Good and bad things happen to good and bad people.  There is no reason, no pattern, no plan.  Whether something is good or bad is purely a personal perspective.  Take Portland summers.  Most people here love the summer - temps not often above 90, no or little rain for a couple of months.  All good, right?  I hate it - too warm - I want it to be fall already.  And I am super glad I don't live in the middle of the US right now.  All relative. 

Which is my theory for why religion is so persistent.  The universe is random with a completely random reward schedule.  When Skinner subjected his pigeons to a random reward schedule, they started exhibiting superstitious behaviors.  They would turn in circles, bob their heads, and do other funny stuff over and over until they got the food reward.  Which would just encourage the same superstitious behavior repetition until the next bit of food appeared randomly.  I think that is why people exhibit superstitious behaviors and beliefs.  The universe is totally random and so people repeat the same superstitious behavior over and over - praying, going to church, etc - hoping for that reward to drop.  Sometimes it drops, and sometimes it never drops.  And they console themselves that when they die, the reward will definitely happen -- even if it never happens while they are alive.

Pitiful.

And what do you think, might that reward be for the believer?
I'm just curious on what that reward is if it may
Or may not Drop by (according to your theory).

How does this verse fit your theory?

Revelation 22:11

Jesus said ,
Let him who does wrong continue to do wrong; let him who is vile continue to be vile; let him who does right continue to do right; and let him who is holy continue to be holy."

"Behold, I am coming soon! My reward is with me, and I will give to everyone according to what he has done.

Can a straight line be also crooked?
Can a person be good and also evil?
Do you believe in good?

A straight line can be curved.  See Euclidean geometry or polar calculus.

People are good and evil - sometimes all at once, sometimes at different times of their lives.  As I said in my post, good and evil can be and often are a matter of perspective.

Sure, I believe in good.  And I believe in evil.  But I do not believe in absolute good or absolute evil - I don't believe such a condition exists or can exist.

Do you consider Charles Manson and Ted Bundy
Good people?

Im sure what you mean is that a curve and a straight line are different to you because, a straight line goes straight and a curve line changes directions. Put this into mathematical language.

Your argument brings you back to
CS Lewis argument.

"My argument against God was that the universe seemed so cruel and unjust. But how had I got this idea of just and unjust? "

The only difference is that
He found the answer and you are still looking
For it.

Why is it that he found it and others
Have not?

Is it because people are not looking for answers?

Randomness has no sense of justice. Justice is subjective.

No line drawn on Earth is straight, it only appears so to the observer. A straight line drawn from the Earth to the sky will also not be straight. Higher mathematics can explain this for you. See Cj's comments. A simple to understand explanation for a line drawn on the Earth is the Earth has curvature hence your line is not straight. A line supposedly drawn to infinity from Earth is subject to perspective, gravitational forces, the bending of light waves and hence is per se not straight. And it gets worse when you enter time constraints. Your line can't be continuous as everything in the Universe is in motion. Your line cannot exist in time from here to the center of the Universe and be straight. If you perceive a straight line from the Earth to Mars, by the time you see the line at Mars it has moved, therefore it is crooked.

You missed that chapter on Zoology and biology did you?

Fish can do a whole lot more then feel wet. They can tell the salinity, temperature, and pressure of the water. They have a very highly developed sense of touch. Perhaps you should Google fish senses to correct your erroneous assertion.

Which is exactly what justice is, your own idea.

This is too simple as well. You and Lewis both miss the point. It comes down to developed creatures create their own meaning as well as justice, good and evil.

The Jesus character said no such thing. This chapter is based on John's LSD trip and interaction with an angel, not the Jesus.

1- Revelation is supposedly the writing of one St John the Divne, not the Jesus.

2 - Rev 22:8 (NIV) - I, John, am the one who heard and saw these things. And when I had heard and seen them, I fell down to worship at the feet of the angel who had been showing them to me.

in verse 9 NIV: "Do not do it! I am a fellow servant with you and with your brothers the prophets and of all who keep the words of this book. Worship God!"

or from the version you used - New Intl Std - "But he told me, "Don't do that! I am a fellow servant with you, your brothers the prophets, and those who keep the words in this book. Worship God!"

See above comments - yes, because you can't actually draw one except instanously. Higher math explains this.

These terms are subjective.

The Jesus was evil when he went to the Temple and caused insurrection, at least in the eyes of the Temple guards and the Roman soldiers guarding the place.

Julius II  (Giuliano della Rovere) aka Papa Terrible hacked people to death personally in his efforts to reclaim the papal states. Was this good?

He also hired Michelangelo to paint the Sistine Chapel. Was this good?

When the Church sanctioned Crusades to Jerusalem was this good or evil?

Clearly the Muslims saw it as evil, as did the villagers in Ma'arat al Numan who were eaten by the crusaders whether they were Christian, Jews or Muslims, all were boiled in pots or cooked on spits. Good or evil?

