Argument

The Oxytocin Argument

Intro

When a baby is born, one small molecule is doing a remarkable amount of work. Oxytocin helps the womb contract during labour. When the baby feeds, oxytocin squeezes the milk out to the baby. And when mother and baby lie skin to skin, oxytocin rises again, and mothers with higher levels tend to gaze, touch and coo at their babies more. One molecule, three jobs, all arriving at the exact moment a helpless newborn needs to be born, fed and loved.

Step back and the whole living world looks the same way. Life does not just exist; it reproduces. Every living thing we know came from a parent, and the very first cell already had to copy itself. Living things seem set up for generations.

The Oxytocin Argument does not claim a hormone proves God. It is honest that some of the popular "love hormone" claims are overblown. It says the strong, well-tested part of the science shows a timed system that unites birth, food and love, inside a world built around passing life on, and that this is far more expected if a loving Creator meant life to continue than if blind processes simply drifted into it.

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In full

The Oxytocin Argument is a teleological fit argument at two scales. At the organism scale, its explanandum is the integration and timing of the oxytocin system around birth: a single nonapeptide that drives uterine contraction in labour through a positive-feedback reflex, effects milk ejection in response to suckling, is released by the newborn's touch, and is correlated in human studies with maternal and paternal bonding behaviour, so that delivery, nourishment and attachment are coordinated at the one moment a helpless neonate requires all three. At the biosphere scale, the explanandum is that life is organised around reproduction from its origin: natural selection presupposes self-replication and therefore cannot account for its first appearance, and biology cannot describe organisms without goal-directed language (Pittendrigh's and Mayr's "teleonomy"). A deductive spine (P1 to P5) carries a likelihood conclusion: these data, together with the further fact that the human version of the mechanism is experienced as love, are more expected on theism, where a Creator who is love intends a world of generations, than on naturalism. The strongest rival is evolutionary co-option: oxytocin belongs to an ancient peptide family, with homologues reaching back at least 700 million years (Donaldson and Young, 2008), recruited step by step into new reproductive roles. The argument concedes that co-option is a serious account of the history of the parts, and answers that it does not explain the origin of replication on which all co-option depends, nor why the fitness-securing mechanism is felt as love. The behavioural evidence is calibrated: the physiology is robust, the human bonding correlations moderate, and the intranasal "trust" claims weak (Nave, Camerer and McCullough, 2015; Walum, Waldman and Young, 2016). The conclusion is confirmatory, not demonstrative, and adds to the Cumulative Case for Christian Theism.

Format note

This is a braided case, one of the house formats for Ris3n Arguments: a short valid spine whose premises are each held up by several kinds of reasoning, then weighed in a ledger and tested against the strongest objection. It braids five fields. Reproductive endocrinology supplies the physiology of labour and milk ejection. Developmental and social psychology supplies the human bonding studies, and the replication critiques that keep them honest. Behavioural neuroscience supplies the vole work that showed oxytocin can shape attachment at all. Origin-of-life biology and philosophy of biology supply the point that reproduction comes before selection and that biology speaks in terms of goals. Theology supplies the hypothesis under test: a God who blesses life to multiply and pictures His own care as a mother's.

The spine

Validity. P1 to P3 establish the data. P4 states that the data, taken together, are more expected on theism than on naturalism. By P5 the data confirm theism over naturalism. The form is a likelihood comparison closed by modus ponens on the likelihood principle, the same shape as The Lock and Key Argument.

Strength of the conclusion. Confirmatory, not a proof. The argument shows the evidence favours theism; how strongly depends on the qualitative ranges argued in the ledger.

