Hi

[Arik]

Oh, I get it.  I have from the beginning of your posts here.  You just don't want to see that emotions are based in the material world (since that is all there is).

Let science inform you:

Let’s Get Chemical
Lust is driven by the desire for sexual gratification. The evolutionary basis for this stems from our need to reproduce, a need shared among all living things. Through reproduction, organisms pass on their genes, and thus contribute to the perpetuation of their species.

The hypothalamus of the brain plays a big role in this, stimulating the production of the sex hormones testosterone and estrogen from the testes and ovaries (Figure 1). While these chemicals are often stereotyped as being “male” and “female,” respectively, both play a role in men and women. As it turns out, testosterone increases libido in just about everyone. The effects are less pronounced with estrogen, but some women report being more sexually motivated around the time they ovulate, when estrogen levels are highest.

Figure 1
Figure 1: A: The testes and ovaries secrete the sex hormones testosterone and estrogen, driving sexual desire. B and C: Dopamine, oxytocin, and vasopressin are all made in the hypothalamus, a region of the brain that controls many vital functions as well as emotion. D: Several of the regions of the brain that affect love. Lust and attraction shut off the prefrontal cortex of the brain, which includes rational behavior.
Love is its Own Reward
Meanwhile, attraction seems to be a distinct, though closely related, phenomenon. While we can certainly lust for someone we are attracted to, and vice versa, one can happen without the other. Attraction involves the brain pathways that control “reward” behavior (Figure 1), which partly explains why the first few weeks or months of a relationship can be so exhilarating and even all-consuming.

Dopamine, produced by the hypothalamus, is a particularly well-publicized player in the brain’s reward pathway â€" it’s released when we do things that feel good to us. In this case, these things include spending time with loved ones and having sex. High levels of dopamine and a related hormone, norepinephrine, are released during attraction. These chemicals make us giddy, energetic, and euphoric, even leading to decreased appetite and insomnia â€" which means you actually can be so “in love” that you can’t eat and can’t sleep. In fact, norepinephrine, also known as noradrenalin, may sound familiar because it plays a large role in the fight or flight response, which kicks into high gear when we’re stressed and keeps us alert. Brain scans of people in love have actually shown that the primary “reward” centers of the brain, including the and the caudate nucleus (Figure 1), fire like crazy when people are shown a photo of someone they are intensely attracted to, compared to when they are shown someone they feel neutral towards (like an old high school acquaintance).

Finally, attraction seems to lead to a reduction in serotonin, a hormone that’s known to be involved in appetite and mood. Interestingly, people who suffer from obsessive-compulsive disorder also have low levels of serotonin, leading scientists to speculate that this is what underlies the overpowering infatuation that characterizes the beginning stages of love.

The Friend Zone
Last but not least, attachment is the predominant factor in long-term relationships. While lust and attraction are pretty much exclusive to romantic entanglements, attachment mediates friendships, parent-infant bonding, social cordiality, and many other intimacies as well. The two primary hormones here appear to be oxytocin and vasopressin (Figure 1).

Oxytocin is often nicknamed “cuddle hormone” for this reason. Like dopamine, oxytocin is produced by the hypothalamus and released in large quantities during sex, breastfeeding, and childbirth. This may seem like a very strange assortment of activities â€" not all of which are necessarily enjoyable â€" but the common factor here is that all of these events are precursors to bonding. It also makes it pretty clear why having separate areas for attachment, lust, and attraction is important: we are attached to our immediate family, but those other emotions have no business there (and let’s just say people who have muddled this up don’t have the best track record).

We are on the road to further understand of our emotions using the scientific method to keep on gaining information.  We do not know all there is to know about emotions, but we know far far more than we did 100 years ago.  And far less than we will know in another 100 years.  We don't need belief or faith or wishful thinking, or calling upon fiction of any kind, to gain that info.  Just the scientific method.  You would do well if you studied that instead of ancient fictions you love to rely on.

There is something that you find quite hard to understand Mike.

Science is not what drive you or motivate you to understand more and more because science being something without life can not do.