Do you consider Joan of Arc to be good or evil?

Yes, it's good when all the lights turn green for me. It's not so good for those forced to wait at red lights. Perspective once more.

You said you get your ideas Of just and unjust
By comparing others to yourself.

If you are unjust, what does that make the rest of us?
What do you consider yourself, just or unjust?

You compared Jesus to Osiris.
What percentage of the world's population do you
Think worship Osiris? Now compare that to the Christians?

Also, this argument is quite ridiculous. You're suggesting using god as a basis for what is just. Unfortunately, god has not told us what is indeed just, and what is not. The books some claim were written, or at least inspired, by him are never followed to the letter by any of his alleged followers, so by default, his word is not being obeyed. Of course, 100% adherence to any scripture I know of is also impossible, since the books are full of contradictions. That means that we are able to think about these things, and make decisions on them without any supernatural help. We have brains that can use logic and foresight to help us make the best decisions we can on questions of justice. We won't always get it right. However, the people most likely to think that they ARE always right, and that every issue is black and white, are the people who have god in their corner.

The existence of human morality does not prove the existence of a supernatural god existing outside of space time. It proves the existence of human morals which are not fixed by some universal constant but are the product of neurology and human culture. Were you fully moral at the age of 3, Jim? Why not? My argument against god is that he does not seem to exist except in the minds of humans. Any direct proof, any direct proof at all, please offer it up.

And this assertion that without god the universe has no meaning. What sort of an argument is that? What sort of meaning are you even talking about? The universe has plenty of meaning, even if that meaning doesn't include you personally being the reason for the universe existing in the first place.  

What you and C.S. seemed to have forgotten is the idea of morals probably come from the environments and influences of various people throughout your lives. The fact that the awareness of a cruel and unjust universe that is indifferent would hint to me a good argument that no designer or creator exists.

Besides, why make the automatic leap that it must be the christian god, even if I were to allow your argument any validity, which I will not.

C.S Luis? Who is next Flew? I love it when a "former atheist" yanks out these names as if we have never dealt with this crap before.

If theist thinks morals are handed down by a non material magic super brain, I would suggest they read Victor Stenger's "New Atheism", which covers all the world's major religions including Janism and Taoism and covers the universal motifs humans value and proves that labels did not invent morality, but morality is an evolutionary product.

"The answer to the ultimate question of life, the universe and everything is 42."

Harleysporter wrote:

C.S. and all other theists that assume that an Atheist would call the universe totally meaningless is an idiot.

But you yourself believe the universe does not have a
Meaning.

To my understanding, some atheist believe the
Universe has a meaning and some don't .
Correct me if I am wrong.

You would have to establish a clear question defining "meaning" and "universe" in snyonymous terms. No, I am not playing semantics here.

The universe is one giant mystery, the human mind and this planet are as well. We only know very little about it and have a long way to go ( just go to Science Daily news everyday).

I only feel awe and wonder when I think of all the infinite possibilities that may or may not exist within the universe.

Leaping to the "god" conclusion, especially the god of the bible, is selling yourself quite short. IMO.

The universe has meaning in as far as we can measure it, just like we define a hurricane or a volcano. But it did not occur for human benefit. Nor was it an invention of thinking being, THAT is a bunch of bullshit. It would be like claiming lightening was an invention of Thor.

The universe has a scientific meaning like a definition has a meaning because of our SCIENTIFIC observation. But once you stick a fucking bullshit magical invisible super hero into the gap, that IS totally meaningless.

Christianity, nor Islam nor Buddhism nor Hinduism, was ever needed for evolution to occur, and our planet and our species and our sun ARE completely meaningless in the scope of the entire history and future of such. Once our species goes extinct and our planet dies and our sun dies WHICH THEY WILL, the universe will continue on without us with no fucking record of us. In that context we are meaningless.

What humans do in regards to their gods and their politics as being center of reality, is as stupid as having a pet snowflake and then crying after the snowstorm that has produced billions of snowflakes, then cry when the snowstorm  ends and the snow melts.

Cycles of nature are not fucking magic or the product of a thinking being, not evolution and not the universe. They can have scientific understanding and scientific meaning, but there is no "specialness" to  of any of this.

Your stupid thought process is merely mundane human ego born from our evolutionary desire to spread our genes. Your desire to have a god, is just that, a mere anthropomorphic reflection of wanting a super parent to protect you, just like a baby cries for a nipple, except your "nipple" is merely your own fantasy, in an attempt to replace your protective parents and avoid your REAL finite existence which you know damned well you cant.

In other words, IT IS ALL IN YOUR HEAD and nothing more. Humans have always made up gods or fallen for the idea of a god someone sold them. But to claim you magically  are somehow outside of nature in regards to the same flawed logic that lead other people to believe in gods you don't believe in is fucking absurd. You are NOT special and are NOT doing anything differently than what lead the Ancient Egyptians to falsely believe the sun was a god.