P1, The integrated system

Inductive strand

1. Named for birth. Henry Dale showed in 1906 that posterior pituitary extract contracts the uterus (Journal of Physiology, 1906); the name oxytocin comes from Greek for "swift birth." Vincent du Vigneaud determined its structure and synthesized it, the first polypeptide hormone made in the laboratory, and received the 1955 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. Synthetic oxytocin is still used to induce and strengthen labour.
2. A built-in feedback loop in labour. In the Ferguson reflex, named for J. K. W. Ferguson (1941), pressure on the cervix signals the hypothalamus, the posterior pituitary releases oxytocin, the uterus contracts, the pressure rises, and the loop repeats until delivery, a textbook case of positive feedback. Anna-Riitta Fuchs and colleagues found that oxytocin pulse frequency and duration increase during spontaneous labour (American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology 165, 1991, 1515-1523).
3. Milk on cue. Suckling triggers oxytocin release, which contracts the cells around the milk ducts and ejects milk. In mice lacking the oxytocin gene, mothers still gave birth and made milk, but could not eject it, and the pups died without feeding unless the mothers were given oxytocin (Katsuhiko Nishimori, Larry J. Young and colleagues, PNAS 93, 1996, 11699-11704). The finding is honest both ways: the birth process has back-up systems, and the feeding step depends on oxytocin outright.
4. The newborn helps trigger it. In ten unmedicated births, Ann-Sofi Matthiesen, Kerstin Uvnäs-Moberg and colleagues found that the newborn's massage-like hand movements and sucking at the breast were followed by rises in the mother's oxytocin (Birth 28, 2001). The baby's first behaviours call out the hormone that feeds it.
5. Linked to bonding in mothers. Ruth Feldman, Aron Weller, Orna Zagoory-Sharon and Ari Levine measured plasma oxytocin in 62 women in the first trimester, third trimester and first month after birth. Levels in early pregnancy and after birth were associated with a defined set of maternal bonding behaviours (gaze, vocalization, positive affect, affectionate touch) and with attachment-related thoughts and checking on the infant ("Evidence for a Neuroendocrinological Foundation of Human Affiliation," Psychological Science 18, 2007, 965-970). The study is correlational, and the authors framed it that way.
6. And in fathers. Ilanit Gordon, Orna Zagoory-Sharon, James Leckman and Ruth Feldman followed 160 mothers and fathers of firstborns and found fathers' oxytocin levels did not differ from mothers'. Higher levels went with affectionate touch and gaze in mothers and with stimulating, exploratory play in fathers ("Oxytocin and the Development of Parenting in Humans," Biological Psychiatry 68, 2010, 377-382). Fathers neither give birth nor nurse, so something in parenthood itself engages the system.
7. Animal work shows oxytocin can shape attachment. Thomas Insel and Lawrence Shapiro found that the brain distribution of oxytocin receptors differs between monogamous prairie voles and promiscuous montane voles (PNAS 89, 1992, 5981-5985). J. R. Williams, Thomas Insel, C. R. Harbaugh and C. Sue Carter found that oxytocin given into the brain of female prairie voles produced a preference for the partner present, and a receptor blocker prevented it (Journal of Neuroendocrinology 6, 1994, 247-250). See Larry J. Young and Zuoxin Wang's review (Nature Neuroscience 7, 2004).

Abductive strand

Convergence

Physiology (Dale, Ferguson, Fuchs), mouse genetics (Nishimori and Young), neonatal research (Matthiesen and Uvnäs-Moberg), human developmental psychology (Feldman, Gordon) and vole neuroscience (Insel, Carter, Young, Wang) reach the descriptive claim from different methods. None of these researchers draws a theistic conclusion; the description does not depend on the argument.

Objections and rebuttals

1. "The mouse knockouts gave birth without oxytocin, so it is not running labour." Rebuttal. Granted, and the page says so. P1 claims oxytocin takes part in all three provisions and coordinates them, not that labour has one point of failure. A system with back-ups for delivery and a dedicated signal for feeding is more engineered, not less.
2. "Plasma oxytocin is a poor measure of brain oxytocin." Rebuttal. That is a real limit, raised by Nave and colleagues (2015), and it is why the ledger rates the human bonding rows as moderate. The labour and milk-ejection physiology does not rest on those measures.

P2, The felt side

Inductive strand

1. Bonding is felt, not only done. The behaviours Feldman and Gordon coded, gaze, touch, the "special song," are expressions of an attachment parents describe as love for this child in particular.
2. The phenomenology is not optional to the explanandum. A reflex could secure feeding. Humans also experience the care as worth giving, and judge neglect as a wrong, not a malfunction. See Argument from Love.
3. The codex's ruling on chemistry and love. The neuroscience shows what love runs on, not what love is (Love Is Just Chemicals Objection Defeater). This argument depends on that ruling: chemistry is the instrument love is played on, not the music.

Abductive strand

Convergence

Developmental psychology describes the bond, philosophy of mind presses that no physical description entails what it is like to love (see Consciousness Emerges from Neurons Objection Defeater), and moral experience treats parental love as a good, not a mere fact.

