We're not supposed to grow old; that's a result of our sin, both that which is inherited and that which we commit ourselves. We were actually designed for immortality, but we fucked that up.
I mean, if you believe that sort of thing. I don't not believe it, for what it's worth; it just doesn't quite jibe with either what I've seen or what I intuit.
Seems to me we're a fundamentally imperfect machine. A remarkable one, to be sure--most of us manage to be mostly healthy most of the time for 60-100 years, give or take--but one designed to begin declining into entropy upon reaching full growth (on a molecular level, that begins sooner--as the existentialists noted, life itself is the first step towards death). We seem, also, to follow dual impulses, that toward survival and to that toward annihilation. Seems like we never quite reconcile that, but then, we seem to be the only object that needs to; it's the same pattern that the star, the rock, the tree, or the orangutan follows. Resist annihilation, except where annihilation gives you pleasure. Eat right, sleep enough, and you can drink, fuck, and fight yourself to death for a much longer time.
I'm for it, of course.
To deny any given understanding of God in this life isn't quite the same as non-belief in god(s); non-belief in god(s) differs pointedly from non-belief in transcendent truth; non-belief in all of the above isn't quite the same as denying that such things are possible. We're all trying to find rational default positions, presuppositions, on matters unseen, on the unknown (and perhaps unknowable) mysteries of origin and purpose.
Personally, I'm a nocturnal sort; sunrises are only interesting to me if they precede a long nap. Economic realities demand that I work during the day and wring what little sleep I can manage to find in the hours between writing, rehearsal, or watching Doctor Who on DVD with the missuz and dragging my mick ass out of bed in the morning, bleary-eyed and dazed, to face another day (and night) of more or less the same. But yes, there is beauty in life that makes me think that there must be some transcendent, overarching unity to all things. A good storm; a vast body of water; a beautiful woman . . . so many beautiful women . . . and some beautiful men, here and there, the ones that bother.
Interesting, that last point, because the bother makes it so. Beauty, to me, is man made. A Fellini is a greater thing than a sunrise, a poem more glorious than the glacier, a fine play or a well-wrought kata more graceful and perplexing than a flock of birds in formation. Not that the sunrise, the glacier, or the flock lack beauty, but even then, it is our observation that imbues them with such. I can see why we might have posited that we were created in the image of our god(s); our very imposition on the world can look like a blessing. Maybe it is, maybe it ain't. Who knows?
The Abrahamic God seems an anthropomorphic, and therefore anthropocentric construct, but I find it hard to imagine any view that spurs us to any reasonable action that isn't. Either we're the peak of creation, or we're the pinnacle of consciousness; and even if we're wrong about both of those, I'm hard-pressed to think of another basis on which to proceed.
Being a pantheist, I think the word "god" is essentially a code for the sum totality of phenomena, that each phenomenon is encoded with with some element of divinity which connects it to the whole. It's possible I'm a panentheist; I can at least entertain the notion that there's some plan, some purpose, that precedes all of this, and that we are thus progressing toward some goal.
Does the fact that I believe such is possible mean I'm an agnostic? Maybe. Calling myself an agnostic panentheist seems like an unnecessary mouthful; add to that that there are things that I feel I DO know intuitively, and I become a gnostic-agnostic-pantheist. I suppose I could shorten it by suggesting I'm a Spinozan, but I find more poetry in Giordano Bruno, and my pantheism ultimately has as much to do the Taoism as with any of the Western pantheists/atheists/agnostics. Stir in my Buddhist practice, and I sound like a real mongrel.
All of which is to say, I see a thru-line of understanding that works with what I can't help but believe, which is that there's something tying us together, and that living according to that understanding is a worthy endeavor. I even concede the possibility--though not the necessity--that there's some sort of design to it. I only reject the notion that in some 60-100 short years, we will have made enough mistakes, done enough good, or believed enough of the "right" assertions to be rewarded, punished, forgiven, what-have-you for the infinite to follow. I could be wrong, but I have faith, if you can call it that, that my faculties for discerning truth are as reliable as anyone's.
Interesting topic, always . . . But I might have made it pithier if I'd understood, just a little more clearly, the sort of responses for which you were trawling (not to say trolling; I'd never hold you guilty of that). :)