An unnecessary part of my whole mailing address.

I attach meaning to my own life, but the Universe itself is simply where I live. 

I think you meant to say, ask ten different Christians about the
Universe and they will all say; God created it. Genesis 1:1. It is self
Explanatory . You won't get any arguments there .

Prove it.

If you want proof, you will have to work for it.

Read the bible.
Take a course in theology.
Go to Jerusalem and visit the historical
Sites and Museums .
Read this essay:

What Are We to Make of Jesus Christ?
From: "God in the Dock" — C. S. Lewis
 
“Now the story of Christ is simply a true myth: a myth working on us in the same way as the others, but with the tremendous difference that it really happened.”  — C. S. Lewis
 
‘What are we to make of Jesus Christ?’ This is a question, which has, in a sense, a frantically comic side. For the real question is not what are we to make of Christ, but what is He to make of us? The picture of a fly sitting deciding what it is going to make of an elephant has comic elements about it. But perhaps the questioner meant what are we to make of Him in the sense of ‘How are we to solve the historical problem set us by the recorded sayings and acts of this Man?’ This problem is to reconcile two things. On the one hand you have got the almost generally admitted depth and sanity of His moral teaching, which is not very seriously questioned, even by those who are opposed to Christianity. In fact, I find when I am arguing with very anti-God people that they rather make a point of saying, ‘I am entirely in favour of the moral teaching of Christianity’ — and there seems to be a general agreement that in the teaching of this Man and of His immediate followers, moral truth is exhibited at its purest and best. It is not sloppy idealism; it is full of wisdom and shrewdness. The whole thing is realistic, fresh to the highest degree, the product of a sane mind. That is one phenomenon.
 
The other phenomenon is the quite appalling nature of this Man’s theological remarks. You all know what I mean, and I want rather to stress the point that the appalling claim, which this Man seems to be making, is not merely made at one moment of His career. There is, of course, the one moment, which led to His execution. The moment at which the High Priest said to Him, ‘Who are you?’ ‘I am the Anointed, the Son of the uncreated God, and you shall see me appearing at the end of all history as the judge of the universe.’ But that claim, in fact, does not rest on this one dramatic moment. When you look into his conversation you will find this sort of claim running throughout the whole thing. For instance, He went about saying to people, ‘I forgive your sins’. Now it is quite natural for a man to forgive something you do to him. Thus if somebody cheats me out of five pounds it is quite possible and reasonable for me to say, ‘Well, I forgive him, we will say no more about it.’ What on earth would you say if somebody had done you out of five pounds and I said, ‘That is all right, I forgive him? Then there is a curious thing, which seems to slip out almost by accident. On one occasion this Man is sitting looking down on Jerusalem from the hill about it and suddenly in comes an extraordinary remark — ‘I keep on sending you prophets and wise men.’ Nobody comments on it. And yet, quite suddenly, almost incidentally, He is claiming to be the power that all through the centuries is sending wise men and leaders into the world. Here is another curious remark: in almost every religion there are unpleasant observances like fasting. This Man suddenly remarks one day, ‘No one need fast while I am here.’ Who is this man who remarks one day, ‘No one need fast while I am here.’ Who is this Man who remarks that His mere presence suspends all normal rules? Who is the person who can suddenly tell the School they can have a half-holiday? Sometimes the statements put forward the assumption that He, the Speaker, is completely without sin or fault. This is always the attitude. ‘You, to whom I am talking, are all sinners,’ and He never remotely suggests that this same reproach can be brought against Him. He says again, ‘I am the begotten of the One God, before Abraham was, I am,’  And remember what the words ‘I am’ were in Hebrew. They were the name of God, which must not be spoken by any human being, the name which it was death to utter.
 
Well, that is the other side. On the one side clear, definite moral teaching. On the other, claims which, if not true, are those of a megalomaniac, compared with whom Hitler was the most same and humble of men. There is no halfway house and there is no parallel in other religions. If you had gone to Buddha and asked him: ‘Are you the son of Brahma?’ he would have said, ‘My son, you are still in the vale of illusion.’ If you had gone to Socrates and asked, ‘Are you Zeus?’ he would have laughed at you. If you had gone to Mohammed and asked, ‘Are you Allah?’ he would first have rent his clothes and then cut your head off. If you had asked Confucius, ‘Are you Heaven?’ I think he would have probably replied, ‘Remarks which are not in accordance with nature are in bad taste.’ The idea of a great moral teacher saying what Christ said is out of the question. In my opinion, the only person who can say that sort of thing is either God or a complete lunatic suffering from that form of delusion, which undermines the whole mind of man. If you think you are a poached egg, when you are not looking for a piece of toast to suit you you may be sane, but if you think you are God, there is no chance for you. We may note in passing that He was never regarded as a mere moral teacher. He did not produce that effect on any of the people who actually met him. He produced mainly three effects — Hatred — Terror — Adoration. There was no trace of people expressing mild approval.
 
