A lot of great thoughts have been expressed. I also think that there is much to learn in our universe.
However, I am now leaning towards learning as I go along, not relying on someone elses wisdom that states: "I also, haven't seen it, but I know it's there!"

Like the song, imagine there is no heaven and no hell. Now imagine none of us ever even heard of these places. Would we tend to act more or less rational? Could each of us live our own lives better? Would we be better off overall? Or, would we need to invent something else to tell us how to live our own lives?

"Do not say that you're afraid to trust your mind because you know so little. Are you safer in surrendering to mystics and discarding the little that you know?" J.G.

There is a point that is getting missed about religion and its use of mythology, and oddly even a point Rand herself seem to miss even if she was "somewhere in the shadows of her memory" aware of it. Consider her own language in writing Howard Roarke's speech defending the primacy of humanity against all other external forces:

"That man, the unsubmissive and first, stands in the opening chapter of every legend mankind has recorded about its beginning. Prometheus was chained to a rock and torn by vultures - because he had stolen the fire of the gods. Adam was condemned to suffer - because he had eaten the fruit of the tree of knowledge. Whatever the legend, somewhere in the shadows of its memory mankind knew that its glory began with one and that that one paid for his courage."

The lessons of mythology are not "magical tea pot in Jupiter" fantasies. They are the life lessons that speak to the human psyche that Rand clearly understood.

The Prometheus she speaks of was alternatively seen as either a hero of humanity and the bringer of light, flame and knowledge, or a villain who brought the curse of the gods upon humanity. Those who saw Prometheus as a hero understood the importance of being cause over ones circumstance and those who viewed him a villain were those who agreed to be the effect of their circumstances.

Prometheus is the Greek version of Adam and Pandora is often linked with Prometheus as Eve is with Adam. The mystics, those priest class dictators are the ones who used the Garden of Eden mythology and turned it into a punishment tale, but an objective mind, unconcerned with the science of mythology and only concerned with its message can readily discern the purpose of Satan entering Eden in the form of a serpent as its meaning was to convey that no evil could enter Eden in its natural form. Eden was a place without evil and with only good. It was the serpent who informed Adam and Eve that by eating the fruit from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil (not simply the tree of knowledge as Howard Roarke presents it) would know what God knows about good and evil.

Adam and Eve's action in eating that fruit was not reckless with the effect of original sin, but rather heroic in that they were given a choice, to stay in Eden for eternity and remain forever ignorant or eat from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil and know what God knows. They chose the latter and this was their answer to the call to adventure.

The existence of nothing is impossible. Nothing can exist outside of existence. Therefore, there is no need for a first mover/prime cause, and there can't be any such thing as an omniscient, all powerful, and all loving being.

In today's cosmology there is a belief that the universe is made up mostly of a material that cannot be seen, cannot be interacted with, and yet we somehow know it exists by how it affects things around it, yet never leaves a trace. Sounds pretty familiar if you tell me. No one will claim we as yet know everything about the universe, I say the same about God, it is something that is a continuous learning and discovering process.

While I have long been a fierce admirer of Rand and for quite a while considered myself an Objectivist, many other Objectivist would castigate me for my belief in God. I was born and raised Catholic, and while I have many issues with the Catholic Church, particularly the Vatican, I have never rejected my religion, and even though that religion demands I never dabble with other religions, I have. I have studied Zen, the Tao and Buddhism all as a part of my philosophical yearnings.

I have also studied Descartes, and on the issue of the Mind/Body Problem I fall squarely in the Dualist camp and it appears that Ayn Rand falls squarely in the monist camp at one moment and then a moment later it appears as if Rand is a dualist. She argues the Objectivist should reject the Mind/Body dichotomy but then later will make arguments such as this:

"I want to stress this; it is a very important distinction. A great number of philosophical errors and confusions are created by failing to distinguish between consciousness and existence -- between the process of consciousness and the reality of the world outside, between the perceiver and the perceived."

~Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology~

This distinction between consciousness and existence is dualism. She is arguing that the mind is something separate from existence and as such something different from the brain, or body. Rand understands on a fundamental level that our mind is separate from our body and that fundamental understanding becomes a basis for spirituality. Why Rand had such a problem with this is her problem, but it has never been mine. I can fully appreciate her distaste for those she calls mystics and I can still be in awe of the mystical.

The mystics she refers to are those who embrace a hooga booga language to mystify their laity. Lawyers are as guilty as shamans when it comes to priest class mystical incantations. Legalese is nothing more than that. It does not speak to the law, but rather seeks to subvert it and the law they want you to believe is an invention of mankind is as natural as your own existence.

As to your question of the impossibility of a "Supreme Being" being missed, my answer to you is yes, and would ask you to take a look in the mirror tonight to catch a glimpse of that Supreme Being. Not the physical body you inhabit, but the Supreme Being that is you. Take a look, it is impossible to miss and that is the relationship between observer and observed.

It all depends on what you think "proof" of a Supreme Being is. A flower blooming, a healed illness, or actual scientific proof. I grew up religious, but I no longer am as I haven't been to church in decades and don't care for organized religion whatsoever, although I haven't moved completely away from faith itself. It isn't logical on most days, but I can't totally let it go, nor do I want to. To each his own...