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Love Doctor Helen Fisher, evolutionary psychologist, expert on romance who got divorced after 6 months

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If there were one person in the world who might have converted me to Darwinism, it would have been love doctor Helen Fisher, a professor of love, romance, anthropology and evolution at Rutgers university.

Her writings are an enchanting mix of real life romance stories sprinkled with the fictions of evolution. She has a truly brilliant and beautiful mind.

She became a love doctor after she was married at a young age, became disappointed, and then divorced after 6 months. She then made it her life long journey to understand the nature of love and find the formula for romantic love that will last forever. She went on to publish her findings in famous books like Why We Love: The Nature and Chemistry of Romantic Love

Dr. Barbara Smuts summarizes Dr. Fisher’s work in the pages of Scientific American:

A male baboon named Sherlock sat on a cliff, unable to take his eyes off his favorite female, Cybelle, as she foraged far below. Each time Cybelle approached another adult male, Sherlock froze with tension, only to relax again when she ignored a potential rival. Finally, Cybelle glanced up and met his gaze. Instantly Sherlock flattened his ears and narrowed his eyes in what baboon researchers call the come-hither face. It worked; seconds later Cybelle sat by her guy, grooming him with gusto. After observing many similar scenarios, I realized that baboons, like humans, develop intense attractions to particular members of the opposite sex. Baboon heterosexual partnerships bear an intriguing resemblance to ours, but they also differ in important ways. For instance, baboons can simultaneously be “in love” with more than one individual, a capacity that, according to anthropologist Helen Fisher, most humans lack. ADVERTISEMENT (article continues below) Fisher is well known for her three previous books (The Sex Contract, Anatomy of Love and The First Sex), which bring an evolutionary perspective to myriad aspects of sex, love, and sex differences. This book is the best, in my view, because it goes beyond observable behaviors to consider their underlying brain mechanisms. Most people think of romantic love as a feeling. Fisher, however, views it as a drive so powerful that it can override other drives, such as hunger and thirst, render the most dignified person a fool, or bring rapture to an unassuming wallflower. This original hypothesis is consistent with the neurochemistry of love. While emphasizing the complex and subtle interplay among multiple brain chemicals, Fisher argues convincingly that dopamine deserves center stage. This neurotransmitter drives animals to seek rewards, such as food and sex, and is also essential to the pleasure experienced when such drives are satisfied. Fisher thinks that dopamine’s action can explain both the highs of romantic passion (dopamine rising) and the lows of rejection (dopamine falling). Citing evidence from studies of humans and other animals, she also demonstrates marked parallels between the behaviors, feelings and chemicals that underlie romantic love and those associated with substance addiction. Like the alcoholic who feels compelled to drink, the impassioned lover cries that he will die without his beloved. Dying of a broken heart is, of course, not adaptive, and neither is forsaking family and fortune to pursue a sweetheart to the ends of the earth. Why then, Fisher asks, has evolution burdened humans with such seemingly irrational passions? Drawing on evidence from living primates, paleontology and diverse cultures, she argues that the evolution of large-brained, helpless hominid infants created a new imperative for mother and father to cooperate in child-rearing. Romantic love, she contests, drove ancestral women and men to come together long enough to conceive, whereas attachment, another complex of feelings with a different chemical basis, kept them together long enough to support a child until weaning (about four years). Evidence indicates that as attachment grows, passion recedes. Thus, the same feelings that bring parents together often force them apart, as one or both fall in love with someone new. In this scenario, broken hearts and self-defeating crimes of passion become the unfortunate by-products of a biological system that usually facilitates reproduction. Fisher’s theory of how human pair-bonding evolved is just one of several hypotheses under debate today, and she does not discuss these alternatives. Similarly, some of her ideas about love’s chemistry are quite speculative (which she fully acknowledges). No one familiar with the evidence, however, can disagree that romantic love is a human universal that requires an evolutionary explanation, and Fisher, more than any other scientist, has brought this important point to public awareness. Like the words of a talented lover, Fisher’s prose is charming and engaging. Love poems, both modern and classic, enliven her narrative, along with poignant examples of romantic passion from other times and cultures. One chapter is a litany to passion in other animals, a vivid reminder that we are not the only species that feels deeply. Another provides new insight into the obsessive attempts of abandoned lovers to rekindle romance. Toward the end of the book, Fisher helps to redeem the self-help genre, rooting her advice in hard science. She shows how you might “trick the brain” to maintain enduring passion or recover more quickly from the pain of rejection: “Someone is camping in your brain,” she reminds us, and “you must throw the scoundrel out.” Engaging in activities known to increase dopamine might help; after all, love is not our only source of intense pleasure. In hands as skilled and sensitive as Fisher’s, scientific analysis of love only adds to its magic. If you forgot to give your beloved a gift on Valentine’s Day, it’s not too late to woo him or her anew with this book, which is likely to fascinate and delight anyone who has ever been in love.

