I poise a question.

[FiniteImmortal]

And that's a rather unjustifiable arrogance. The reason those "aren't contenders" are 1) Because two of the world's major religions are monotheistic and 2) Only your narrow experience and ignors Hinduism (which has 1 billion+ adherents), which has both a sort of Supreme Being and lesser gods (it's really diverse from what I gather).

I don't see the need to get too deep in analyzing what may be a candidate for an existing god when it comes to failing meaningful criteria prima facsia. I don't need to bother with an god that hasn't made a truth claim, and hasn't claimed to have created me, or hasn't attempted to describe me in a coherent way that conforms to reality as I know it. There may be someone who had a dream that there was a god of hurricanes of Jupiter. Whether there is or isn't, has no bearing on me and is wholly irelevant to me or our lives here on earth. The only God that is worth exploring it one that has relevance to reality. Such as, has compelling answers for the 4 main questions that fuel our lives. 1) Origin. 2) Meaning. 3) Morality. 4) Destiny. Any worldview worth entertaining must have meaning answers or at least interaction in a coherent way concerning all these simultaneously. And each idea answer must be logically consistent, empirically adequate, and be existentially relevant.

I have explored panthiesm, and it fails to me in that, a real God must be infinite in nature (in order to be God) and so a an infinite being swallows up an finite number of gods. If there are an infinite amount of Gods, thats the same as an infinite God. You can't multiply infinity times infinity, contrary to my childhood arguing games with my sister.

"The only god that could conceivably exist...", what? I can conceive of lots of kinds of gods existing. Since nothing in the concept of 'Zeus' is logically incoherent, I can conceive of him.
Further, if you hold to the doctrine of creatio ex nihilo, you do have to think that God is a magical hand waiving wizard, hence 'Let there be light', and thus it happened.
Funnily enough, you bringing up other gods misses my point entirely. Assuming there even is a god in the first place, and that this god is at least omnipotent and omniscient, HOW do you know it is wholly good? I can clearly imagine a god (assuming omnipotence and omniscience aren't incoherent) that is wholly evil.

I don't see how the Big Bang is any different or less supernatural of a beginning that God speaking matter and time into existence. From Nothing comes everything, from an infinitesimally small singularity, expanding to the unknown depths of the universe... Seems equally explosive and awe-inspiring to me. Maybe two desciptions of the same event?
About imagining a God who is wholly evil, how does that work? If there really was a God that is behind all this that is wholly evil, would the world look the way it does? How would you define love? It slipped by the evil God while he was tying his shoes? People love to indite God by saying if a loving God existed, there would be no evil in the world. This is a moral pronouncement that has implications of ought. The world ought to be better, people ought to respect and love eachother, but alas, we make selfish choices and do henious things to eachother. We push God out of every facet of our lives, then when 9-11 or a Tsunami hits we wonder when the coward is hiding. We want it both ways. Moral pronouncements require a moral framework, it can only come in two flavors: Humanist, or Transcendent.

Why is it 'far more likely that there should be nothing at all'? There is no possible way to draw that probabilistic conclusion, because there is necessarily only a sample set of one with regards to reality: either something exists or nothing does.

And we can explain why we are here; that's what science is for. You're impugning purpose onto it without explaining why. And in fact, given that essentially everything we know of that exists goes through some kind of evolutionary process (development of languages, development of musical styles, development of life, etc.), it is an exponentially better inference to explain our existence in those terms. And all you have in return is 'If this, that and the other thing are assumed to be true, then...".

Everything does in fact go through an evolutionary process, and everything in nature as well as convention that has ever been observed has been by guided means. Look at cars, phones, weapons, aircraft etc., every change was brought about by reason and engineering as more streamlined design. Micro-evolution in nature is, of course irrefutable. Making the leap from primordial soup to a bangle tiger is still at best, an interesting, though problem-ridden theory. The destruction of pieces of information in a DNA chain by radiation over time has never been demonstrated to produce more increasingly complex organisms.

There's that ridiculous arrogance again. I don't see your god as being any less obviously man-made that Zeus, especially given the historical development of Christianity and it's predecessor Judaism. Worse, I think your god is logically incoherent, unlike Zeus.

No it isn't. If God makes the statement "The law of non-contradiction is false.", I can evaluate it the same way I do any other being, and demonstrate God is wrong. The scope of a mind does not change the fact that the mind could be wrong or have ulterior motives.

I'd like to see a quote from God that has been proven to be false, or in any way spurious. He claims to be truth. He either is, or isn't.. and if he isn't he isn't God.

Which is another example of you assuming your god exists and is as you believe it to be. And of course 'badness' can be explained cogently by someone not taking your view. In fact, one of the problems with your 'evil is a privation of good' belief is that it cannot allow for the existence of non-moral actions. I picked up a glass. That action under your view must be considered as evil, since only God is good and anything else is by definition evil. My ontology of ethical values can actually coherently and unabsurbly allow for non-moral actions, and have the added bonus of being intuitively friendly, while not depending on that for its cogency. The short of it is you can view things on a scale, with what is moral being on a spectrum. The closer to the middle of that spectrum an action gets, the less it has moral significance, and upon getting to the middle it becomes non-moral.

And you exhibit more 'my god has a bigger dick and is thus the only one worth discussing' arrogance.

I agree, to a point. Complexity multiplies morality. A cow can't be very good or bad. A Dog, a little more one one or the other. A child even more. An average man, capable of much good or bad as history shows, a genius; the devil incarnate or a righteous and noble hero. (think Hitler vs. Gandhi).

When you make blanket assertions ("evil has no existence of its own", "my god is the only one worth discussing", etc.), you are trying to force your ontology on others, especially if you have to ignore the existence of contrary ontologies to do so.

Thanks for the reply to my reply.

I hope this thoughtful discussion could be relocated to neither one of us forcing anything, merely trying to interact point/counter point politely. Thanks for writing.

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When I mention God, I hope it is clear I'm not referring to an invisible flying spaghetti monster, or Zeus, or any other arc-type construct of human kind, those invented transcendental gods (lower case) are obviously not contenders when trying to establish if there is a god or not, and trying to understand what conforms to reality as we know it.
I'm referring to the only God that could conceivably exist. It is between this God, or nothing at all, if we are to honest for a second.

And I bet this god just happens to be the one YOU think is real, right?

Of course, I believe the God I'm talking about is real, or I wouldn't have wasted an hour pin-typing like a moron to stimulate thoughtful discussion. I'm sure you believe your god is real too, it would be silly if you didn't (the god of humanism). Now, i will admit, in this day and age there are a growing number of churchianity followers and other watered down fan clubs that don't really believe their god exists, its just feel-good medicine one day a week.
I care if my beliefs are actually true, and I think they are. I feel they provide me a more accurate portrait of reality than atheism, no offence. If atheism is actually true, I would have to concede and convert, if I'm being honest and actually seeking truth. I hope anyone else would state the same if they are willing to purse a more accurate portrayal of reality, and be willing to put pride aside and follow the rabbit hole to the bottom.