I get so mad I sometimes. I really do hate G-d at times

This is infuriating. Neither of the Men in your scenario achieve love.

This is very basic, very logical. The evidence is very apparent. Let's approach this scientifically.

If people with attraction advantages (money, looks, social status, charm) are "more likely" to achieve love, then there will be more life-long, happily in love couples amongst those with attraction advantages than there are amongst others.

However, there are not.

I never advanced a spontaneous creation of love theory. What are you talking about?

Sometimes people fall into romantic love with people they have a business relationship with, or a friendship relationship with or an acquaintance relationship with. Sometimes they fall in love with someone they have a romantic relationship with. Sometimes they don't.

 

I'm starting to get bored myself. I didn't say that they're more likely to achieve love per se, they just have more opportunities, which they usually squander over frivolities.

From the time that our conversation began to deviate from the existence of "God", you've been asserting that attraction is irrelevant in the equation of love, as if love itself is enough.

Finally we agree on something.

 

You don't make any sense. This is what you said initially:

This is what happened:

1. I asserted that God is Love
   
2. You assert that people with attraction advantages have an unequal advantage at cultivating love, therefore God can't be love because God is supposed to be equal opportunity
   
3. I assert that people with attraction advantages do not have a higher success rate for long term love, therefor there is no evidence that attraction advantage equals love advantage
   
4. You assert that love is "not enough"

Wtf are you even talking about?

 

What I meant by "love is not enough" is that it's not some spontaneously occurring phenomenon. In my rigid opinion, I believe that there has to be some preliminary chemistry. I assert that attraction advantage equals love advantage because of the inseparable relationship between love and attraction. Only someone who believes in love-at-first-sight would suggest otherwise.

This is what you initially said.

And I respectfully disagreed.

 

No. Attraction advantage does not equal love advantage because attraction is fairly cheap. You can be attracted to 100s of people who you will never love. You can be attracted to 100s of people that you never even give a chance.

Just because someone is attracted to you, doesn't mean they will ever love you. Just because someone loves you, doesn't mean you will ever love them back. If you know they are with you for superficial reasons, you are actually less likely to love them. If you are interested in them for superficial reasons, you are also less likely to love them.

You can also grow to be attracted to someone you were not attracted to before for superficial reasons.

If a greater chance at attraction led to a better chance at love, then those who attracted more people would be more likely to have long term love relationships. They don't. That's all there is to it.

If Love had anything to do with money or social status or charisma or attractiveness, then those with more of that would also have more long term love.

 

So true.

That's true, but if you find someone repulsive, socially inept, or uncool, you'll be less likely to want to get to know this hypothetical person. You seem like the type who preaches lines like "Just be yourself", "It's what's on the inside that counts", "You'll find someone". Superficiality exists in all walks of life, even your precious religion. Christians aren't taught that they should do good because it's the right thing to do, they're taught that they should do it so that they can make it into Heaven and avoid the fiery pits of Hell. It's a threat and a reward rolled into one.

I asked a Christian guy "If God is so benevolent, why did he tell Joshua to slaughter all of the Amorite men, women, and children. Doesn't that go against the sixth commandment?", his response was simple: he's God.

True.

That's your opinion. I never said that longevity was included in the package. We can't have it all right? In just about every study that I've read on the bad boy phenomenon, the same results were produced: they have many relationships that end pretty quickly. I can't remember the guy's name who said something along the lines of "Men love a little many times; women love greatly a few times", but whoever he was/is, he obviously had a grasp on it.

PS: Love is a waste of time in my book. If everyone in the world stopped to pursue something so fragile as that, society would collapse.

 

That's incorrect, Christians are taught to respect and love others because it's the right thing to do. Some people clearly view it as reward or punishment driven, but they don't represent all Christians. Read the Bible and you'll find numerous examples of people who did things with no expectation of reward. Not everyone is in it for what they can get out of it.

 

They have to do what's right in God's eyes. In the Bible, they also had to commit acts of violence and murder to remain under his umbrella. If God was as directly present in the lives of modern Christians as he was in the lives of the Hebrews, I'm certain that many people would be kicked out of the club so to speak. What if he told you that he needed you to go and kill a man, his wife, and his baby? Would you do it without question?

 

I'm not telling you personally how to find love. That's not what this is about.

Superficiality does not exist in love.

That's not at all true. Many types of Christians don't even believe in Hell.

Well, that's one Christian's answer. Mine was different, I posted it pages ago.

True love lasts.

I do.

Yes. That's not love. Short term relationships are about infatuation and/or lust and/or attraction. Not love. As you yourself have said several times, that's something that builds over time.

Or possibly he had a grasp of something else, because he clearly had not found the love of his life.

Yes. Clearly the whole world doesn't pursue love, and hasn't for the entire history of the world.

 

[YOUTUBE]-he2DohfwWE[/YOUTUBE]

 

You're amusing. Clearly you don't have a good grasp of Christianity or you would know that there is no getting 'kicked out of the club'. We're human, we aren't going to be perfect, it's not possible. The best that we can hope for is to do our best as often as possible, and pray for forgiveness when we fall short. God forgives, as many times as you ask, as long as your request and remorse is genuine, He hears and forgives. You may find that concept ridiculous, that's your prerogative, just as it is my prerogative to believe in God and His forgiveness.

