I'm an atheist, but as a physicist I'm not totally closed to the idea of some "higher order", but more in a physics sense than a spiritual or religious sense.
"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. "
There may very well be something beyond our measureable universe that would classify as "gods" but really is nothing more than a higher level of the universe and nothing like the fantasies portrayed by religions. Only problem is the tools we use to detect and observe such things are built of the same physics of our own universe, thus we will never be able to confirm/deny such things without external intervention into our isolated sandbox.
As for religions, I think that either they were made up completely as a social control scheme, or perhaps people did witness unknown phenomenon and interpreted it as best they could in their primitive state and rolled with it from there.
Human beings will build a religion around anything.
For further perspective that will turn your view of the world upside down, regardless whether you are atheist or religious, check out the PS1 game Xenogears. It will blow your mind.
I love alternative creation stories. Whether it's aliens created us like "Mission to Mars", or whether a 10,000 year old interplanetary bio-progenitor and terraforming weapon system created by humans from a distant star system crashed and spawned artifical humans to preserve it's genetic programming and preprogrammed humanity to one day "return to god" by reviving the system...
Christians and other religious people are easily offended by such material, however they fail to realize that their bible and religion is merely a narrow human interpretation thoughout the years, and that either of the above scenarios easily qualify as the legitimate "god" they have worshipped for 2000 years, just because it doesn't fit their premisconception and humanized idealization that "god" has to be a silver haired man sitting in the clouds.
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