[The Cloud]

Occam's Razor states that, all things being equal, the simplest answer tends to be the correct one, because the answer with the fewest parameters that could contradict it is the least likely to be proven incorrect. Following this, there is no God and the universe has been in existence forever. Something has to be infinite, whether it is a single God that created the universe and has been around forever, or whether it's an infinite number of Gods that created an infinite number of Gods that eventually created the universe. Either that or something came from nothing. Since something coming from nothing is inconceivable from my human perspective, I must believe that something has existed forever, that thing being the universe because that is the simplest possible explanation, involving no Gods or Gods of Gods. Of course, this doesn't explain the gradual increase of entropy in the universe, which could be used as an argument for a creator, but that's another story.

As for consciousness, I believe that it is a result of objective reality. I believe that consciousness is simply an artifact created out of the laws of the universe, just like we use the laws of the universe to create computers that perform thought processes based on various input. In the end, I am no more than a more complicated computer, with no true objective existence beyond the matter and energy that my brain and body are composed of. You may find that idea repulsive, but if you truly think about it it becomes more freedom than pointlessness.