From the Bible: "In the beginning was the Word, the Word was with God, the word was God." ( John 1:1 ). The Word in my understanding is the basic physical laws that runs this universe. The same stuff scientists study. It was science who convinced me that there is some sort of intelligence out there which resulted in the formation of me and everything I observe. The religious people call this God, Spirit, and all sorts of other names, but it seems to be a universal human observation that we are likely not the top in the chain of command in the Universe.
I enjoyed reading your post. I'm not completely clear on where you stand after coming to the end of it, but I get the sense you are a theist, but believe in a God which represents the abstract laws of the universe - something which is greater than what we understand at the moment. I don't know if you've read Dawkins' book, The God Delusion, but he has a whole chapter devoted to theists or agnostics of this sort. He has several arguments against these ideas of God - they mainly go along the line of - if you believe in a God which created the universe and it's laws, but doesn't bear any current interaction with the universe, then your reasoning requires a God-creator, ad infinitum - this isn't a satisfactory explanation for the universe. If your God _is_ the laws of the universe, then your definition of God is sketchy and almost impossible to differentiate between what we discover in Physics.
Personally, I was brought up Catholic. Like yourself, I never bought into the beliefs 100%, but I did see how particularly rules were beneficial to society and the individual, and generally followed them. My belief of God was, I think, similar to yours - something higher and deeper to the meaning of the universe as we understand it at present. Maybe external to our universe, not necessarily conscious, not necessarily a physical being.
In more recent years, I have changed my mind on both premises. Yes, the bible can be interpreted in ways that fit your ethical belief system, but why do this when you can think for yourself? Yes, there are aspects of the universe that we don't understand on a fundamental level, but why call it God?