What motivate you to go ahead is your consciousness which is something alive.
Consciousness push you while science does not.
I am sure that one important day in your life you will understand this important concept.

[Mike Cl]

One of the Atheists problem is that according to them things must be perceived by our senses to exist.

Many things incorrect in this statement.  First, atheists are not a formal (or informal) group.  Atheists agree on only one thing--that god/gods do not exist or there is no evidence that shows they exist.  There are no Atheists (with a capitol letter).  In a sense you are right that generally atheists don't think something exists until we can tell with our senses.  I cannot sense a dog whistle--does that mean it is not making a sound?  No, for I extend my senses with instruments that can hear for me.  So, dog whistles exist and I know that because of instruments that help us hear. 

Do atheists think things exist beyond what we, as humans, can sense with our unaided senses?  Of course.  Surely you don't suggest that scientific equipment used to enhance our senses are not real or accurate--are you?  Will most atheists accept that god exists but we can't tell that with our senses--even enhanced--??--I don't think so. 

[Arik]

I think you are really a 15th cent. monk that has somehow escaped to the current times.  You use the same language of a monk of that time period.  And you seem to refuse to even consider anything science has to say about emotions and how our brain works.  You put more weight on old painting of religious people with halos over their heads and treat that as a proof of what you want to believe.  Of course the saints are depicted as being special and have a special connection of their god.  That is part of the snake-oil salesmanship that religion is; keep giving the masses what they want and charge them dearly for it.  Holy pictures, words, works, rules, scripture, and heroes are all part of the scam that keeps the common people in their place with promises of happiness later on, so don't worry about it now and just suffer along with god's words and demands and you will be just wonderful; and all the while the religious hierarchy gets rich and powerful.

As for love and how we experience it can be explained in detail (no, not perfectly yet) by science.  And more and more is learned each and every year.  But one has to be willing to put in the time and study of such subjects to hope to understand any of it.  It takes work and not faith or belief.  If you would spend half the time researching biological science as I have in researching religions, you may very well change your opinion on such subjects.

Oh, well.....if you believe that physical science can understand what is not physical then you go back to the mistake to call a plumber when in reality you need a carpenter.

[Mike Cl]

There is something that you find quite hard to understand Mike.

Science is not what drive you or motivate you to understand more and more because science being something without life can not do.

What motivate you to go ahead is your consciousness which is something alive.
Consciousness push you while science does not.
I am sure that one important day in your life you will understand this important concept.

????:::))))  I have no idea what it is you are trying to say.  Taking an English class or two would really help you learn how to communicate in writing.

You have no clue what motivates me to do what I do.  I'm not sure you understand that for yourself.  Science (the scientific method--Science does not mean magic) drives me to learn more for science gives me reliable answers--your religion or spirituality gives me nothing; it is claptrap bullshit. 

[Mike Cl]

Oh, well.....if you believe that physical science can understand what is not physical then you go back to the mistake to call a plumber when in reality you need a carpenter.

You do have goggles on, eh?  Never listen to what another says, do you?  All science is physical science, since all that exists is physical.  Can one have a science of the supernatural?  I think you believe that that is so.  How do you test the supernatural, since there is no supernatural?  I actually did call a plumber to remodel my bathroom, for he was capable of doing the plumbing and the carpentry needed to get the job done.  You have STILL not given even a shred of evidence your fictional fanciful view of the universe is real.

[Blackleaf]

Ok. then let me discuss your point when you say.......................Even in the field of psychology, of course we can't directly observe the mind, so we infer about it based on behaviors...........................

The yoga that you knock down goes further than that.
Beside to see the outer physical expression is also able to strengthen the mind which is something that physical science can not do.

Oh, by the way did you know that at the CERN in Geneva there is a statue of Shiva the very first scientist according to many.

Claiming to go further and actually going further are two very different things. Find me one article published by a yoga expert in a peer reviewed scientific journal. You can't, because it isn't science. It makes claims that it can't back up, which is the exact opposite of science. And I don't give a damn about Shiva. Not only does she not exist, but science had a much different definition back then. The high standards scientists hold themselves to now were only recently aquired.

