

Hi Merzul. You need to read the first sentence. "The Argument from love is an argument for the existence of God, as against materialism" and perhaps the "in this respect". All any argument of this general type can do is help discriminate between two (or more) given hypotheses. You don't need to assume that they are both equally likely - in Bayesian language the prior probabilities can be anything between 0 and 1 (and even Dawkins doesn't think that the prior probability of theism is exactly 0). The article makes the point that this doesn't discriminate between theism and idealism. Of course it is fair to point out that materialism is in a very sickly state and very few philosophers consider it viable - classical materialism is in any case probably holed below the waterline by Einstein and Dark Matter - bt it's what most "scientific" atheists seem to say they believe in. NBeale 18:14, 31 March 2007 (UTC)

The wrath of Plantinga

Yes, but it is still quite obvious this argument is flawed. The same argument could be used for "love-unicorns" and that would be equally valid, but clearly that's a ridiculous argument. I was confused by the conditional probability stuff, but that's not the problem. The underlying issue is that you are begging the question: when materialism is defined as "objects not transcending their material manifestations", then of course the posterior probability of materialism given transcendental love turns to zero. When you are arguing that theism is more probable than materialism; it would be dialectically deficient in excelsis to argue this by appealing to non-materialism as a premise. Of course it is unlikely that materialism is true if there is such a thing as transcendental love; in fact transcendental love logically entails that materialism is false; but it would be obviously question-begging to argue that materialism is improbable because non-material objects exist. Please provide a source for this formalization, or rephrase it, leaving materialism out of it. This is clearly not valid. --Merzul 21:08, 31 March 2007 (UTC)

Hi Merzul. Obviously if the premise is (certainly) true then the conclusion (that materialism is false) follows with certainty. That's how logical argument works. What is also the case is that, if you think the premise is quite likely to be true (most people act as if love is really significant, but perhaps they might be mistaken) then to the extent that you accept the premise, it makes theism more plausible than materialism. NBeale 06:31, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

Prior probabilities

As wth the classic 3 door problem, prior probability in a linked system is important. Taking a highly unlikely event as a starting point (ie the existence of God) invalidates the whole thread. We have to accept the existence of the universe even if it is highly unlikely (!) but trying to find the lead up events by reading an ancient mistranslated and forged book, or by internalising and magnifying personal delusions will not bring answers that are generally valid. As for what scientists know (they do not believe) - it is based on the best explanations for current repeatable observations and experiments. Looking forward I'm sure the theories will change, some substantially and others just in the details. This has always struck me as more honest philosophy than presenting to the world all the answers with the added incentive that if you don't believe them you're doomed. Sophia 07:26, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

SOPHIA, I think your intuition is right, and this is what makes the argument fishy. I'm thinking that probably the argument would be valid, if instead of concluding "theism is more plausible, in this regard, than materialism", that it should say, to the extend that we accept the premise theism gains in probability with respect to materialism, and once belief in the premise is strong enough, it becomes more plausible than theism. Prior probabilities must matter. This is why even if we very strongly believe in transcendental love, it won't make the ridiculous theory of love-unicorns particularly plausible. --Merzul 13:05, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

Overload objection

NBeale, tell me what is wrong with this, and I will completely shut up:

1. There are compelling reasons for considering love to exist in a way which transcends its material manifestations.
2. If Materialism is true, nothing exists in a way which transcends its material manifestations.
3. If Classical Invisible Pink Unicornism in general, and the ridiculous theory of love-unicorns in particular is true, love is a quality of the 748 non-material love-unicorns, and therefore exists in a way which transcends its material manifestations.
4. Therefore, if and to the extent that premise (1) is accepted, the ridiculous theory of love-unicorns should be considered, in this respect, more plausible than Materialism.

This can not be a valid argument, and yet it is no different than yours. Once again I ask, is this logical outline attributable to some proponent of the argument? Then it is no longer my problem if it begs the question or not. And if there is no formalization in the literature, then you can describe it using words. --Merzul 10:59, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

(refactored) Hi Merzul. This is not a problem with this argument but a fact about all arguments which compare 2 hypothesis. For example, Eddington's observation of the perihelion of mercucy confirmed General Relativity but would equally have been consistent with a suitably ingenious system of epicycles. NBeale 16:46, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

Physicalism

NBeale: "Of course it is fair to point out that materialism is in a very sickly state and very few philosophers consider it viable - classical materialism is in any case probably holed below the waterline by Einstein and Dark Matter - bt it's what most "scientific" atheists seem to say they believe in.".

