MT39. 17 May 2005.
Copyright 2005 by Kevin Sharpe. All rights reserved.
Unaccepted submission for a conference presentation.
by
Kevin Sharpe
Graduate College, Union Institute and
University, Cincinnati, Ohio
Harris Manchester College, Oxford University, Oxford
kevin.sharpe@tui.edu
www.ksharpe.com
ABSTRACT.
Love lies at the heart of our lives. It forms the basis of many human relationships: we love our partners, children, parents, and close friends. We love the wider human circle. We even express love for places, literature, and music. Spiritual traditions the world over have added much to our understanding of this a most enduring human emotion.
Even so, scientific research shows a biological rootedness to love for humans as well as ani
How do these scientific findings relate to spiritual love? Do oxytocin and vasopressin drive Gods love and concern for us? Only with answers to the likes of these questions can commence the reconciliation of scientific and spiritual understandings of love.
PROPOSAL.
Love is an adaptive trait, both a willed and an involuntary phenomenon (often a combination of both), but it always involves the release of biochemicals. Yet, tradition says that parental, filial, altruistic love the behavior involved in the biochemical release originates in God. Is this a conflict? Further, if love derives largely from the involuntary release of biochemicals, is it reasonable to urge people to love each other?
In the summer of 1848, an explosion shot a steel rod through the brain of Phineas Gage. He recovered, physically. Before the accident he was even-tempered with a strong, ambitious, social, and positive character. Afterwards, despite emphatic admonitions, he was fitful and irreverent, obstinate, unable to stick at anything for long, and indifferent to other people. Did the steel rod remove his values from his brain?
Other mammals share this same physiology, including voles, small, brown, mouselike mammals which live under grasses. Members of one species, the prairie vole, share elaborate systems of burrows and feeding tunnels. Males and females form long-lasting bonds, raising their young together. Montane voles, however, occupy separate burrows and avoid each other except to mate which they do often and indiscriminately. Mother montane voles usually abandon their pups sixteen days after birth, and fathers never see their offspring. When a predator plucks a youngster from its nest, it neither calls for help nor surges with stress-related hormones. In comparison with their prairie cousins, montane voles lack family values and are exceptionally asocial. Why?
A female prairie vole copulates with a male repeatedly, more than fifty
times over 36-48 hours, as soon as she reaches sexual maturity. After such a
bout, she becomes socially exclusive, preferring her mate to unfamiliar males.
Mating instills long-term pair bonding. Copulation causes the release of oxytocin; is this the critical
factor in developing her social preferences? A female prairie vole rapidly
forms a preference for a male if exposed to oxytocin
for six hours, but when
What about in humans? While the study is still in its infancy, experiments suggest similar reactions to those in voles. According to Websters New World Dictionary, love is a deep and tender feeling of affection for or attachment or devotion to a person or persons;...a feeling of [unity and cooperation] and good will toward other people;...a strong, usually passionate, affection of one person for another, based in part on sexual attraction. Oxytocin fosters friendship, love, and nurturance. With vasopressin, it provides the chemistry of human attachment. Says Cort Pedersen, Human relations are influenced by the model of the parent-child relationship in that they include the notions of nurturing, care, help. These behaviors we call love. Despite obvious qualifications, love derives from the positive effects of oxytocin and vasopressin.
The dictionary also defines love as Gods tender regard and concern for [hu]mankind.
These questions challenge the traditional view of the nature of God and Gods relationship to us humans, and the traditional approach to morality. What is a spiritual understanding of love in the light of this new research? What role does God play in love? Whatever the answers, they should emphasize the relevance of scientific and theological ideas for each other.