Barbara Smuts is a professor in the psychology department at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor. She is author of Sex and Friendship in Baboons (reprinted with a new preface, Harvard University Press, 1999). –This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

But the question that remained unanswered is why is there a chemical and genetic basis at all? For that matter, why should the genders of male and female even exist in the first place? Some will say that genders evolved so that species may survive. But that is wrong. See: How Darwinists confuse the Extravagant with the essential and Selection after something exists is not the same as selection before something exists.

But setting aside the question of evolution for the moment, let us see the architecture of romantic love as discovered by the love doctor herself, Helen Fisher.

From On Air:

The brain system I am studying is romantic love. I began by culling from the scientific literature those mental and physical traits that people regularly express when they are madly in love. I concluded Romantic love is a universal experience, deeply embedded in the human brain. Moreover, I developed my hypotheses about the brain chemistry of this passion…

and

Few people kill themselves when someone denies them sex; many have committed suicide after being rejected by a beloved.

and

animals feel primitive forms of romantic love. All mammals (and birds) have mating preferences. And as they court, they focus heir attention on specific individuals, follow them obsessively, express intense energy and pat, lick, stroke and caress in tender ways. All are caracteristics of romantic love…
‘animal attraction’ has been associated with dopamine in the brain — just like human romantic love. Attraction lasts only seconds in rats, about three days among elephants, and months in dogs; but animals do love….

Dr. Fisher fails to see that romantic love is costly from the standpoint of Darwinian selection. Genders should not have evolved in the first place, much less romance. Quoting Graham Bell from The masterpiece of Nature, the evolution of Genetics and Sexuality in Sex the queen problem for evolutionary biology

Sex is the queen of problems in evolutionary biology. Perhaps no other natural phenomenon has aroused so much interest; certainly none has sowed as much confusion. The insights of Darwin and Mendel, which have illuminated so many mysteries, have so far failed to shed more than a dim and wavering light on the central mystery of sexuality, emphasizing its obscurity by its very isolation.

It would seem the Intelligent Designer intended the existence of male and female to be the masterpiece of Nature. For all the love doctor’s knowledge about love and romance, she fails to notice one of the most important aspects about love and romance, it was the product of Intelligent Design.

NOTES

1. photo credits idigitalcitizen

2. The topic seem appropriate for Valentine’s Day.

3. Dr. Fisher talks about her divorce here: Interview. The figure of six months I got elsewhere from a source I have since lost, but I recall the experience of broken love had some influence in her chosen specialty of romance.

4. Evolutionary psychologists often think, “human psychology evolved from animals, so we study animals to understand human psychology.” But from a perspective where Humans are the privileged species living on a privileged planet in a privileged time, then we might consider thinking the reverse –animal psychology is better explained by understanding human psychology. Here is a forgotten article posted 9 years ago at UD by Bill Dembski:
Legitimizing a Thoughtful Form of Anthropomophism.

