Obviously you will not love a stone if you dont think it is alive My point was that love isnt proof of that humans or life are special in the universe.

The opposite is true, that we know, even if subjectively so that our lives, our individual life, is not only special, but is the essential life in the universe; and love, as it is when true, is the willingness to share your life, and even put it on the line for another, and to see them as yourself, equal, or even more so at times...

there are an infinite number of degrees of love... you could love your parents even though they were neglectful or cruel simply because you were taught you are obligated to love your parents...

you could love pizza... you could love your pet... you could love the sunset... but nothing can PROVE this to another person if the person has doubt in what you say... you could eat pizza all week to prove this love and at the end of the week you might find you hate pizza... could you still technically say you ever truly loved pizza if you are capable of hating it? its a small complexity i still think of every now and then for fun... light heartedly

so what i meant is i believe in love... specifically a huge range of degrees of love... but i meant it cannot be proven to another being...

and im pretty sure emotion is chemical reactions in the brain right... theres a youtube video (that at some points has silly animations) but it still talks about the part of the brain that produces these peptides and how they are dispersed about the body so that you actually FEEL the emotion.

YouTube - 1The Human Emotions (IMPORTANT!!!) (1 of 6)
part 1 of 6 parts

I don't believe it is possible to love things like pizzas or gold... If we hold these things in high regard it is because we associate them with out well being... But Love is a form of relationship, and when we view nature we are associating it with our well being, perhaps our being itself, but perhaps with a larger form of relationship with a perceived being of all time and all existence... It is hard to escape the thought that what we view as beautiful must be beautiful because some being anticipated our need for that beauty.... We want that being...We want what that being represents to us, compassion, understanding, and companionship... If nature has thrown up life and humanity here and only here, as may be the case; then loneliness is our greatest challenge, and it means we will have to hold our own hands, and rock ourselves to sleep....

thats why i mentioned degrees of love... you could easily say you like pizza.. but people use the word love all so often... perhaps its overuse has diminishes its meaning to me...

but i disagree that love is only applicable when referring to a relationship

i think you could say we just dont have the extra words in our common vocabulary to correctly express the very different amounts of love felt...

if you think something is beautiful, anticipate having it, or seeing it again... like the sunset... couldnt you say you love it...

but regardless of the definition given and the appropriate use of the word... i only mentioned because i still maintain the level of what you feel for something cannot be PROVEN to someone who doubts you... that was my point... not that i dont believe in love, or dont acknowledge all its incarnations... just my opinion it cant ever be proven.

id love to continue to discuss this in a thread about love but i hope more people offer things that are believed but cannot be proven

Right now I would LOVE the person who walks through that door with a large pepperoni and salami with extra cheese, I guarantee it.

I do not know what you know then, rather, I know that I am a drop in the endless ocean, important only because its the only drop I have full acess to.

You are confusing what it is with how it is conceived... What your life is can only be grasped emotionally... People know how they feel, that instinct tells that their life is all...It is subjective, but true for all...Why do you want to live??? Even when we know rationally that the sacrifice of our individual lives for the greater good is sometimes essential; it is done with remorse and regret... We rationalize about morality because we see that it requires a denial of self... Yet in emotion and in philosophy, self is all we have... For primitives, all were raised with sacrifice of self as the highest virtue, and for that reason Jesus was so easily accepted...Before he was even known, he was already heroic...

The importance we give ourselves doesnt needs to have a relation to the influence we have to the universe as a whole: I know I am special, but I also know the universe thinks and acts otherwise.

Universe thinks and acts??? That might be a hard proposition to sell...Better put some sugar on it... It is in flux, but not as commonly conceived, Acting.

The universe as in "the stuff inside it"