Gladiator, yes I basically accept your logic. I can completely accept that since you do not see any evidence of a God you have no reason to believe he exists any more than, say, a yeti or dark matter. My point though was that evolution doesn't necessarily discount the existence of some incomprehensibly powerful intelligence cosmic force we might generally define as 'God' or godlike, irrespective of what we make of the Bible, since that being could have itself evolved. But I am going beyond that to say that if evolution from inert matter to intelligent mind in this universe is a fact in our case, then it almost demands belief in the possibility of some higher, power salient being having evolved. I say possibility of, not certainty of. Therefore evolution cannot refute the existence of 'God'.
In your case, you only choose to believe that something is 'real' when you see direct evidence of it, with your own eyes. This is entirely reasonable. But there are also things on the fringe, were we have no direct irrefutable evidence from a scientific viewpoint but we cannot explain as complete fiction, such as the paranormal (where people swear their experiences/what they saw was a real as anything else they've seen/experienced). Or feelings and thoughts - scientists can't really measure them. If I laid on a lab bench hooked up with all kinds of equipment, no equipment is ever going to tell that I am imaging the smell of a rose, for example, or imagining the feeling of love I have for my child. Is that thought/feeling real? This is philosophy 101 stuff, which is really beyond the scope of my original point, but in terms of your comment about evidence, we must be careful in how we define evidence and what we limit it to.
But I accept that if we are to believe in a personal God, even if that God is just a super ancient product of evolution, we would expect the kind of direct evidence you require. Otherwise God is not personal, just a possibility. For something tangible to move from possible to real the evidence must be direct and unequivocal.
Ok GeneM, remove my words 'transcends time and space' then. I retract them. Assume then that if this super ancient being/s evolved, it would have evolved within the limits of the physical laws of the universe. But this aspect of the argument is not necessary for the purpose of my original point. After all, our understanding of the laws of the universe are hardly settled (if they ever will be). Newtonian physicals was replaced by Einsteinian physics which is now being replaced by something else. In five thousand years from now our understanding of what are the limits of the physical laws of the universe may be entirely different. But lets just say that any evolution of anything in the universe must be within those limits, not 'transcend' them. It doesn't change my point.
Mindseye - yes I agree that this kind of discussion and religion in general falls within the area of metaphysics and philosophy not science. I am only postulating that belief in evolution hardly disqualifies belief in a 'God' that evolved, and that in fact if evolution is true then given the almost infinite parameters of space and time, to say that there would not be other salient beings in the universe that have similar evolved but have evolved way way way beyond what we have evolved to, seems unlikely. To accept all the huge variety of life on this planet (and that 'mind' could evolve from inert matter) evolved from a primordial soup is to accept random chance events over billions of years at incomprehensibly impossible odds. Therefore we basically cannot discount the possibility of evolution on a much grander scale elsewhere in the universe, and therefore to take a positively atheistic position of "God does not exist" is absurd.
This would get around the objection "who created God then." To dimiss the possibility of God's existence on that basis is logically absurd, since we exist and no one created us. If we evolved, then so could a God/Super alien.
Put whatever definition you want on the meaning of 'God'. Call it an alien of immense power and intelligence if you want. But let me clarify my definition of 'God' for the purpose of this discussion. By 'God' I do not necessarily mean the Biblical version of God. I mean a being that, for example, came down in a huge spaceship or similar that hovered over New York in the manner of the movie Independence Day and put on a display of awesome, unequivocal power that left everyone in no doubt of its power and existence, and that also directly claimed that it is 'God' (but not necessarily using our word for it but by making a clear statement that it claimed to be our 'parent' or progenitor somehow.)
Does that definition suffice?