5. From www.HelenFisher.com

Helen Fisher, PhD Biological Anthropologist, is a Research Professor and member of the Center for Human Evolution Studies in the Department of Anthropology, Rutgers University and Chief Scientific Advisor to the Internet dating site, Chemistry.com, a division of Match.com. She has conducted extensive research and written five books on the evolution and future of human sex, love, marriage, gender differences in the brain and how your personality type shapes who you are and who you love.

Comments
I guess this Helen Fischer has never heard of soul mates before. I too once fell in love with a girl in high school but it was unlike any feeling I ever felt before . I could never fully describe the feeling in words until I saw the Ten Commandments movie with Charlton Heston and the queen of Egypt asked him how he could fall in love with a simple sheep herder girl, and and asked him what how he could compare his wife to her. When he told the queen he felt a feeling for that was a beauty beyond the senses, I recognized that feeling immediately. The girl in high school was a year younger then me and I always wondered if she believed in God and when I saw the online yearbook I saw a writing she left beside her name which had to do with her faith in Christ. It brought a smile to my heart knowing that one day when I see her in heaven she will know exactly how I feel :) Someone should tell this Helen Fischer that until she can see that human beings aren't automated robots who are but Chemicals, neurons and electricity that she. Will never understand the true nature of romantic love as a gift from heaven. What a shallow for any human being to look at love.wallstreeter43
February 15, 2014
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The way back to an Earthly paradise is prevented by God. It doesn't stop people for longing for it, dreaming of it and hoping for it. I have nothing against the bard who wrote such a beautiful declaration of love for his beloved, my heart goes out to him, but I have to admit, he was creative in the way he expressed his parting with his beloved -- he put a chainsaw through the bed he once shared with his beloved: John Denver My Dark Night of the Soul
He was Mr Nice Guy, but he took drugs, divorced two wives and once chain-sawed through the marital bed.
That chainsaw act made me laugh... The reason I like Helen Fisher's work is that it details how deeply embedded the Garden of Eden pattern is in our genes.scordova
February 15, 2014
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Here is a beautiful poetic declaration of love by a man to woman before they were divorced:
You fill up my senses like a night in the forest, like the mountains in springtime, like a walk in the rain, like a storm in the desert, like a sleepy blue ocean. You fill up my senses, come fill me again. Come let me love you, let me give my life to you, let me drown in your laughter, let me die in your arms, let me lay down beside you, let me always be with you. Come let me love you, come love me again. You fill up my senses like a night in the forest, like the mountains in springtime, like a walk in the rain, like a storm in the desert, like a sleepy blue ocean. You fill up my senses, come fill me again.
And this declaration set to music: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C21G2OkHEYo&feature=kpscordova
February 15, 2014
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I once fell madly in love with someone whom at first I did not know was married, but was starting a new life while separated from her husband. We did nothing we would regret, but it felt like my heart was ripped out nonetheless. She was 10 years older than I, and I was young and confused... Let us call her Helen (like Helen of Troy). She was sweet, soft-spoken, blonde, athletic, a concert level pianist, and a chemical engineer. We met in line at the Registrar's office through a mutual friend. She was returning to school to become a piano teacher after deciding she no longer wanted to wear Moonsuits cleaning up toxic wastes as a chemical engineer. When she told me of her prior life as a chemical engineer, I blurted out, "That's phenomenal, did you study physical chemistry?" The mutual friend, then said, "that's the best kind." We'd sneak into some class rooms in the music building of the university and serenade each other. She would play Beethoven and Bach for me, and I would play Liszt and Chopin for her. I even remember us walking together through the pathway in the forest and she was recounting some of her chemistry classes from years ago, and how mesmerizing it was to hear her say the word, "enthalpy". When she visited our family she would play her concert pieces for us and endeared herself to my mother. We would sometimes sing for each other, and her voice was like a nightingale. Her marriage and separation was something of a secret as she tried to begin a new life with new friends and social circles. But I