at this point it seems like natural selection is becoming a designer all its own. The things attributed to it make it seem almost conscious. I thought, by definition, it was pure chance mixed with some advantaged weighing the dice, per se.
This is why evolution is such a threat to religion. Religion is supported, to a significant extent, buy unfounded proof. People would support religion by stating that the complexity of the world requires intelligence. Evolution does not oppose religion in any way, it doesn't have to, evolution threatens religion simply by proving that complex and well-adapted constructs can occur without an intelligent design to them.
Evolution does not entirely require life, the same processes of irregular entities combined with refinement occur in inanimate objects. If you break a piece of rock from a wall, it will have sharp edges, yet all the stones in a stream will have rounded surfaces. This isn't a deity filing them down to a nice surface, it is just a simple process of stone structures deteriorating in irregular fashions and individual stones becoming similar due to being subject to the same forces. Life really isn't too great a leap, and once you have life, nothing else in our world is unexpected...
I think that all is this argument on the existence of God is a moot point. If such a being, that is capable of creating matter in all it's infinite complexities and combinations, existed it would be beyond our capablities to even fathom. The Christian God, and others that I know of(not all of them), are really just anthropomorphisms of nature. Attributing and projecting our ideas about things unto them so that they can be understood(or rather understood to be understood, meaning simply believed to be) in human terms. Something that conceived our entire reality, if it indeed it is an entity, is beyond it and therefore entirely alien and not conceptually available to our thoughts. To see God or believe that you know it is a rationalization and, ultimately, self-deception.
I feel that there is a great deal of overlap between what can be a creator and what can be understood, of course, the ones that can be understood can also be disproven, so that point also is also moot.
The simple fact is that there is, by definition, a single all-encompassing scenario. If there is just the universe we see, than that is it. If there is a multiverse, than that is it. If there is a deity that has separated itself into different projects, than that is it. If there is a diversity of spaces with which we have contact, and others with no contact to our space, no influence at all, no way we could ever know anything about them, in short, places that do not exist from our perspective, but do exist from their own, then they are part of the same all-encompassing scenario. The simple fact is that there absolutely needs to be precisely one, there is no other possibility, and whatever it is it needs no other justification. Time is not a factor, being outside of time does not address anything. The origin of everything, including any gods, is self-evident.
In short, everything 'just is', gods(or a lack there of) are completely irrelevant to creation.