That is a very tendentious and misleading statement. The existence of dark energy, dark matter,etc may be a departure from classical materialism, but they in no way equate to idealism or theism or mind-stuff. And these discoveries are driven by physics, so physicalism is in a healthy state. "Most contemporary philosophers are physicalists" --S.E.P

1Z 12:09, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

Yes, this is also a serious problem, I really doubt any serious philosopher would try to prove that theism is more plausible than classical materialism. However, since classical theism holds that Love transcends its physical manifestations, the argument could be rewritten as against physicalism. I still think this is a question-begging argument, and you can put whatever ridiculous theory that predicts "love will transcend its physical manifestations" and you can argue it is more plausible than physicalism. --Merzul 13:05, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

Hi Merzul & 1Z. Keith Ward and Alvin Plantinga are very serious philosophers who do. And pretty much no-one believes in classical materialism. I don't think it's true that "most philosophers are physicalists" (whatever this "senior fellow" writes in the SEP) and physicalism has the intruiging property that according to physicalism (as defined in his article) it makes no difference whether God exists or not - which suggested to me that it is obviously false! Obviously the grave definitional and other problems of materialism don't themselves show that theism is true - it may well be, as Mary Midgley suggests that the atheistic idealism that was in vogue about 100 years ago is more coherent - and it is possible that some form of physicalism can be made coherent. NBeale 14:38, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

NBeale:Philosophers don't believe in classical materialism because they do believe in physicalism. Otherwise they would simply ignore what science says. So you can't have it both ways.

'I don't think it's true that "most philosophers are physicalists"'

That would be an artifact of mistaking apologetics for philosophy. 1Z 21:11, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

Amen to that. ;) No seriously, that was very clever, made me laugh a bit. Thank you. --Merzul 22:00, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

About the validity & numbers

NBeale, the point is about this specific formalisation of the argument. Compare this to the formalization on Argument from consciousness, which is logically valid. Now, can we attribute this question-begging formalisation to Keith Ward or Alvin Plantinga? Otherwise, if you insist on using your own formalisation, can you at least work out the conditional probabilities, showing me that you get anything other than zero for the posterior probability of materialism given a weak acceptance of transcendental love. --Merzul 15:42, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

(refactored) Hi Merzul. The posterior probabilties calculations is straightforward: p_1T:p_1M = p_0Tp_L:p_0M(1-p_L) in the obvious notation, so if p_L is high but <1 p_1M is non-zero, but smaller than p_0M NBeale 16:46, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

The notation is not obvious to me, could you rephrase using the notation from conditional probability or bayes' theorem, or just write out whatever everything is supposed to mean? --Merzul 16:55, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

Anyway, if I read the above formulas correctly, it still requires an assumption of everything else being equal, or one could pick probabilities in a way that materialism remains more plausible, although suffers a bit in credibility. In short, I don't think this argument can be formalized in this way. --Merzul 22:00, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

Ok, I see you did fix the wording, it is now much more valid than before. The last step in making it a valid bayesian argument is to express premise (2) and (3) not as absolute deductive material implications, where the likelihood is zero, and hence posterior probability is also zero, and hence the argument is question-begging. What you need is something expressing a non-zero likelihood of us perceiving transcendental love given materialism and theism respectively, so that when applying Bayes's theorem you get something that is not zero for materialism, but lower than before we had experienced love. --Merzul 13:15, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

Popular culture...

I thought the pop culture section was not being serious. I have now searched in Swinburne's writings for any form of argument from love and have not been able to find any. (I have the 1991 edition of the book sited.) Now, google book search came up with something of really high quality:

The argument from Love. Love is the greatest of miracles. How could an evolved ape create the noble idea of self-giving love? Human love is the result of our being made to resemble God (Gen 1:26-27; James 3:9), who himself is love (1 Jn 4:8). If we are made in the image of King Kong rather than in the image of King God, where do the saints come from?

Peter Kreeft. Your Questions, God's Answers. pp. p. 105. ISBN 089870488X. {{cite book}}: |pages= has extra text (help) Could we include this? It is too brilliant to merely lie on a talk page. It's much more convincing than NBeale's formalisations, I mean, where do the saints come from? Does he need to say more? Absolutely brilliant. --Merzul 23:12, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

More seriously though, Peter Kreeft does use an argument from love in more serious work. If I can only find a link... here is something, but there was an essay somewhere... mentioned here. --Merzul 15:54, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

Leap from evidence of God to "Theism" not a given.

