Regarding the ideas about God that have been talked about, I just wanted to add some thoughts. I think that it should follow that if our intelligence is not a "dead end", that it is evolving perhaps towards something greater, than our conception of God will probably not be (and probably should not be) the same as the ones we created over 2000 years ago. I think that all religions share one thing - a feeling that people have. It's some kind of emotional reaction to the world around us and depending upon how we perceive our world we will associate it with different ideas.
I propose that there is no God in the sense we have come to think of it. In fact, using the word God in this context sort of takes away from the new meaning since it is so different. As I mentioned above, I strongly believe that there is no hierarchy after death and that such a thing could only be conceived of and drilled into people at the top of a hierarchy here on Earth. I think that as our intelligence "expands" into the 21st century a lot of people conceive of God, in the sense of having the same feeling, to everything around them rather than a Creator or an all-watchful diety. Even a lot of people I know who attend church regularly have views on Christianity that, it seems to me, are not compatible with Christianity. Which is fine, I know that people need to celebrate the "feeling" with something and religion is widely available.
Of course, people like me could be wrong but so could everyone else. As someone who has been a staunch atheist since the 7th grade (I'm 27 now) it's only been recently that I have even allowed to place ANY importance on a lot of my emotions simply out of skepticism. I have come to believe that "Everything" is what our concept of God has traditionally been, minus the need for God to be anything but every single part of said Everything. In other words, minus the need to use the word God. A lot of religious people will point to natural events as evidence of God's existence; I would simply point to the events as the beauty and wonder of the world around us.
I personally don't think there is such a thing as absolute right or wrong. Collectively, most people can easily agree that say, murder and rape, are wrong. However, since I believe in no "higher authority" to tell me these things are wrong, it is simply a matter of opinion as to whether they are or not. The fact that it is only opinion should not undermine its importance. If we lose the right to free speech I believe we are losing the right to express our moral beliefs because many others could have vastly different conceptions of such things.
Anyway, I got off on a rant, having said all that, I should add that I obviously have no idea what I'm talking about.
Hopefully someone can read this, get a few sentences that make some sense and tell me what I'm missing. Good luck to you all in finding your Everything.