[Baruch]

Find me one peer reviewed journal that can prove the last Star Wars movie to be Woke or not.

Oh, and if experts are to be listened to and obeyed ... they why not the Pope?  Why not choose to be Catholic?

Ah ... only Marxists are experts perhaps?

[Baruch]

Oh, well.....if you believe that physical science can understand what is not physical then you go back to the mistake to call a plumber when in reality you need a carpenter.

There is only hardware.  Software doesn't exist.  To say so is to be a conspiracy theorist ;-)

[aitm]

spiritual love ...is gibberish intended to make humans think they are some special ordained creature for the universe. Nonsense.

There is no alternative aitm.
At the end everybody will get to that stage because the alternative is an animal life. so...then there IS an alternative....also gibberish.
The scope of life for an evolved human being is not to do what animals do.  THe "scope" of regular humans is not to do what animals do, however all humans behave more animal than "human"
That stage will have to be overcome and left behind because new high are waiting for us. gibberish, also...nonsense, wishful thinking, wave a candle around and sing kumbayah and spread some magic crystals around the room and feel the LOOOOVE.  Complete nonsense.

The simple fact that you are here in this forum is because your consciousness tell you to go ahead in your progress and learn more and more in a never ending drive to a goal that you yet can not perceive but nevertheless is there otherwise your consciousness wouldn't push you to go ahead.

Hoo-boy..you are one whack-a-doodle.

[aitm]

I picture young Arik here sitting in a sunny room full of colored glass on string swinging in the breeze created by a colorful ceiling fan painted with flowers on the blades. And of course you have to have some "dream catchers" hanging in front of all the windows and on the floor little piles of magic crystals and of course some guy playing really lousy wooden flute music on a 1987 cassette player, with the ever gentle waft of strawberry incense burning in a little clay pot with a peace symbol on it. He has given up on regular clothes and just wears a open frock.....and his mailbox has an arrow and flowers pointed to the house that say. "Find your consciousness inside"

[aitm]

Oh wait...do you have or want any kids named "moonbeam"?

[Hydra009]

The fact that consciousness can not be perceived by our physical senses doesn't mean that it doesn't exist.

Consciousness is in fact perceived, at least on a subjective level.  So you're lying about it being imperceptible in addition to lying in claiming that I say it doesn't exist.  Twofer.

The mind is there otherwise you could not do anything or exist at all.

Certain people are showing me otherwise, heh.

One of the Atheists problem is that according to them things must be perceived by our senses to exist.
This concept doesn't make any sense as it didn't make any sense in the past that according to most the planet earth was the center of the universe.

Argument by non-sequitur.

[Hydra009]

Oh, by the way did you know that at the CERN in Geneva there is a statue of Shiva the very first scientist according to many.

So what?  Also, who cares?

[Arik]

????:::))))  I have no idea what it is you are trying to say.  Taking an English class or two would really help you learn how to communicate in writing.

You have no clue what motivates me to do what I do.  I'm not sure you understand that for yourself.  Science (the scientific method--Science does not mean magic) drives me to learn more for science gives me reliable answers--your religion or spirituality gives me nothing; it is claptrap bullshit.

1) You got a book that explains science right in front of you but you will not touch it until your consciousness tell you to open in order to learn what is written so the motivation start from within.
This is a very simple thing that I try to explain you.
What motivate you motivate everybody else because at the end all the roads lead to the same place.
Different consciousness are the same reflection of the same cosmic consciousness.
The moon in the night reflect her imagine in a lake.
You can see a myriad of moons according to the position in which you are around the lake but the moon is only one.
Once this concept of separation vanish then people understand who this cosmic consciousness is.

2) Surely science can give reliable answer but again everything move and change in this finite universe so what is reliable today may not make any sense tomorrow that is why I do not bet all my money (so to speak) on something that comes and goes as too many people do.

[Arik]

So what?  Also, who cares?

It is obvious that you do not care.
The point that I try to make is that many important scientists working in such important center like the CERN understand what Shiva did to help human progress that is why they agree to have Shiva statue outside their center.