What are we to do about reconciling the two contradictory phenomena? One attempt consists in saying that the man did not really say these things; but that His followers exaggerated the story, and so the legend grew up that he had said them. This is difficult because His followers were all Jews; that is, they belonged to that Nation which of all others was most convinced that there was only one God — that there could not possibly be another. It is very odd that this horrible invention about a religious leader should grow up among the one people in the whole earth least likely to make such a mistake. On the contrary we get the impression that none of His immediate followers or even of the New Testament writers embraced the doctrine at all easily.
 
Another point is that on that view you would have to regard the accounts of the Man as being legends. Now, as a literary historian, I am perfectly convinced that whatever else the Gospels are they are not legends. I have read a great deal of legend and I am quite clear that they are not the same sort of thing. They are not artistic enough to be legends. From an imaginative point of view they are clumsy, they don’t work up to things properly. Most of the life of Jesus is totally unknown to us, as is the life of anyone else who lived at that time, and no people building up a legend would allow that to be so. Apart from bits of the Platonic dialogues, there is no conversation that I know of in ancient literature like the Fourth Gospel. There is nothing, even in modern literature, until about a hundred years ago when the realistic novel came into existence. In the story of the woman taken in adultery we are told Christ bent down and scribbled in the dust with His finger. Nothing comes of this. No one has ever based any doctrine on it. And the art of inventing little irrelevant details to make an imaginary scene more convincing is a purely modern art. Surely the only explanation of this passage is that the thing really happened? The author put it in simply because he had seen it.
 
Then we come to the strangest story of all, the story of the Resurrection. It is very necessary to get the story clear. I heard a man say, ‘The importance of the Resurrection is that is gives evidence of survival, evidence that the human personality survives death.’ On that view what happened to Christ would be what had always happened to all men, the difference being that in Christ’s case we were privileged to see it happening. This is certainly not what the earliest Christian writers thought. Something perfectly new in the history of the universe had happened. Christ had defeated death. The door, which had always been locked, had for the very first time been forced open. This is something quite distinct from mere ghost-survival. I don’t mean that they disbelieved in ghost-survival. I don’t mean that they disbelieved in ghost-survival. On the contrary, they believed in it so firmly that, on more than one occasion, Christ had had to assure them that He was not a ghost. The point is that while believing in survival they yet regarded the Resurrection as something totally different and new. The Resurrection narratives are not a picture of survival after death; they record how a totally new mode of being has arisen in the universe. Something new had appeared in the universe: as new as the first coming of organic life. This Man, after death, does not get divided into ‘ghost’ and ‘corpse’. A new mode of being has arisen. That is the story. What are we going to make of it?
 
The question is, I suppose, whether any hypothesis covers the facts so well as the Christian hypothesis. That hypothesis is that God has come down into the created universe, down to manhood — and come up again, pulling it up with Him. The alternative hypothesis is not legend, nor exaggeration, nor the apparitions of a ghost. It is either lunacy or lies. Unless one can take the second alternative (and I can’t) one turns to the Christian theory.
 
‘What are we to make of Christ?’ There is no question of what we can make of Him; it is entirely a question of what He intends to make of us. You must accept or reject the story.
 
The things he says are very different from what any other teacher has said. Others say, ‘This is the truth about the universe. This is the way you ought to go,’ but He says, ‘I am the Truth, and the Way, and the Life.’ He says, ‘No man can reach absolute reality, except through Me. Try to retain your own life and you will be inevitably ruined. Give yourself away and you will be saved.; He says, ‘If you are ashamed of Me, if, when you hear this call, you turn the other way, I also will look the other way when I come again as God without disguise. If anything whatever is keeping you from God and from me, whatever it is, throw it away. If it is your eye, pull it out. If it is your hand, cut it off. If you put yourself first you will be last. Come to Me everyone who is carrying a heavy load, I will set that right. Your sins, all of them, are wiped out, I can do that. I am Re-birth, I am Life. Eat ME, drink Me, I am your Food. And finally, do not be afraid, I have overcome the whole Universe.’ That is the issue.

Read the Bible:   Check!

Take a course in theology:  Waste of time and money.

Go to Jerusalem and visit the historical Sites and Museums:  Check!

Read this essay:  Waste of time.

You aren't offering proof.  You are asking me to exert effort into my own brainwashing.  I spent the first 25 years of my life brainwashed into not thinking for myself or demanding any kind of proof for ridiculous statements made about religion.

And you expect me to invest time and money into rebrainwashing myself?

No thank you, sir.

My parents are.  And they know there was no "monkey".