Do you believe in God?

Well this blog today is a hodge podge of my favourite rants i suppose... poorly edited and a year past the question, but as I sit hear eating chocolate and mint ice cream and talking to god:
I would say that vocabulary  tends to get in our way when we attach too much definition to any one term.  Words are so partial that sometimes when people too rigidly define with words they close doors to their own, and other's experience.  (Creeds are often hazardous in this way).
Take 'god' for instance.  At age 50 I am now as likely to respond to god-peddlers that I am an 'atheist', as I am to say I 'believe in god'.  I do not wish to define god (because a god in a box is not god) nor to declare what 'believe in' means.  If George Bush walked up to me and said "Do you believe in God" I would say, "No sir , not on your life sir!!  Find someone else to fight your war, SIR!".  Same with a fundamentalist of any stripe or cause (including environmentalism or atheism).  I would think what they were really asking would be "Please let me co-opt you to my ego cause".  So I am often a declared 'atheist'.  On the other hand I share openly that I 'pray' all day, every day, in private, in my heart in public, with my arms around the shoulder's of each patient, silently as I listen to their heart.  And this prayer is to open the false curtains that separate us from one another and separate us from a dynamic interconnected involved universe which is always within us and among us and wanting to be drawn in to every second of our lives and our relationships with one another.  And Jesus is my guide, the man who fully realized his human potential and his own transcendent being that connects us all to the Daddy/Universe wellspring of life and ever present moment.

When it comes to the structure of the universe I think there is the ability to collect empirical evidence, (and then memory), laid down in the hard wiring of our neurons.  And I think there is an opening to connection outside of our individual brain cells. 
Even with the kind of evidence registered by the hard wiring of our intrinsic structure, sometimes we second guess ourselves and wonder if we are experiencing correctly.  And then if we are wise we reserve judgement and we pray and reach out to connection:  "I am not sure if I 'get' what just happened in the parking lot ...maybe I perceived correctly, or maybe my yearnings and fears and finite nature have coloured what really happened.  I feel unable to tell.  Speak to me in a voice I can understand.  I will align my heart to that quiet still place of listening, empty my own ego as best I can, and listen for you to guide me about how what happened/is-happening may inform my own life, my brother's life, in the here right now".
As a physician I am as aware of what we do not know, as what we do know, when it comes to neurology, physiology, psychiatry, spirituality, meaning, life and death itself.   As a human being, I like being informed in as many ways as I can, and I like never declaring that we fully understand one darn thing.  Every good question will stimulate 10 more.

I believe consciousness has no starting and stopping point defined within the human body from conception to cessation of vitals signs. 
My family seems rife rife with dream information.  Our dead relatives pop in at times of crisis, in dream and hypnocampic vision.  We scoff at one another and yet we each believe our own experiences.  And this is the way it ought to be I think.  We should always be skeptical of others trying to manipulate us with highly emotionally charged or spiritual messages.  We must all be vigilant.  But we must all welcome in the entire universe and allow it to nurture and teach us.
There are some tricks when considering what other people share:
1. Do they have an ulterior motive?  Attention?  Secondary gain?
2. Is the overall flavour of their experience ego enhancing/annihilating (grandiose or self-destructive from a depressed ego)?  Or are they sharing to genuinely promote communion among us all?
Consciousness, if it is continuous, is just that:  continuous.  Ever seeking to express and live its continuous round wide interconnection in every moment.
I am a NDE survivor (sorry, still no better term).  And then too, in 2001 I had an "NDE" on behalf of another person.
I took him in line skating to challenging hills and found him unconscious, in the dark, incontinent.  He was in ICU with a basal skull fracture and intracranial bleed for a week, in hospital for 6 weeks and not his usual self cognitively for two years.  He is now perfect.
When I first caught up to him, my response was anger, at the inconvenience he was causing me as I was going to have to get him out of the woods, look after him in hospital.  And I was supposed to leave on vacation with my kids in the morning.  I was ticked off.
And as I knelt beside him and realized how sick he was (at 10 min no show of anything but breathing and a pulse), blood coming out of his ear, big hematoma on his occiput, incontinent, I was suddenly overcome with a will to sacrifice and I prayed "please let him live, take me instead".  And in that moment in the dark starry night it was as if a shroud was lifting physically in the heavens above us and heaven and earth and life and death were suddenly continuous and I knew my friend would live and be OK.  It was as if the very will to sacrifice for another person was enough to bring all the positive will of the universe itself, to bear on we two little children alone and in trouble there in the dark.