Cause and effect Belly. Before the beginning was some sort of Cause. And causes create effects. Beyond this,what attributes we give to this conceptual figure are determined by culture,experience,ideals and dreams.

Universal concepts of all knowing,all loving and all powerful Gods are fine with me.

Maintaining that there is only one god,and trying to force this on others is pretty lousy tho'. This scarcity of gods makes people cling to the one theyve got too hard, and ultimately they will fight to protect that endangered god. Having lots of gods would fix this.

And Belly, God,religion and spirituality exist as ideas outside the material world. Any Materialist is by definition blind to spiritual experience, and could never get the sort of 'proofs' they might need before they could believe.

This scarcity of gods that makes people anxious about their God, and prepared to fight and die for their god, makes religion far too serious. We should all lighten up on the subject and go and play with our dogs.

Boaz
This is one thing in the NT which caught my eye and was put forward as fact in the bible but has yet to be proved http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massacre_of_the_Innocents that is the killing of all male children when Jesus was born by King Herod.
What I am saying is that how many people back in the early years of the church were capable of reading and writing and interpreting. How much of the text did they corrupt? I have lost count of the number of times “the holy sprit” influenced writing. The Holy Sprit would appear in the dreams of those chosen by god. Very convenient if you ask me, anybody can say they have been chosen by god and that the holy sprit is talking to them.

Philo
I am still looking for the meaning in my life, I am looking down all avenues and I may never find it. One thing I am sure of is that I was not put on this earth just so I could die and then go to heaven or hell. That concept makes the least amount of sense of all. People want there to be meaning in their lives and they use the god heaven hell scenario as that meaning. People turn to religion because they want hope when a loved one has died or they want to feel as though some one is “listening” to their prayers and thoughts.
The more I read about science the more amazing and complicated the universe appears to be. The more we learn about it the less in an overall prospective do we understand about it

From the link Boaz posted, the classical historian F.F. Bruce writes:

The New Testament was complete, or substantially complete, about AD 100, the majority of the writings being in existence twenty to forty years before this.

…To sum up, we may quote the verdict of the late Sir Frederic Kenyon, a scholar whose authority to make pronouncements on ancient MSS was second to none:

'The interval then between the data of original. composition and the earliest extant evidence become so small to be in fact negligible, and the last foundation for any doubt that the Scripture have come down to us substantially as they were written has now been removed. Both the authenticity and the general integrity of the books of the New Testament may be regarded as finally established.'

Belly, again from personal experience, my child (4) was run over by a 4WD in March. Ambulances were called, emergency crews were mobilized. While the very competent medical team demonstrated care and professionalism, it was news that most of the congregation had been contacted and were praying that provided the greatest comfort. Traumatic as it was, this was a life and death situation, not a broken arm.

As Christians, we need to allow God to work through his servants and not demand signs and miracles as evidence of His existence.

My prayer, as for others that day, was that God’s will be done, and that we could accept the outworking of His plan for us. I saw the accident, the evidence of my own eyes was that my little one could not possibly survive.

God answered. In the end, the medical crew had stabilized my child only to discover no brain damage, later, we found no broken bones, no serious injury. The neurologists and paediatricians called him a miracle.

Even the experts fell back on the spritual to describe my child’s recovery. It is good to acknowledge God’s existence when it is so demonstrably obvious. Take the rainbow you mentioned. Another visible sign of God’s loving and merciful hand over His creation, or the twofold infraction and dispersion of sunlight…

Attention david boaz
a philosopher may write:
Idealism can never survive on an evolving planet if the idealists in each generation permit themselves to be exterminated by the baser orders of humanity.
And here is the great test of idealism: Can an advanced society maintain that military preparedness which renders it secure from all attack by its war-loving neighbors without yielding to the temptation to employ this military strength in offensive operations against other peoples for purposes of selfish gain or national aggrandizement?

But maybe today's Father based person would add:

National survival demands preparedness, and religious idealism alone can prevent the prostitution of preparedness into aggression.

Only love, brotherhood, can prevent the strong from oppressing the weak.

Perhaps there are many mansions in a Fathers house for logic to be classed as wise:

http://www.urantia.org

20 years ago a group was returning from a Christian revival meeting, full of the holly spirit and happiness.
The road was heading for a T intersection and had been there for more than 40 years unchanged.
They sailed on blindly into another car, a T bone at the T intersection.
The letter they wrote to the editor of a country paper warned us the devil had been behind the wheel, but God had saved his children.
Luckily he saved the victim in the destroyed car too.
You can find such proofs of God ? every day.
Or be brave and confront the fact man has many Gods ,why is it we fail to understand half of the world is not Christian?
Do we say, are we saying only we are worthy of having the right God.
My God? it is man himself the inventor of all Gods spend just a minute looking at the stars tonight and tell me God made all that so we can spend eternity on our knees serving him.

Belly

You write 'it is man himself the inventor of all Gods spend just a minute looking at the stars tonight and tell me God made all that so we can spend eternity on our knees serving him.'

I think it was Bob Dylan who said you gotta serve somebody. In actual fact we all do either serve ourselves which if done exclusively leads to misery or we serve God by serving others which brings contentment. You are right that the God of the bible did create the stars and the sun and the moon. Our human minds are far to limited to fathom God's greatness. That is why we come up with pathetic alternatives such as evolution in order to explain our existence.