I like you wfz.. i dont mean it in a weird way :P.

It's just nice to see a person-for once- who's open minded and willingly accepting either ends of this topic. I for one was agnostic for around a year, but i guess now im back to having faith. It took a while, and i read alot of topics to really help me out. And i agree on your question of what is God, or what does he represent. It's really complicated, but i for one just can't believe that the laws of physics, the big bang and etc just operated randomly. Anyways good read!

Here's my view of God. You may think it's funny, you may think I'm crazy but here I go.

Anything is possible. There's an answer to everything in life. However, we as humans are limited. Our knowledge will never expand beyond the realm of this material world. We selfishly want an answer to everything, yet we are too stubborn to admit that there are some things in life we will never understand. 

There was only one being/person/thing that maintained that knowledge and found the answers to everything in life/the universe ... we just happen to call him/her/it God.

Well not quite actually.  The Big Bang Theory doesn't state that everything came from nothing, we just like to simplify it that way because it's easier to understand. 

What I don't understand is that many people seem to have no problem accepting a God that either spontaneously came in to being, or one that has existed for all time, yet can't fathom that all matter in the universe was created spontaneously at a finite point in the past. 

One requires us to accept the 'spontaneous' creation of a bunch of simple elemental particles which have gradually acquired more complex arrangements over the intervening 13 billion years.  The other requires us to accept the spontaneous creation of a fully formed, omnipotent being who then set about fashioning the rest of the universe, or the continuous existance of said being throughout all time, a concept no less brain twisting to me than generation of matter from a singularity.

One we have some evidence for, the other we don't.

OT: I think Atheism is a belief that there is no such thing as a sentient, omnipotent being.  If we are going to define God as losely as the sum total of all physical laws or some similarly abstract concept, the bounds of Atheism would be very limited.

No you're absolutely true! Humans may think that thy may be able to find the answer someday, but truth is we really haven't been able to even find out the simplest of things yet. 

Its a hard question and loads of people will have different opinions.

I personally don't believe in a concious God anymore......but I do wonder where did the first spec of life, the first living organism, WHATEVER IT WAS come from? The hypothetical answer my biology book gave me just wasn't good enough for that question.

There must have been some catalyst that led to life being formed. Some books claim, "by chance" a bunch of minerals combined to form mitochondria which were the first type of living things, well again "a bunch" of mineral just randomly combining just isn't good enough as an answer.

But still I don't believe in God, and if there was a God he's left us now and long gone somewhere else.

While the arguments against the existance of a god or multiple is all based on logical and rational arguments. the point anyone could say about that is that god exists outside of logical understand, outside of time and our comprehension. this is also a logical argument, because it means that we can never prove or disprove this existance of a god.

however the argument i have with that is that if there a god, then god must have a source, even the Big Bang must have a source, which i think Hawking address in his new book with a multiple universe theory.

personally i think based on scientfic discoveries in the last half century, there is life on other planets. out of the billions of stars in our galaxy, and the hundreds of billions of stars in the universe there is a strong chance sentient life exists on other worlds. however we're simply too far away to those planets. and i highly doubt our convential religions, Christianity, Jewdasim etc exist on those worlds. but even though i dont think conventional relgions are true, it dosent deny the existance of a god on some level.

Well, one good, key point there, what definition of God are we using and what does it mean?

For example, it may interest you to know that if you read Richard Dawkin's The God Delusion, he makes clear he isn't against the idea of a creator per se (and indeed this cannot be disproven fully at this point, although recent material from Stephen Hawking might change his view there) but the idea of God as defined in our own religious texts - the Bible, etc.  He is also of the view that the key difference is whether by God you invoke supernatural and the afterlife or whether you mean a highly, highly evolved and capable entity.

For me, God relates specifically to our religions plus the idea of the supernatural.  My atheism is not a belief so much as an acknowledgement that the idea we were created by a God directly, that the Earth was created whole 10,000 years ago, that when we die we magically wake up in a nice garden, etc. are not only not supported by any evidence but are, in many different ways, disproved by the available evidence.

Now, does that mean I wouldn't consider the idea of creators, etc.?  No, I'm perfectly happy to consider that.

The analogy I'd give is the old Gary Larson cartoon with an old guy with a beard baking the World in his oven.  I don't believe in that old guy.  Replace him with an alien entity divorced from any supernatural trappings, and sure, we have no evidence one way or the other.

Certainly, SF writers have come up with many ingenous ideas for creators and supremely powerful beings that don't involve God or the supernatural, which are feasible and which currently couldn't be disproved.

For example, suppose I was to posit the idea that an alien race sent out tiny probes millions of years ago designed, as an experiment, to introduce simple chemical life to suitable worlds they came across, and that one happened to pass the Earth, judge it correct, land, ensure basic life began to evolve, then take off and head away, leaving the rest to history and the processes of chance and evolution?

The above is certainly feasible, doesn't involve a supernatural God and I doubt could be easily disproved at this point.

What would we think of aliens with such capabilities?  Gods?

It's important to consider the root and initial development of words.  Atheism and Agnostic, so far as I'm aware, are words that specifically came into being regarding our own definition of God and our own religions.  Clearly today they can be taken differently, and our views have changed much, but in principle I'd say Atheism means not believing in any Earth generated religion involving the supernatural and Agnostic is being unsure specifically with regard to those religions.  However, Atheism doesn't mean a disbelief in other potential creators or options.

Strictly speaking, atheism does not imply the belief that god does not exist. It can be as little as stating that the atheist refuses the (unsupported) belief that a deity exists.

Refusing to accept an untested hypothesis as true over the default ones (see the null hypothesis in scientific method) is as rational a position as that of the agnostic ( that on top of that may state that the whole issue is unknowable in principle). Actually, atheism and agnosticism are not mutually exclusive at all.

It is true that some atheists bring it to the level of making an all-out statement that god does not exist either via rational means (again, occam's razor and null hypothesis) in which case it's a temporary working theory, as all scientific ones. Or in some cases it becomes in turn a statement of (non rationally supported) belief, just like the theist believer's position. But the latter category by no means encompasses all atheists.

Wow kinda depressing coming from a quirky guy like you :P

Wow, I'm actually being convinced that atheism is a belief. Not completely in the same sense as religions but still something like that. Now I think I can try to convince my brother become agnostic rather than atheist.