Can Evolution Explain Love? No!

Fact One: Love is not a feeling, but a choice.
- Evolution teaches that love is a chemically-induced feeling for another person. In other words, your body physically responds to a person by producing certain chemicals that draw you to them (i.e. “chemistry”). But this is actually not love, but attraction or sexual desire, which can potentially lead to love.
- True love involves choice, not a mere feeling which you cannot control (and comes and goes). Just look at the divorce rate… People all the time choose to stop loving another person after “falling in love” with them. That is because we have free will. If love is the by-product of an uncontrollable chemical reaction in our brain, then it becomes meaningless (e.g. husband’s love for his wife). But we all know better than that. It is self-evident that love requires choice. Evolution makes people into robots that are irresistibly programmed by their biological make-up. Yet a robot cannot really love because a robot does not have the will to love. Therefore, far from explaining it, evolution makes love impossible. Real love looks beyond one’s own feelings and makes a decision to unconditionally put another person first. Which brings me to my next point…
Fact Two: Love is selfless, not selfish.
- Evolution is all about “survival of the fittest.” Yet love goes against this selfish principle. After all, love has led many people to sacrifice their lives for others.
  - Evolutionists might argue that love evolved to help the survival of a person’s gene pool (relatives). But what about when love leads people to sacrifice themselves for strangers outside of their gene pool? Also, if evolution is true, why even sacrifice yourself for your family? It does not benefit your survival, so who cares? If there is no God, after all, shouldn’t I be concerned with making the most of my limited life? Evolutionists might say, “But nature planned things so that in the long run love will benefit your gene pool and humanity in general.” Yet how can nature, which is mindless, plan for the future? Ironically, evolutionists talk about nature like its God (Rom. 1:25).
  - Evolutionists sometimes say that love encourages love. So, if you love someone, they will benefit and want to love you I return, benefiting you. Thus, love is really selfish. But what about when people love someone to the extent that they sacrifice themselves without expecting anything in return?
  - In the end, evolution teaches that the weak die and the strong survive. If evolution was true, then love is weakness, because it is selfless and hinders the survival of the organism. As such, it would never have evolved in the first place.
- So, if evolution cannot explain love, where did it come from? If love is not a product of the natural world (physical), it must be supernatural (spiritual).
Fact Three: God is love!
- Love is unconditional because God’s love for us is unconditional. If love was only based on attraction, then we would be in big trouble, because God is holy and we are sinful (Is. 64:6). Thankfully, God’s love sees past our sin and that is why Jesus dies for us on the cross (Rom. 5:8).

Formal arguments for love being of God:

a. Evolution states that love is a chemically-induced feeling.
b. Feelings come and go apart from choice.
c. True love requires choice.
d. Thus, love is more than a feeling.
e. Therefore, evolution fails to fully explain love.
a. Love in its purest form is selfless.
b. Evolution is about survival.
c. Survival is about the self.
d. Thus, evolution is inherently selfish.
e. Therefore, evolution cannot explain love.
a. The natural world is space, time and matter.
b. Love is not contingent on space, time or matter.[1]
c. Thus, love transcends the natural world.
d. Therefore, love is supernatural.
e. Love is personal by definition.
f. Therefore, the source of love must be a supernatural Person.

[1] No matter where you go in the universe love will still be possible. No matter how much time passes love will still be possible. Lastly, love is not material (a chemical reaction). If it was, it would be no more than a subjective feeling (i.e. selfish) and choice would not be part of the equation (necessarily destroying the very foundation of love: freedom of choice).

Author: James Buddy Smith
Ark of Hope
Jasper, Georgia