eventually learned the story. She would start telling me a few details but after a few words the tears would start gushing out of her eyes. There were lighter moments, and maybe somewhere in my home I may still have pictures of us hanging out....I eventually moved on believing God had other things for me. I saw her years later, and strange as it may sound, the magic was completely gone. I still admire her, but the rapture of simply being in her presence had almost completely evaporated. This episode in my life raised other questions such as those epitomized by Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlett Letter where a young beautiful girl, Hester Prynne, got married to a fiendish old man, Roger Chillinworth, because of her poverty and his wealth. She travels to the United States before her husband arrives and while there she falls in love and has a child with Rev. Arthur Dimsdale. Amazing that probably lots of Christian girls will think the moral thing to do would be for Hester to dump Roger the fiend and run off with Rev. Dimsdale for a new life. When I first read the story, I had to confess I was rooting for Hester and the Reverend to run off together and live happily ever after. And there were fiends and villains married to members of my family. It was hard not to root for the separation. It was hard not to think, "surely a loving God wouldn't want a life of misery for someone with a lousy partner." There is an obscure passage in the Old Testament. In the Old Testament, if a man's brother dies, he is to marry his brother's widow. It was then possible to have more than one wife because of this requirement in OT law. And the Lord had certain instructions for the man how to treat his wives, but the instruction belies a certain truth about human nature:
15 "If a man has two wives, one loved and the other unloved, Deuteronomy 21:15
So even God understand the heart of man that will have the capacity to love one woman over another. Israel(Jacob) loved his wife Rachel and did not love his other wife Leah. Israel was so in love with Rachel that when he had to labor 7 years to be with her, the years seemed only like days because the outcome so overshadowed the sacrifice. And so the tale of Israel from who our Lord and Savior is descended, reads like a sordid soap opera. So I began to wonder how something that seems so right could be so wrong. Most parents I know would not want their children to remain in unhappy marriages, especially if the spouse is a louse. I came to conclude that the pattern of romantic love, and love for certain kinds of individuals, is deeply embedded in the human brain. Helen Fisher was correct to see it, and the brain scans show the emotions are an undeniable reality. But to treat the desire for romance like chemistry seems to denigrate the feeling, but ironically so to did describing romance as sinful, especially when such feelings seem more "right" than anything one has known all his life. So how could I reconcile what seemed so "right" with what was actually right? I then realized, it is like being impoverished for food, and then satisfying the hunger by theft. The food will nourish, the food will help heal, it will do all things food is intended to do, because in a sense, there is something deeply "right" in being fed with food. But it still doesn't justify the theft. So it is with forbidden love -- there is no question such love will meet a certain need at the root of one's existence, it will nourish someone's need, but like stolen food, it doesn't make it right.
Folly is an unruly woman; she is simple and knows nothing. 14 She sits at the door of her house, on a seat at the highest point of the city, 15 calling out to those who pass by, who go straight on their way, 16 “Let all who are simple come to my house!” To those who have no sense she says, 17 “Stolen water is sweet; food eaten in secret is delicious!” 18 But little do they know that the dead are there, that her guests are deep in the realm of the dead. Proverbs 9
I then was able to reconcile what seemed so "right" with what was really right when I accepted that we live in a fallen world where everything is tarnished and broken from the intended purpose. The Bible in the original language is more graphic than many of the polite English translations, such as the above passage from Ezekiel. Also consider the Garden of Eden, Adam was in paradise, he had the whole world to himself, and when he emerges out of a deep sleep, God presents to him a beautiful naked woman (Eve). It was love at first sight and marriage on the day they met. God instituted the pattern of romance in the Garden of Eden. And that pattern has been embedded in every cell of our body, and it expresses itself in the romantic stories and lives throughout history. But that first romance was shattered by the fall from grace, and thus every romance for the rest of history has been doomed, if not by betrayal or loss of interest, by death. So I've come to believe, the model of "happily ever after" that was designed in the Garden of Eden is still embedded in the human heart, and Dr. Fisher, like an archaeologist, has uncovered artifacts of the Garden of Eden pattern in our genes. Every romance novel is a re-expression of the designed pattern of romance that is written in every cell. The origin wasn't culture or upbringing or training, it was by design, but like polluted water that may have some nourishment, romance today is tarnished with many sorrows. One only needs to consider the divorce rates to see the unhappiness there. And what of the widows? Those are shattered romances through no fault of theirs. My heart goes out to them... Israel's romantic love for Rachel was an imperfect representation of God's love for His people. And so was Emperor Artaxeres love for Queen Esther. He was so in love with her, that this tyrant was willing to reform his ways and give half his Kingdom to her. So much is lost in the translation of the book of Esther, but the Emperor is actually declaring his love for Esther:
“What is your wish, Queen Esther? It shall be granted you. And what is your request? Even to the half of my empire, it shall be fulfilled.” .... “Behold, I have given Esther the house of Haman, and they have hanged him on the gallows, ... And the king said to Queen Esther, “In Susa the citadel the Jews have killed and destroyed 500 men and also the ten sons of Haman. What then have they done in the rest of the king's provinces! Now what is your wish? It shall be granted you. And what further is your request? It shall be fulfilled.” .... Now the rest of the Jews who were in the king's provinces also gathered to defend their lives, and got relief from their enemies and killed 75,000 of those who hated them
So the Emperor allowed the slaughter of more than 75,000 for the sake of his beloved Esther. Love will indeed drive someone to do things they would not otherwise do. The Emperor probably did the right thing to permit the Jews to defend themselves in such a civil war, but it was because of his love of Esther that he reformed his ways. Romance is an imperfect chemical representation of a higher spiritual reality. The romances in the Bible are imperfect pictures of the ultimate reality:
35 Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword? 36 As it is written: “For your sake we face death all day long; we are considered as sheep to be slaughtered.”[j] 37 No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. 38 For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons,[k] neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, 39 neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord. Romans 8
And that is the only love that will last for eternity. Earthly romance and the Garden of Eden pattern which Dr. Fisher discovered is a beautiful but imperfect picture of the one Love that will last forever.scordova
February 14, 2014
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Sal @ 3 Wow! You echoed many of my own usually private thoughts and intuitions. Though, I usually felt the first idea you mentioned was quite difficult to ever try to communicate - so I would very rarely skim around it. Anyway, it's cool that we've came to practically identical notions/concepts... i.e. in a way that the physical is a kind of shadow (my words, for lack of better words on my part) of spiritual truth and/or reality. And if you think about it, it seems that the spiritual reality is more real than the physical... As we read in scripture, God is a spirit. As mentioned, I've tried to describe the same thoughts. But you did an excellent job of articulating it and more elegantly. My more crude way was used when I'd try to suggest to people the nonmaterial reality, by asking them to write the word "love" down. And after acknowledging between us that it's ink and paper, then illustrate how the arrangement is not just information but a kind of shadow (symbol?) of an immaterial concept. This is a bit different still than your example, but in the ballpark, and I've also suspected the way our bodies are physically engineered is more deliberate than how we might write a word. Even the design of nature I suspect carries similar models...and our three r four dimensional lives may even act as a kind of ink on a scroll of space-time. Ok, I'm starting to sound too esoteric..but I think you get the gist. Similarly, our physical brains may be arranged in the form that models some spiritual meaning. Indeed, God made man in His image. :) Also agree with the man and wife model. To depict more spiritual from the physical model, just as Eve was taken from the side(rib) of man, Christ died on the cross, and bled from His side on the cross - being speared in the side. With this blood and water in a significant spiritual sense comes His bride - the church. Blood and water that poured from His side, indicates Christ died of a heart that ruptured/broke. my bold added... Genesis 2:22 And the rib, which the Lord God had taken from man, made he a woman, and brought her unto the man. 23 And Adam said, This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh: she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man. 24 Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh.JGuy