The introduction is arguing that this is an argument for the existence of God and yet later jumps into saying that "Theism" should be considered. The argument only presents references from "Christianity". Thus this argument is only claiming that the one Christian God is more plausible than Materialism. Given there are claimed to be many gods unless all religions claim that "love is quality of God" you can't make the leap from evidence of just one God to Theism i.e. god or gods in general. Quite simply we have what can only be considered as a sexed up "advertising" claim about one 'x' and yet people want to apply this to all examples of 'x'. Nope, I feel that unless you can cite that all religions and all gods have this attribute it is too much to then make a claim for "theism". At best it simply reinforces the "evidence of a Christian God". It's like me saying that a specific 4x4 vehicle has the characteristics that make it the best way of getting from a->b and then saying that thus "trucks" are better for this task. That's not precise enough if I only cite the characteristics of one truck. All I'm after are references for the other religions but all we have is "There are many references to the love as a key quality of God in the Hebrew Bible, but the statement "God is Love" only occurs in the New Testament" and yet "Theism is the belief in the existence of one or more gods or deities." (cribbed from Theism). The Argument from love should not suddenly generalise a claim to love by then roping in other deities under the catchall of "Theism". Ttiotsw 20:26, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

Summary of criticism

No Original Research.

This page practically sums up the reasons why Wikipedians should not do the job of philosophers. Many things can go wrong when attempting to formalize an argument. Could we therefore rely on a formalization that is immediately attributable to a well-known proponent of the argument? --Merzul 21:46, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

I think it's best to be WP:BOLD here and just insert the formal form of this an related arguments, since this discussion is going in circles. I don't have any official sources, but in a cursory search some websites came up that seemed good enough and consistent enough between eachother (i.e. they have the same form of the argument) that we could just use those as the official form of 'argument from love/beauty/whatever.' That would get rid of the original research problem. Nbeale, please make sure you're using the common form of the argument in the future, rather than just using a form you personally came up with or that a small minority of authors (your favorites or whomever) happened to use. -Nathan J. Yoder 20:14, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

That would probably be a good idea, currently, the only section with some real philosophical substance is the popular culture section :) But seriously, what websites did you find? And another point is that, one doesn't necessarily have to put an argument into a formal logical form, it is perfectly fine to describe the argument as argued by Polkinghorne, Swinburne, or Wright, but I don't have these books; and NBeale seems to prefers his own formulation over theirs. --Merzul 20:29, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

Sorry, I should have phrased that differently. I didn't mean in the sense of formal logic, I simply meant in the most commonly used form in philosophy books. I was confused--I had found plenty of links on the argument from beauty, including commentary on that from Swinburne from a simple Google search. For the argument from love, I had to use google book search, but could only find books by other authors. Kreft's book has a Biblical one and Drummond mentions one by Augustine. Hebblethwaite's book mentions Swinburne, but Google book search isn't letting me see that one right now. I don't know which form is supposed to be the 'standard.' -Nathan J. Yoder 05:15, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

Now, it is at least valid...

After some quality original research of my own, I have reached clean and completely valid bayesian formulation. It is still a hopeless case of original research, but it is at least valid. For reference, I want to keep the result of my research here. Any feedback is welcome! I still believe we should replace it with something directly taken from a book. --Merzul 13:43, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

Hi Merzul. Been busy elsewhere and IRL. But I'm afraid your "quality OR" has mangled the argument hopelessly. Let's get back to the original form, but to avoid the confusion you may have fallen into clarify that (1) is a premise. This article closely parallels the Argument from beauty and Argument from morality and no-one but you seems to be getting steamed up about these. NBeale 12:34, 13 April 2007 (UTC)

What you call original form is your original research and it is begging the question. I'm 100% convinced of that, statements 2 and 3 are in your formulations material implications, meaning they set the likelihoods at zero. The first premise would only serve as a normalizing factor in the equation and how strongly one believes in it doesn't change the post-probability of either hypothesis. What is important is how likely something is given materialism. How can you not see that your formulation is question-begging? It is saying

1) Materialism is often seen as improbable.

2) To the extend that materialism is improbable, it is less probable than theism.