Objections and rebuttals

1. "The feeling is just how the mechanism looks from the inside." Rebuttal. That restates the data without explaining it. Why does a fitness mechanism have an inside at all? A thermostat regulates without loving the room.
2. "Plenty of parents bond without breastfeeding or skin-to-skin." Rebuttal. Yes, adoptive parents and fathers love deeply. That fits P2: the love is not reducible to one hormone pulse, which is the very point the defeater page makes.

P3, A world set up to reproduce

Inductive strand

1. Life comes only from life. Every living thing we observe has parents; see Biogenesis Argument.
2. Selection presupposes replication. Theodosius Dobzhansky, a founder of the modern synthesis, argued that natural selection requires self-replicating units, so there can be no natural selection before there is replication; he called prebiological selection a contradiction (discussion in Sidney W. Fox, ed., The Origins of Prebiological Systems and of Their Molecular Matrices, Academic Press, 1965). See Abiogenesis, Argument from Origin of Life and RNA World Failure Argument.
3. Biology speaks in goals. Colin Pittendrigh coined "teleonomy" (1958) so biologists could describe end-directed processes without invoking design; Ernst Mayr took up the term ("Cause and Effect in Biology," Science 134, 1961) and later restricted it to processes directed by a coded program. The vocabulary was invented because the phenomenon could not be described without it.
4. A hostile witness. Thomas Nagel, an atheist, argues in Mind and Cosmos (2012) that the materialist neo-Darwinian picture is unlikely to explain the origin of life, consciousness and value, and proposes a natural teleology instead of design. He grants the goal-directedness; he declines the designer. See Thomas Nagel.

Abductive strand

Convergence

Origin-of-life chemistry, population genetics (Dobzhansky), philosophy of biology (Pittendrigh, Mayr) and philosophy of mind (Nagel) reach the same descriptive point from different directions: replication is the precondition of the Darwinian process, and living things are goal-directed in structure.

Objections and rebuttals

1. "Reproduction is just what persists. Things that do not copy themselves vanish, so of course we see copiers." Rebuttal. True after copiers exist. The selection filter explains why copiers dominate once there are copiers; it cannot be the cause of the first copier, which is Dobzhansky's point.
2. "Teleonomy was coined to remove design from biology." Rebuttal. It was coined to describe goal-directedness without committing to its source. The argument uses only the description; the question of source is what P4 compares.

P4, The hypotheses

Inductive strand

1. Theism. God blesses living things to "multiply" (Genesis 1:22) and humans to "be fruitful, and multiply" (Genesis 1:28, repeated to Noah in Genesis 9:1); children are "a heritage of Jehovah" (Psalm 127:3); and God is love (1 John 4:8). A reproducing world in which the young are cared for with love is what this hypothesis predicts.
2. Naturalism. Replication arose by unguided chemistry; oxytocin is one member of an ancient peptide family whose roles were extended over time; the feeling of love is either a by-product or identical with the mechanism. See Naturalism.

Abductive strand

Naturalism's best answer is co-option, treated at full strength in the defeater gate. Its weak points are the two places co-option cannot reach: the origin of the first replicator, and the existence of a felt, valued love riding on the mechanism.

Convergence

Design arguments from biological integration (Irreducible Complexity Argument, The Design of Human Milk, The Birth Transition) and from origins (Argument from Origin of Life) reach P4's comparison independently; this argument adds the hormonal timing and the felt side.

Objections and rebuttals

1. "God of the gaps." Rebuttal. The argument rests on what is known: the timing, the integration, the felt love, and the logical point that selection needs replication. See God of the Gaps Objection Defeater.
2. "Theism predicts anything." Rebuttal. Not so. A God who is love and blesses generations predicts reproduction and loving care; it does not predict a sterile cosmos or young abandoned at birth as the norm.

P5, The likelihood principle

Inductive strand

The comparative use of evidence is standard in science and probability theory: evidence favours the hypothesis on which it is more expected.

Abductive strand

Its rival, that evidence confirms nothing without known priors, would also undercut ordinary scientific confirmation.

Convergence

Bayesian and likelihoodist schools agree on this comparative use, whatever they think about priors.