February 14, 2014
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Darwinists want to take all the joy out of love. They want us to believe it is simply the result of chemical reactions in our brain. Not original with me:
"Christianity says ‘God is love,’ ‘love one another’ and ‘love your enemies.’ Such love is self-sacrificing. Consequently, Christians have been at the forefront in helping the sick, looking after the orphaned and the aged, feeding the hungry, educating the poor, and opposing exploitation through such things as child labor and slavery. Atheism, with its evolutionary rationale, says ‘love’ is nothing more than self-interest in increasing the chances of our genes surviving in our offspring or our close relatives. In the ‘struggle for survival of the fittest,’ where is the basis for compassion?"
How inspiring!! Oh, I found the quote on line. It is from The Revised and Expanded Answers Book, Ham, Sarfati and Wieland, Ed. Don Batten Also:
Romantic love is the latest subject for evolutionary speculations. According to a recent review, love is nothing more than our ‘ancestors’, on the ‘plains of Africa 4 million years ago’ who are ‘whispering in our ears’. We have allegedly inherited the predisposition for such love behaviour as gazing deeply into another’s eyes because such strategies helped our ancestors to survive. When humans first began walking upright, say evolutionists, it made the whole person visible ‘for the first time’ and so each person had ‘a unique allure’. The ‘four-year itch’—the tendency for couples to divorce after the first flames die out—is blamed on the fact that primitive pairs stayed together ‘just long enough to rear one child through infancy’. The same article blames adultery on inheritance from our ‘primitive ancestors’. TIME, 15 February 1993.
http://creation.mobi/article/885 A famous person once wrote this about love:
If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing. Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends.
"By this we know love, that he laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers." I John 3:16
What do you think Darwinists? Is love just an illusion, the product of chemical reactions that take place in our brain that evolved to motivate us to procreate and further the species? OR Is human love real, an imperfect copy of God's love that is a product of free will and God's enabling power in our lives?tjguy
February 13, 2014
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My speculation is the chemistry of the brain that drives romance is like the paint that a painter uses to draw a picture. Human romance painted with chemicals in the brain is but a picture of deeper non-material reality. And for Christians like St. Valentine, that deeper non-material reality is God's relationship with redeemed humanity. All romances will eventually end in death except one, and that romance is described in the final book of the Bible. The beauty of human romance was left as a picture spiritual truths that will transpire in the future. This is all speculation, but sometimes its hard not to think that the biology is structured to reflect symbolism more so than survival. If biology is more about symbols than survival, then the question is, what does the symbol of romance represent? I offered my speculation. The Bible begins with a romance (Adam and Eve) and concludes with romance (Christ and the Bride of Christ). We sometimes think, God just used the most convenient metaphor (man and wife) to describe his relationship with his people, but I actually think (speculate), the reverse is true, God CREATED the metaphor of male and female to give us a picture of God's relationship with his people. God also expresses the notion of faithlessness with adultery. I do not think the emotions of jealousy are an accident either, they are by design as well.
... jealousy is fierce as the grave. Its flashes are flashes of fire, the very flame of the LORD. Song of Solomon 8:6
The original Hebrew is vulgar in the description of God's sense of betrayal [warning mature content from the Bible Ezekiel 16, NIV]