This is so horribly question-begging that I'm not allowing it on Wikipedia. End of story. --Merzul 17:52, 13 April 2007 (UTC)

Hi Merzul. I'm afraid you seem to be deeply confused about Bayesean arguments and question begging in general. Why not read eg the Beale Howson debate - Howson is a world expert on Bayesan arguments. Clearly, at the deductive level, the falsehood of materialism follows directly from "love exists in a way which transcends its physical manifestations" but that is not quite the premise. What it boils down to in the end is how compelling the reasons are for holding onto materialism compared to the compelling reasons for believing that love, beauty etc.. exist. Now in fact there are no good arguments for materialism, it's close to being self-refuting, certainly cannot be established scientfically, and it is not even clear what it means. But clearly subjectively some people find that there are compelling reasons for it - the issue then becomes balancing these compelling reasons against the compelling reasons for believing in the real existence of love. And that is what this argument is about. NBeale 20:10, 13 April 2007 (UTC)

I read the debate, and Howson recommended you to read his textbook... draw your own conclusion. I am, on the contrary, very clear on Bayesian arguments, the problem here is not with your idea, the problem is that the precise formulation is wrong. --Merzul 20:16, 13 April 2007 (UTC)

Please allow proponents of this argument to make it

I don't think that people who don't believe the argument should garble it. Please let proponents make it, and if you want to put in refed criticism then do so. NBeale 20:12, 13 April 2007 (UTC)

Please attribute the formalization to some serious proponent and I will sleep happily that wikipedia is not to blame for claiming that a clearly flawed argument is valid! I don't care if Swinburne or Plantinga make question-begging arguments, I also don't care if you want to publish question-begging arguments on your blog, but please do not place invalid arguments here. --Merzul 20:18, 13 April 2007 (UTC)

He is right NBeale (even if he is on a wikibreak......). This article is a horrible OR synthesis of ideas. Please give direct refs of whoever (believers or not) use this argument in the form it is presented here. Sophia 20:27, 13 April 2007 (UTC)

I'm especially right, when I'm on a wikibreak. :) --Merzul 20:30, 13 April 2007 (UTC)

And my grammar is especially good... --Merzul 20:30, 13 April 2007 (UTC)

Hi Sophia & Merzul. You are trying to impose completely different standards on this article from pretty much all the other articles on arguments for or against the existence of God. This is actually one of the better refed ones. As fas as I can see, in all cases where the argument is formalised (and sometimes it isn't at all) the formalistaion is abstracted from various other sources. I find it quite interesting that you are so keen to avoid the argument from love from being made - indeed because we have such a strong intuition that love is real and important it is a very major reason to get beyond the sterile nostrums of materialism to the "glorious liberty of the children of God". I've now spent nearly an hour carefully refing this to Wright and Tillich. Please apply consistent standards to this and the other arguments, almost all of which poorer sources. NBeale 07:38, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

The other arguments are most of them either equally problematic, and I will get to them, or as in the case of the ontological argument, so incredibly well-known, that their formalism is easily attributable to any text-book in philosophy. The reason I'm complaining here is because I take great pains in searching online and in libraries for similar formalizations before I complain, and your arguments are the only ones that do not appear in the literature. Second, I honestly believe your formulation is flawed and it will harm wikipedia to claim this is valid, while this is not the case for the other arguments. Third, if it is the case that you see an article that is synthesizing material to present an entirely novel analysis, then please do Wikipedia a favour and complain about those articles too. In short, if you do find an argument for or against the existence of God where the formalism they present has not appeared in the relevant literature, then please help Wikipedia be a "compendium of well-established knowledge" and point out the novel synthesis. Thank you. --Merzul 08:34, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

Not quite sure where this should go

Well actually I am as it's an opinion piece and therefore is pretty useless to explaining this nonsensical argument. Dump it here for others to review.

“ Love is the greatest of miracles. How could an evolved ape create the noble idea of self-giving love? Human love is the result of our being made to resemble God (Gen 1:26-27; James 3:9), who himself is love (1 Jn 4:8). If we are made in the image of King Kong rather than in the image of King God, where do the saints come from? ” — Peter Kreeft

Sophia 07:45, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

Yes, this is a good place for it. I had added it to the article, because I think it is more lucid than the current article :) Now that NBeale has added at least a prose section, which is quite okay, haven't looked at it in much depth. But this is no clearly no longer needed. --Merzul 08:38, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

I disliked the setting of it more than the words. It was out of context and looked like a something from a Sunday School pamphlet!!! And about that break????? Sophia 09:06, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

