I do not belive in a God in the in the Christian sense, but I do have faith in a god-like entity.
Let me explain why:
Back in agrarian days of mankind, when we were still pounding rocks together and recently descended from the Apes (as heston would say, the DAMN DIRTY APES :P), we were a religious species.
We thought at first that there was an overall spirit everywhere: in rocks, trees, an intertwining magical force.
This philosophy can still be found in the few hunting and gathering aboriginal socities around the planet today. Everything was connected and had a spirit: things became sectionalized: there became a god of everything instead of a meshed spirit for everything. A god of rocks, a god of trees, a god of a certain river.
These gods then began to mesh with human ideals: they began to fight. Around the time of Egyptian, and old testament days, there were many gods everywhere. They ruled and fought certain areas and places, just as humans did. The Judeaic-christian god came out of this time: he insisted, for a reason, "there are to be no other gods besides me," to stave off comptetition from the regional gods everwhere.
Ironically, the triumverate of the Christian 3-in-one holy spirit, god, and the son, is rather reminiscent of a politheistic religions which is why Islam was founded as a backlash.
Unfortuantly, as time passed in the Judeaic sense, god went from being a vengeful god to a saving god, and in the meantime from an uninterested god of human affairs to one who dealt an interacted with mortals. Think moses and burning bush, and all the tales of god smiting various people.
God became jealous, he wanted constant attention, he ruled secular life as best as he could through his ordaned servants (who, also ironically, had the best spots in society). After corruption started to seep into the system, various people tried fixing and tweaking the now-made-human god with the new "demanded" rites and rituals. Think baptism, divorce, abortion and the like.
In the end, as it was bound to happen to a humanistic figure, god was killed. Neitzche, realizing that god had humanistic features, thought: "let me see if I can kill the now mortal-immortal" and successful did so, exposing the white space behind the curtain.
Now, that being said, is the history of god. That has nothing to do with a realistic out-side-of-this-time-and-space force which has an eternal loving power.
Ever watch futurama? Bender meets god out in space. God is a pretty cool, laid back guy. He tells Bender, who had been running his own civilization for a few eons as he drifted in space, "You were doing pretty good until they all died."
I think god is a very real thing, and he is a very real force. It is just very unfortuante that the spiritual was embodied with physical and humanistic features when they must be remained seperate for a reason. Secularism and religion dont mix.
I am not religious at all, but i am spiritual.
Moreover, "heaven" as a concept is perfectly fine as well. The human mind is a nexus of elecrical charges and atoms. If there is an all-powerful being, he could save such a gathering and reform it elsewhere.
If a clone is created at the same time as the original is destroyed at the EXACT SAME TIME, whats the difference?
If the universe is infinite, arent all possibilities infinite?
Besides, go to wikeopedia and look up Matriska Brains.
What most people argue and fight against is the political nature of the entities of the philosophies of people like Jesus: the religions. Religion is totally sheered from spirituality, but is also very closely together. One might say the two are cleaved. In any case, its a parallel to sex and love: the two are together and yet also totally apart.
I have had alot of time to think about this after the sudden death of my father in Feburary.