23 “‘Woe! Woe to you, declares the Sovereign Lord. In addition to all your other wickedness, 24 you built a mound for yourself and made a lofty shrine in every public square. 25 At every street corner you built your lofty shrines and degraded your beauty, spreading your legs with increasing promiscuity to anyone who passed by. 26 You engaged in prostitution with the Egyptians, your neighbors with large genitals, and aroused my anger with your increasing promiscuity. 27 So I stretched out my hand against you and reduced your territory; I gave you over to the greed of your enemies, the daughters of the Philistines, who were shocked by your lewd conduct. 28 You engaged in prostitution with the Assyrians too, because you were insatiable; and even after that, you still were not satisfied. 29 Then you increased your promiscuity to include Babylonia,[c] a land of merchants, but even with this you were not satisfied. 30 “‘I am filled with fury against you,[d] declares the Sovereign Lord, when you do all these things, acting like a brazen prostitute! 31 When you built your mounds at every street corner and made your lofty shrines in every public square, you were unlike a prostitute, because you scorned payment. 32 “‘You adulterous wife! You prefer strangers to your own husband! 33 All prostitutes receive gifts, but you give gifts to all your lovers, bribing them to come to you from everywhere for your illicit favors. 34 So in your prostitution you are the opposite of others; no one runs after you for your favors. You are the very opposite, for you give payment and none is given to you. 35 “‘Therefore, you prostitute, hear the word of the Lord! 36 This is what the Sovereign Lord says: Because you poured out your lust and exposed your naked body in your promiscuity with your lovers, and because of all your detestable idols, and because you gave them your children’s blood, 37 therefore I am going to gather all your lovers, with whom you found pleasure, those you loved as well as those you hated. I will gather them against you from all around and will strip you in front of them, and they will see you stark naked. 38 I will sentence you to the punishment of women who commit adultery and who shed blood; I will bring on you the blood vengeance of my wrath and jealous anger. 39 Then I will deliver you into the hands of your lovers, and they will tear down your mounds and destroy your lofty shrines. They will strip you of your clothes and take your fine jewelry and leave you stark naked. 40 They will bring a mob against you, who will stone you and hack you to pieces with their swords. 41 They will burn down your houses and inflict punishment on you in the sight of many women. I will put a stop to your prostitution, and you will no longer pay your lovers. 42 Then my wrath against you will subside and my jealous anger will turn away from you; I will be calm and no longer angry.
Human interest in "happily ever after" and romance is not an accident nor explainable by evolutionary mechanisms. Like the peacock's tail (which made Darwin sick since it was evidence against his theory), the extravagance of romance has no defensible evolutionary explanation. I think it is by design, and it was designed to symbolize a much higher non-material reality. And all earthly romances will fail (if not by betrayal or loss of interest, by death), but Christian theology says there will be one and only one romance that lasts for eternity. Now, it may seem when we see members of the church, we sometimes think, how can God love these? Remember, even the most desirable individual was created from lifeless dirt into something fantastic as Queen Esther or the daughters of Job. Somehow God will effect the transformation of his church into the Bride of Christ. Evolution doesn't explain the existence of romance, the origin of romance comes by design for reasons that are not completely clear, and I can only offer speculations as to what it all means.scordova
February 13, 2014
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Those who don't teach. Another reason why the wrong people get these jobs. there is no chemicals for romantic love. no brain things going on. The bible says marriage is to end lonliness forever in a original creation. The male and female are so matched in their opposite conclusions based on identity awareness that they fit hand in glove. The woman was made for the man and not the opposite. So she gives herself to him and wants his affirmation of her feminity. The man wants her to help him in his cause on earth. he loves her in return for help. They both love and are not alone anymore in a deep way. If it had worked. Things went wrong. Its all about identity and conclusions and status. Happy Valentines day.Robert Byers
February 13, 2014
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Those who don't teach. Another reason why the wrong people get these jobs. there is no chemicals for romantic love. no brain things going on. The bible says marriage is to end lonliness forever in a original creation. The male and female are so matched in their opposite conclusions based on identity awareness that they fit hand in glove. The woman was made for the man and not the opposite. So she gives herself to him and wants his affirmation of her feminity. The man wants her to help him in his cause on earth. he loves her in return for help. They both love and are not alone anymore in a deep way. If it had worked. Things went wrong. Its all about identity and conclusions and status. Happy Valentines day.Robert Byers
February 13, 2014
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