WARNING: Spoilage throughout below post!
I didn't feel it pissed all over itself. The show has had some pretty weak moments in the past, my feeling are that this last run of episodes, including the finally have been some of the best since season one. I thought a few things were cop outs, and poorly done (dancing robots, eeeh! Now every time I hear All Along the Watchtower that will pop up in my head. I appreciate what they were trying to do there, but it was pulled off poorly and wasn't even really necessary. I think the camera zooming in a news headline about robot soldier or advanced robotics then fading to the credits would have communicated the same thing without coming off as lame.
Whether you are an atheist or not, I don't see any reason why the ending should be so annoying. Even if you feel there is absolutely not the slightest possibility of a God, you might want to remind yourself, its Sci-Fi. There is no reason the existence of God in a science fiction universe should upset you any more than a mystical energy field known as The Force that controls everything should bother you. I am glad Moore had the courage to make such an ending, even in a society filled with plenty of people who may be outright enraged with the idea. I am sure he knew the ending would not please everybody, and would upset or irritate others, yet he still did it.
As for Starbuck, I don't think she was actually an angel, or never there to start with, but I think the idea was that she actually was temporary brought back to life to complete her purpose. She obviously had no idea what the hell she was, or how she had come back. Even when she tells Lee she is leaving, she doesn't seem to know to where or how, just that she has a feeling her purpose is done and that it is time for her to go.
I found the idea that the Colonial's Earth was not the same as our earth to be brilliant. Perfect in fact. It makes perfect sense that if they happened to stumble across a perfectly inhabitable planet that suits there needs and represents exactly what they were looking for when they set out in the very beginning, that they might name it after the object of their search. <- That has got to be the most awkward and poorly constructed sentence I have ever wrote. Forgive me, I am so fricken tired right now I can barely even see my computer screen.
The biggest thing that bugged me was Adama' ending. So is he just going to sit by Laura's grave until he starves to death? They really made it overly dramatic. He still has his son and other people around that care about him, and he is just going to toss the rest of his life away because the woman he loves dies?
Also, I might have missed this, was Starbuck being the "harbinger of doom!" bit ever explained? They made an awful bit deal about it over the last season, I was expecting something to come out of it, either I somehow missed it, didn't understand it when I saw it, or they totally just dropped it and ignored it.
Finally, in regards to Axia's comment about who would want to give up all their modern comforts and go back to a primitive life. I would in a second! I often feel I was born in the wrong century, and it bothers me to see how much of a stranglehold technology has on our lives. I try to live a technologically limited life, but even I find myself going through withdrawals when I go a few weeks without internet, or frustrated when I am just a few days without power. I hate that feeling of being so dependent on something so fickle.
Look how long mankind lived without these things? We poor bastards today would go extinct in just a few years without it all. I hate the film The Village, it was pure crap IMHO, but I really liked the concept behind that movie. I'd love to be part of something like that, long before that movie came out I'd talk about how great it would be to start a small nation on a remote island disconnected from the rest of civilization. But yeah, I am actually with you on this one, when they went on about people "surprisingly" not having a problem with Lee's idea of "starting with a clean slate" I thought, Yeah right!
Perhaps a combination of literally having been brought to the brink of extinction by their own technological creations, and having spent such a long time cooped up on their increasingly dilapidated starships made them more eager to accept such a proposal.