The avenue I've been exploring is to look at the Bible.

Why the Bible instead of any other book?

In the end it is a matter of faith, either faith that God exists and that he wants to have a relationship with man, or faith that no God could possibly exist.

False dichotomy and incorrect on the application of faith.

First, on the false dichotomy, disbelieve in a god or all proposed gods is not the same as saying that no god could possibly exist. Most atheists will freely admit that a god could exist, but will recognize that we have no evidence for the existence of any proposed god. Therefore the rational position is to not believe that such a god exists.

Secondly, it is not a faith position to reject the faith of the theist. It is the rejection of faith.

I admit that I am still trying to understand if the evidence that God could not exist is more compelling then the evidence in a God that does exist.

There is no evidence that any god does exist, while many of the proposed gods are logically impossible, such as the omni-max god depicted by many Xians. The atheist position wins, hands down, in terms of rationality.

But even atheists must believe in something. Your entire meaning of life, purpose and what is morally good or evil cannot be based on what you don’t believe.

Life has no "meaning" in the sense you are using the word. There is no grand scheme or 3rd person that will witness life. There's no objective reason to prefer life over its absence. There are a million subjective reasons however. The joy of love, sex, family, curiosity, challenges, applying your skills and talents, and on and on.

I have no purpose other than that/those I choose for myself. Purpose arises from the interface of my values(below) and my preferences(above).

Whether you're a theist or atheist opinions about good or evil are just that, opinions. Depending on what you take as axiomatic you'll wind up at different places.

If you think human happiness is the cat's pajamas, then you'll see anything curtailing that as evil and anything promoting it as good.

If, on the other hand you think freedom is the end-all be-all of existence, then you'll tend to accept some misery in order to preserve the freedom to make self-harming or even, indirectly, other-harming choices.

If equality floats youe boat, then a applying the brakes on the efficiency of the economic system may not be such a bad idea, and maybe the fat cats could stand to lose a few pounds in your neck of the woods.

If you believe in a personal god, then you probably view doing whatever he commands as the basis for good and disobedience as bad. Indeed, human happiness doesn't figure too largely in that scheme - depending on the god and which humans' happiness we're talking about. If that god throws people into Hell, by definition that is a good act, because the deity makes the rules - HIS opinions are the only ones that ultimately matter. As for Plato and Euthyphro, they're burning in Hell so pay them no mind.

If technological advancement is aces in your book, then screw the humans (and animals). Just support whatever will get you the most advancement the fastest - arms races, space races, missile gap theories, funding technology, pitting superpowers against each other, etc. If a fascist government produces superior technology then that's the form of government to support. If capitalism, then support that. If something else, then that. All regardless of how many people suffer under the system, because they are orthogonal to your values.

OTOH, if you love animals and think they're just the cutest, cuddliest things, then maybe human technology isn't for you as it tends to eviscerate the critters' environs. Or, some kind of preservation at the cost of feeding the homeless or all those poor bastards starving in Africa would be viewed by you as a morally acceptable or superior choice.

There are tons of other foundational values, and combinations of such, upon which to build an ethical system. And they aren't mutually exclusive. But, at some point all values clash and you'll have to choose which you prefer. What you end up choosing depends on weighing the factors, assessing the impact on others, rooting out self-conflicting propositions, and most of all, your mood and whether you've had lunch, yet.

This does indeed make it hard to find God when the institution of the church has such a spotted history. Is there anyone who thinks that any religion or sect is perfect? Is reasonable to think this is even possible?

Exactly what is wrong with holding an institution which claims divine guidance to a higher standard?

It's really quite simple. Before you ask if one of the thousands of religions and sects has a perfect concept of God, ask this: why take it as given that there is a god in the first place? Considering Judaism and Christianity, for example, the historical evidence is terrible -- anonymous holy books collected from lost folk traditions, packaged centuries later by groups of people with conflicting political motives, and all the original sources long gone. Huge chunks of it are flatly contradicted by science, like Genesis and Exodus, to name two books we can safely reshelve as "folktales". There is no solid evidence that anyone even vaguely similar to the character of Jesus ever lived on earth, or that the earliest Christians even thought this.

Another huge hurdle for god-belief is that countless religions exist today, and have existed in the past, with no relationship to each other. You would think, wouldn't you, that if there were some kind of universal truth, to which we could have some kind of access, humans would have been drawing closer to it, our beliefs having more and more in common?

On the other hand, consider the alternative: there is no god, and there are no supernatural forces directing us or trying to communicate with us. There's a vast, cold, nearly empty universe, and us on this tiny planet, only beginning to make sense of it after a hundred thousand years of having no clue. We made up lots of stories in the past, when human-like deities with super-powers seemed plausible. Conveniently, these stories also made for an easy way for an elite to keep control of the masses. Billions of us still find comfort in the stories. Some of us are looking for the facts.

This doesn't advance the argument for or against God, except perhaps to point out that we are all "lost" as the bible suggests and in need of a "savior".

You just got done telling us that since we are imperfect we may have garbled the message...I presume that you meant except this message?

If religion is about man reaching up to God, what hope is there of getting to the real God even if he did exist?
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I'll try to look for attempts to get past this to understand the claims of God himself.

Um...OK.

You have a new fan among your ranks. I appreciate the manner in which you present your thoughts. Most of the comments and post by others are quite civil. I'm glad I happened upon your site. Thanks for the insight!

On a deeper level, in the posts that I have read, you have answered many of the questions I have asked myself while I was growing up as a Christian. These pockets of doubt made me realize "being a Christian" never really sunk in because of my own thought processes. As it turns out, I'm most certainly not alone in how I think.

Thanks

You can find a detailed, positive account of what one atheist does believe in my post "An Atheist's Creed". You commented in that thread as well, so you're obviously aware of it.

set up a website at which prayers may be directed to an omniscient being(not omnipresent or omnipotent, think about it.) All aetheists may apply(people who have a religion won't, strange how many rules there are for not worshiping other god's, jealousy or a practical motivation?)and direct prayers (ie wish lists) to this being, then arrange a random response from the site derived from the inputs. Discussion on this if you think it's worthwhile.