Objections and rebuttals

1. "Theism's prior is too low." Rebuttal. The ledger is prior-agnostic and the conclusion comparative. Priors are argued elsewhere in the Cumulative Case for Christian Theism.

The knot

The strands come from different methods and people: early twentieth-century physiology (Dale, Ferguson), clinical endocrinology (Fuchs), mouse genetics (Nishimori and Young), neonatal observation (Matthiesen and Uvnäs-Moberg), human developmental psychology (Feldman, Gordon), vole neuroscience (Insel, Williams, Carter, Young, Wang), population genetics (Dobzhansky) and philosophy (Mayr, Nagel). Three overlaps are counted once:

• Feldman 2007 and Gordon 2010 come from one research group using similar plasma measures, so they are one family of evidence, and both share the measurement concern Nave and colleagues raise.
• The vole studies and the human bonding studies support the same claim (oxytocin can shape attachment) and are one row.
• The felt-love row overlaps with Argument from Love and the Love Is Just Chemicals Objection Defeater; it is counted here only for the specific link between the mechanism and the feeling.

The central datum is the conjunction: an integrated birth-feeding-bonding signal, felt as love, inside a biosphere whose first living thing already had to reproduce.

The ledger

Prior-agnostic: the ledger asks only how expected each datum is under each hypothesis. The ratings are judgments argued above, not measurements.

Net. No row is decisive, and two are disputed. The physiological rows favour theism modestly, the behavioural rows only slightly, and the intranasal trust literature is set aside entirely. The weight sits on the origin of replication and the felt side of care, the two places co-option does not reach. Together they favour theism, at the strength the ranges allow and no more.

The defeater gate

The co-option objection. The strongest objection is that nothing here was planned. Oxytocin and vasopressin belong to an ancient peptide family whose homologues existed at least 700 million years ago and occur in hydra, worms, insects and vertebrates; the peptides are highly conserved, while variation in the regulation of their receptors underlies variation in social behaviour (Zoe R. Donaldson and Larry J. Young, "Oxytocin, Vasopressin, and the Neurogenetics of Sociality," Science 322, 2008, 900-904). In the nematode C. elegans an oxytocin-vasopressin-like peptide, nematocin, organizes male mating behaviour (Jennifer L. Garrison and colleagues, Science 338, 2012, 540-543). On this view an old reproductive signal was recruited, step by step, into labour, lactation and bonding, and reproduction dominates the biosphere simply because whatever reproduces persists.

The reply grants what co-option explains, then shows what it does not.

1. Co-option explains the history, and the argument concedes it. That an ancient peptide was extended into new roles is a serious, evidence-backed account of how the parts got where they are. The argument does not need oxytocin to be new.
2. Co-option presupposes replication. Every recruitment step requires reproducing organisms on which selection can act. It cannot explain the first replicator, which is P3 and is not answered by the history of a hormone (Dobzhansky, 1965; see Argument from Origin of Life).
3. A conserved reproductive signal is itself a datum. That one molecular family has served reproduction from worms to mothers for hundreds of millions of years is what the hypothesis of a Creator who blesses life to multiply would lead one to expect. The conservation is not a defeater; it is part of the pattern.
4. Co-option explains function, not feeling. Selection rewards behaviour that keeps infants alive. It does not require, and does not explain, that the behaviour be felt as love and judged good. Here the argument stands with the Love Is Just Chemicals Objection Defeater: chemistry is the instrument love is played on, not what love is. An account of the instrument's history is not an account of the music.
5. Design inferences survive a history. A stepwise story for one system does not show that design arguments are dead; the integration and origin questions remain where the Irreducible Complexity Argument and Intelligent Design press them, and Theistic Evolution shows that God working through history is no defeater of design.

What the gate costs the argument: the physiological rows cannot carry it alone, because co-option predicts them reasonably well. That is why the ledger weights them modestly and rests the case on replication and the felt side.