I'm not going to attempt to get into an in depth discussion of scripture with someone who I suspect either hasn't read it, or doesn't interpret it correctly. I will say that people in the Bible did as God directed because they knew with unfailing certainty that it was His will. Under those circumstances I would have done the same.

 

'Kay. Even if you were I'd most likely discard the advice.

You're quite right, I misspoke. Superficiality does exist in religion however.

How un-Christian.

Right...

Cute.

Good for you. Most aren't so fortunate. Meh.

Correct. They enter and withdraw, never letting their feelings mature into something more.

That's your opinion. I think he used "love" as a codeword for lust.

Actually, our concept of "love" is quite new. The troubadours transformed love and pretty much laid the foundations of what we call "love" today.

 

You're basically just agreeing with me now, so I take it you concede that Love has nothing at all to do with money or social status or charisma or attractiveness?

 

So, everyone is going to paradise? Nobody is taking a cruise on the lake of lava eh?

Just like he forgave Uzzah? OK.

Without reading and understanding Mesopotamian and Egyptian texts, which predate the plagiarized Bible by thousands of years, you'll be lost forever. But whatever...it's your choice and you're entitled to be as closed minded as you wish.

You say that you "WOULD have done the same", meaning that if God told you to commit ruthless and unjustified acts today, you wouldn't carry out his wishes?

 

No, not really. I still believe that charisma, attractiveness, social status, and money can open up the door, although charisma, attractiveness, etc. are things that cannot by themselves make someone love you.

 

I just thought of this, I think it boils it down well:

Let's say for the sake of analogy that Love == the color green.

To make green, you need yellow. But you also need blue.

Now, people with charisma, attractiveness, social status, and money have many more opportunities for yellow than other people. They may have more opportunities for yellow than they know what to do with.

But despite this, and sometimes because of it, they don't have Blue all that frequently. Maybe they lost the blue they had to start with, maybe they can't find blue anywhere else. Maybe they like yellow so much that they don't even want green. Maybe they forgot about blue.

But for whatever reason, despite all that yellow, they are no more likely to make green than people with fewer opportunities for yellow.

If you think you have enough blue, but you've got no yellow, it's easy to look at all the people with easy access to yellow and think that green favors them.

But if it did, they'd have more green.

They don't.

They only have more yellow.

 

Okay, I've refrained as long as possible for me. I find it interesting that you have been free to spout as much meaningless, unsubstantiated and literally misinterpreted shit as you like without me belittling you for your beliefs, and yet you are not able to extend the same courtesy to Chi and I. Hypocrite much?

It amuses me that people like to throw around their opinions and will try just about any and all means to persuade others to fall in line with their thinking, but the instant they see they aren't going to achieve that objective, the other party is suddenly labeled closed-minded, or illogical, or absurd.

For the record, I've studied major world religions because I personally don't see how I can hold my beliefs and share them with others if I don't understand and appreciate what other's believe. I am sufficiently intelligent to actually read and understand what I've read, and I maintain an open mind. Being open minded means I can listen to your beliefs, or lack of, and acknowledge that they are no less valid to you than mine are to me, yet I don't have to agree with them. So I believe the only person here who has demonstrated 'closed-mindedness' is you.

Regarding your first question, clearly everyone isn't going to Heaven, and nothing I said indicated that was the case. Obviously, some people don't believe in God, and others sin and don't repent. It's not an open invitation to anyone who wants in, but then you know that, or at least you should.

As for your final question. I believe in God, if He tells me to do anything, I'm going to do it. Furthermore, I'm not going to question why. That's what faith is, the unfailing knowledge that there is a God and not questioning what His plan is. I would suggest that people who question Christianity should try sitting through a church service though, because nothing you've said takes place at my church, and if you're going to cast dispersions on an entire group of people, you should at least know what you're talking about.

I think it's safe to say we can agree to disagree at this point. I will never change my thinking to your point of view on this, nor do I even remotely care to. You are entitled to your opinion, and so am I.

 

Dude you can't tell a woman that love is based on the superficial because they want to believe that there's a deeper meaning when in fact we are social creatures simply trying to ensure survival.

 

Don't you start on that bullshit too Andrae, I know you know better. You and I have had this discussion ad nauseam, and we always conclude the same way. Some, not all, women are superficial.

 

Espy I was with you on the first paragraph. I think people should be opened minded and take allowed to come to their own conclusions in terms of religion. However as someone who went to both Catholic elementry and high school and who attended Sunday school for ten years of my life I can honestly say most Christians aren't even Christians. My understanding of being a Christian is following the examples of Christ not indulging in the whims of a God who would be petty and insecure enough to require us to do things with out question.
My biggest question for Christians like yourself has allows been why would God require us to do anything. God is all he needs nothing from us. As far as heaven and hell is concerned I think God would allow every soul to enter into heaven if he is truly a loving and merciful God. Its very sadistic to require people to be a certain but allow accesss to be different so that you can punish them forever. Its like leaving two people in a room with nothing to eat or drink and telling them the last person alive can eat as long as you don't harm each other. And here's the twist they leave a loaded gun in the room. Stop testing us and just feed us or don't hold it against when we try to survive. It comes across as just a way to control people not spirituality.