[John21]

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You can escape religion vhawk - and many would say, thank god for that. But you can't escape subjective experience.

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But who can escape the subjective aspect? I don't have much of a problem with people killing one another, but I do make a distinction between killing someone and murdering someone. To take it out of a strictly human confrontation and act, we don't think too much about killing a cow to get food, but that's something quite different than standing in a pasture and shooting a bunch of cows.

This all comes back to a question of intention. No one knows what God is. God is Love is an intention, or as Aquinas would say - a movement of the will - a choice.

Going on the premise that God is Love - God is and always will be a choice - for the simple reason that Love is an act of volition.

It's pretty easy to throw the word, "love," around, but we really don't stop and ask what that word really means. We can all cruise through a post quickly enough, but do we ever really slow down enough to dip into the philosophical aspect?


What is love? I have a hard time imagining it being something that is biologically, physically, or mechanically induced.

However I sort it out, there's an idea of, "endowment," associated with my conception of love. In other words it's something we choose to give, and more to the point, love is something we have the power to withhold.

I've yet to run across a proof for God's existence, but I've run across a few compelling arguments. So I'm basically left with the possibility of asserting the following premise and conclusion: If God exists, and if God is love; then how could a Being realize the reality of Love without the existence of a being that has the power to withhold love?

Refute the premises all you like, but no one with an ounce of integrity will say that they've been disproven, because they haven't. So with philosophical integrity called into question, and premise(s) that haven't been proven false, one question remains:

How could a Being (God) realize the reality of love without a being that has the capacity to withhold love?

Like I said, you could debate the premises all you like, but you're still left with the fundamental question of theology, and ultimately face the question of how love could exist without God. But you still have to start by answering one question:

How could a Being (God) realize the reality of love without a being that has the capacity to withhold love?