Concessions

• Grant: oxytocin is ancient and was recruited into new roles over time. Now collect: then the recruiting process depends on reproduction already existing, and its origin is the question naturalism has not answered.
• Grant: the "love hormone" and "trust molecule" headlines were overblown; Kosfeld and colleagues' intranasal trust finding (Nature 435, 2005) has not held up well (Nave, Camerer and McCullough, 2015), and intranasal studies are often underpowered (Walum, Waldman and Young, 2016). Now collect: the argument never needed them. Labour, milk ejection and the timing around birth are textbook physiology.
• Grant: love has a full chemical basis. Now collect: as the codex's defeater page argues, depending on chemistry is not being nothing but chemistry, and the felt, valued side of a parent's love is still unexplained by the mechanism.
• Grant: a mother's oxytocin level does not measure how much she loves her child. Now collect: agreed; adoptive parents love fully. The argument is about the provision built into birth, not a ranking of parents.

Cheatsheet

The 30-second version (read aloud). When a baby is born, one hormone helps the womb push, lets the milk flow when the baby feeds, and rises when mother and baby touch, and mothers and fathers with more of it tend to bond more. Birth, food and love, timed for the moment a helpless child needs all three. Zoom out and all of life is built to pass itself on, and the very first cell had to copy itself before evolution could even start. Evolution can tell a story about how an old hormone picked up new jobs. It cannot explain the first copier, and it cannot explain why the whole system is felt as love. A loving Creator who wants generations explains both.

Fast facts:

1. Dale (1906): pituitary extract contracts the uterus; oxytocin means "swift birth."
2. Ferguson reflex: cervical pressure triggers oxytocin, which drives contractions, a positive-feedback loop.
3. Nishimori and Young (PNAS, 1996): mice without oxytocin gave birth but could not deliver milk to their pups.
4. Feldman and colleagues (Psychological Science, 2007): maternal oxytocin in pregnancy and after birth was associated with bonding behaviours.
5. Gordon and colleagues (Biological Psychiatry, 2010): fathers' oxytocin levels matched mothers'.
6. Nave, Camerer and McCullough (2015): the intranasal "trust" claims are not robust.
7. Dobzhansky (1965): natural selection needs self-replication, so it cannot explain its origin.

The closing line. Evolution can tell you how the instrument was built from older parts. It cannot tell you who wanted the song sung over every newborn.

Cross-examination

Round 1, Is the physiology real?

• Q: Do you agree that oxytocin is involved in labour, milk ejection and early bonding?
• If they say yes: then we agree on the system. Now the timing.
• If they say "the love hormone stuff is hype": agree, and point out the argument does not use the hype.

Round 2, Where did reproduction come from?

• Q: Can natural selection act before anything reproduces?
• If they say no: then selection cannot explain the first replicator. What does?
• If they say "we're working on it": then the origin of the process you are relying on is an open question, not an answer.

Round 3, Why does it feel like love?

• Q: Would a mother who fed and protected her child with no feeling at all be just as fit?
• If they say yes: then the feeling is not required by selection. Why is it there?
• If they say the feeling is the mechanism: then your belief is also only mechanism; see the self-defeat argument on the defeater page.

Dodge table

Live-cite kit

Scripture (ASV):

• Genesis 1:28: And God blessed them: and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth (Genesis 1:28, ASV)
• Isaiah 49:15: Can a woman forget her sucking child, that she should not have compassion on the son of her womb? yea, these may forget, yet will not I forget thee (Isaiah 49:15, ASV)
• Psalm 22:9-10: But thou art he that took me out of the womb; Thou didst make me trust when I was upon my mother's breasts. I was cast upon thee from the womb; Thou art my God since my mother bare me (Psalm 22:9-10, ASV)
• Psalm 139:13: For thou didst form my inward parts: Thou didst cover me in my mother's womb (Psalm 139:13, ASV)
• Isaiah 66:13: As one whom his mother comforteth, so will I comfort you (Isaiah 66:13, ASV)
• 1 Thessalonians 2:7: But we were gentle in the midst of you, as when a nurse cherisheth her own children (1 Thessalonians 2:7, ASV)

Scholarly:

• Ruth Feldman, Aron Weller, Orna Zagoory-Sharon and Ari Levine, "Evidence for a Neuroendocrinological Foundation of Human Affiliation," Psychological Science 18 (2007): maternal oxytocin associated with bonding behaviour.
• Gideon Nave, Colin Camerer and Michael McCullough, "Does Oxytocin Increase Trust in Humans? A Critical Review of Research," Perspectives on Psychological Science 10 (2015): the trust literature is not robust.
• Zoe R. Donaldson and Larry J. Young, Science 322 (2008): the oxytocin and vasopressin family is at least 700 million years old.
• Theodosius Dobzhansky, in Fox, ed., The Origins of Prebiological Systems (1965): selection requires self-replication.