Yes, Peter Kreeft probably deserves some treatment in this article. This quotation he explicitly calls: "the argument from love" and has written a longer essay about it too. But anyway, about my break... uhm, it's going splendidly... :) --Merzul 09:18, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

Been watching where this goes and it isn't neutral. We have "Classical theism" claiming love is god without acknowledging what science knows of the sources of these kind of emotions. Classical Theism is simply words that humans have put on paper; the presence of these words still is not evidence for god. But materialism in the form of "science" knows of sets of cells that uniquely appear in hominids (humans and great apes) and more recently claimed in some whales and these allow us to process emotions and helping us interact socially. I propose that we add the text,

Spindle cells allow humans to experience love and emotions and encourage the development of social interaction. These spindle cells also appear in great apes and, more recently, have been discovered in some whales.

...but stuffed if I know where !. Ttiotsw 19:53, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

I've added it in. The Love_(scientific_views) which is what we're linked to before isn't precise enough for me. Let the theists argue people are misinterpreting the effects of these brain structures. These structures function independent of a specific culture; this would explain the idea that love conquers all and how people sometimes fall in love with the most illogical and incompatible of people. Ttiotsw 19:48, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

Feel free to remove/change the link. I think I had added that link. --Merzul 20:17, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

What does it all mean?

I have just paid one of my occasional visits to this page. I am clearly out of my depth (not having philosophy degrees, etc), and previous appeals to the authors of the article to make it make sense have apparently fallen on deaf ears! So I'll just make one comment, and then disappear again. I have just read the article (this version) again, and it strikes me that it's a load of nonsense. If ever there was a circular argument or a case of making your conclusion your premise (or whatever you philosophers call such things), then this is it. Logical nonsense. Meaningless. Proves nothing. And as for the notion of producing an encyclopedia article which enlightens and explains... I think you could more or less sum it up as The idea of love is a concept which christians have for a long time claimed as peculiar to their religion, with such meaningless statements as "god is love" used as the basis for a circular argument which starts with "god is love" and ends with "and therefore there is a god". Snalwibma 08:02, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

Hi Snalwibma, it is possible to make a logically valid argument. The idea is the following:

1. We observe that love appears to transcend its material manifestation. (Empirical observation from our experience.)
2. If materialism was true, then it would be highly unlikely that we would perceive love in this way.
3. If on the other hand, theism is true, since love is a central feature of God, it would make very much sense that we perceive love in this way.
4. Therefore, to the extent that we consider this experience of love unlikely under materialism and likely under theism, we have good reasons to increase the probability we assign theism (and decrease that of materialism).

However, in this logically valid formulation, it is too clear that the controversial premise is not whether love is perceived in some way or not (1), but whether under materialism this is likely or not (2). Unfortunately, NBeale prefers his own circular argument because it seems stronger... Well, of course, NBeale's formulation seems stronger, it is almost a tautology! Oh, and before anyone repeats the objection that probabilistic arguments can't beg the question, please recall Plantinga's objections to Dawkins's probabilistic argument!

Another option is to use a completely deductive argument:

1. We observe that love appears to transcend its material manifestation. (Empirical observation from our experience.)
2. If materialism was true, then we would not observe love in this way. (Premise)
3. Materialism is not true (From 1 and 2 by modus tollens).
4. If on the other hand, theism is true, where love is a central feature of God, we would perceive love in this way.
5. Theism is true. (From 1 and 4 by abductive reasoning).

Any of these formulations are sound and very clear, but they are also intellectually honest, and so expose some of the weaknesses of the argument, or in other words, they "mangle" the circular argument. --Merzul 19:15, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

The problem is still here...

The argument is still problematic... I'm not going to force my position anymore. Seems most people are happy with NBeale's formalization. So I will just state my analysis here. Look at the first premise:

(Premise/Observation) There are compelling reasons for considering love to exist in a way that transcends its physical manifestations.

The conclusion says "to the extent that premise (1) is accepted, this increases the plausibility of Theism by comparison with materialism (or reductionist physicalism)." But this simply doesn't follow from the given premises. It doesn't matter how strongly we accept that "there are compelling reasons". What does matter is to what extent we actually accept that "love exists in a way that that transcends its physical manifestations", so this formulation isn't valid!

We could reformulate it as:

1. (Premise/Observation) Love exists in a way that transcends its physical manifestations.
2. If materialism (or reductionist physicalism) is true, nothing exists in a way that transcends its physical manifestations.
3. If Classical Theism in general, and Christianity in particular is true, love is a quality of God and therefore exists in a way that transcends its physical manifestations.
4. Therefore, to the extent that premise (1) is accepted, this increases the plausibility of Theism by comparison with materialism (or reductionist physicalism).