Aphorism: "One molecule to bring the child out, one to feed it, one to hold it close. Blind processes do not usually plan a welcome."

Connection to Scripture

• Genesis 1:22, Genesis 1:28 and Genesis 9:1, the blessing to multiply, given first to living creatures and then to humans: a world set up to reproduce by design.
• Psalm 22:9-10, trust learned at the mother's breast and traced to God: the bond at birth as God's own provision.
• Psalm 139:13-14, God forming the child in the womb, "fearfully and wonderfully made."
• Isaiah 49:15, the strongest human bond named, then surpassed by God's own remembering.
• Isaiah 66:13 and 1 Thessalonians 2:7, God's comfort and apostolic care pictured as a nursing mother's.
• Psalm 131:2 and Matthew 23:37, the stilled child with its mother and the hen gathering her chicks: the image Scripture reaches for when it describes trust and longing.
• Psalm 127:3, children as a heritage, not a by-product.

Scholarship

Published academic works this page draws on, each matched to a publisher, index or library catalog record.

• H. H. Dale, "On some physiological actions of ergot," The Journal of Physiology 34 (1906). doi:10.1113/jphysiol.1906.sp001148 PubMed 16992821 open access
• Zoe R. Donaldson and Larry J. Young, "Oxytocin, Vasopressin, and the Neurogenetics of Sociality," Science 322 (2008). doi:10.1126/science.1158668 PubMed 18988842
• Sidney W. Fox, The origins of prebiological systems and of their molecular matrices (Academic Press, 1965). Open Library
• T R Insel and L E Shapiro, "Oxytocin receptor distribution reflects social organization in monogamous and polygamous voles," Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 89 (1992). doi:10.1073/pnas.89.13.5981 PubMed 1321430 open access
• Ernst Mayr, "Cause and Effect in Biology: Kinds of causes, predictability, and teleology are viewed by a practicing biologist," Science 134 (1961). doi:10.1126/science.134.3489.1501 PubMed 14471768
• Thomas Nagel, Mind and Cosmos: Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature is Almost Certainly False (Oxford University Press, 2012). doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199919758.001.0001
• Gideon Nave, Colin Camerer and Michael McCullough, "Does Oxytocin Increase Trust in Humans? A Critical Review of Research," Perspectives on Psychological Science 10 (2015). doi:10.1177/1745691615600138 PubMed 26581735
• Anne Roe, Behavior and evolution (Yale University Press, 1958). Open Library
• Hasse Walum, Irwin D. Waldman and Larry J. Young, "Statistical and Methodological Considerations for the Interpretation of Intranasal Oxytocin Studies," Biological Psychiatry 79 (2016). doi:10.1016/j.biopsych.2015.06.016 PubMed 26210057 open access
• Larry J Young and Zuoxin Wang, "The neurobiology of pair bonding," Nature Neuroscience 7 (2004). doi:10.1038/nn1327 PubMed 15452576

See also

• Ris3n Arguments, the hub of ris3n's original arguments
• The Lock and Key Argument, the first braided case and the model for this spine
• Love Is Just Chemicals Objection Defeater, the ruling this argument depends on: chemistry is what love runs on, not what love is
• Argument from Love, the positive case from love to a tri-personal God
• The Design of Human Milk, the composition of the milk that oxytocin delivers
• The Birth Transition, the newborn's side of the same moment
• 50 Amazing Facts About the Human Body, the wider series on bodily design
• Argument from Origin of Life, Abiogenesis and RNA World Failure Argument, the origin of replication behind P3
• Biogenesis Argument, life only from life
• Irreducible Complexity Argument and Intelligent Design, integration arguments from biology
• Teleological Arguments and Fifth Way - Teleology, the family this argument belongs to, and Aquinas on things acting for ends
• Thomas Nagel, the atheist who grants biological teleology and declines the designer
• Theistic Evolution, why a history of co-option does not rule out a Creator
• Marriage and Faith-Based Parenting, the family the blessing to multiply is given to
• Atheist Upbringing Devalues the Child Argument, what "I love you" means to a child on naturalism
• Imago Dei, persons made to love as God loves
• Cumulative Case for Christian Theism, where this argument contributes