However, now it should be clear that the formulation is question-begging. We could just as well say that "to the extent that we accept that materialism is false, we have reasons to prefer theism over materialism."

Now, I have given logically valid formulations above, which contain the premise that is really under dispute, namely whether under materialist assumptions it is unlikely that we would experience love in this way. I mean, does anyone here really think that the empirical observation is under dispute? Surely there is no doubt that "there are compelling reasons for considering love to exist in ways that transcends its physical manifestations" -- but that's not at all what the debate should be about.

By completely failing to address the really controversial premise, or doing an intellectually honest comparison of which theory makes our experience of love more intelligible, we are resorting to The Watchtower level of philosophical accuracy. I hope someone other than me will care enough about correctness to deal with this. I'm giving up, and so I'm going to unwatch this article. --Merzul 20:56, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

I think you'll find that most people don't have the time that NBeale does - don't take that as accepting this argument. As you rightly point out if you set up false preconditions then you can prove anything. I can prove 1=2 by doing this and most lay people won't spot the problem with my argument. Sophia 09:13, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

Faith can never conflict with reason I think sums where this argument will ultimately end up if we swap "heliocentric" with "love". I don't think any rewording will make a difference today. A casual reading of the article will confuse most people and a deeper reading should ring alarm bells. The basis of the argument is the unprovable claim that God is Love. A materialist counter-argument I feel should not lie in semantics but in the tangible; this is why the Spindle cells I feel are so important. It only needs 1 line to refute the whole argument however it is phrased as it fatally flaws the existence of this God. It bemuses me why some theists put so much faith in such complicated arguments against science when they should simply stay focused on the imaginary. Ttiotsw 08:42, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

I like the comparison with "heliocentric". These Spindle cells are just the beginning. In the next 10 years or so, cognitive science will make evolutionary theory look like the creationist's best friend. Nevertheless, some people worth taking very serious, such as Roger Scruton, make a big deal out of love. I would like to understand what their argument is, surely it is not something as flawed as this. --Merzul 20:50, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

Aggressive clean-up

Very nice debate up there, but I believe both were right; the argument is really just spelling out the definitions and drawing the obvious conclusion. You can call that question-begging if you want, but let's just ignore that debate. What I did was just remove the numbering. If someone can find such a logical formulation from a reliable source, we can put it back. For now, in order to remove the template graffiti, it makes much more sense to just focus the article on the main premise. It essentially makes or breaks the entire argument, so who cares about the precise logical formulation??

I also deleted some nuances that overly complicated the argument, e.g. classical theism vs. Christianity in particular. That might be restored, if what I did is simplifying things too much. Vesal (talk) 19:09, 14 September 2008 (UTC)

Bias

Christianity is mentioned several times in the article, Islam not once, nor Judaism, nor any non-Abrahamic theistic, deistic, or pandeistic viewpoint. And yet, this article is as valid in Islamic and Judaic circles as anywhere else, and fits in with many other theological schemes. Torquemama007 (talk) 15:49, 23 February 2010 (UTC)

Well please add material supported with references fromWP:RS that supports this (if such material exists). I don't know enough about these other theologies to know whether this has been an argument that has been made in them. AFAIK "god is love" is specifically from the Christian scriptures. NBeale (talk) 10:08, 28 February 2010 (UTC)

PS FWIW there are 697 references to Love in the Bible and 83 in the Koran- and of these 83 just 16 are about Allah loving (and 23 about "Allah does not love"). There are about 180k780k words in the Bible and 80k in the Koran, but that's still about 4x as much so the density is much the same per word NBeale (talk) 10:23, 28 February 2010 (UTC)

Can you parse that by OT/NT? The OT stuff would be equally applicable to Judaism, and in point of fact would, of necessity, establish an "older" God/love relationship. But even so, this page is on "love" being a "proof" of a God (which would have to be any God), so the real question is, when was the actual argument born of the existence of love proving the existence of God? And who has made especially that argument? Torquemama007 (talk) 14:27, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

Seem to be c276 in the NT so 421 in the OT. There are about 180k words in the NT and 600k in the OT so in fact the density is about 0.07% in the OT and 0.15% in the NT. However as noted most of the references to "love" in the Koran seem to be about God not loving. NBeale (talk) 15:02, 14 March 2010 (UTC)

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