New Year, old mysteries

A New Year has come, and is now 10 days old, and yet we don't seem much closer to answering the old Big Questions that we had millennia ago - what is Life? Is there a God? what is matter? Is the Universe eternal and infinite or finite and ephemeral?

I just read Cicero's "The Nature of the Gods" (Natura Rerum Deo... I think) and it's surprisingly modern in its arguments and counter-arguments. The Epicurean character argues all the previous views of gods are incoherent, that the idea is innate and thus beyond argument, and only Epicurus's uninvolved Eternal Gods, essentially human exemplars, are worthy of adoration. The Stoic character makes all the Creationist/IDist style arguments from the natural order, trashes the Epicureans anthropomorphism, and raves on about how well prophecy has worked for the Romans in the past. The sceptic argues against the gods most effectively by pointing to the apparent lack of morality/Justice being upheld in the events of human affairs, yet he believes in religion and continues to uphold the gods even without a rational reason for believing them to be real.

So similar do all these arguments sound, and I have heard them spouted by Christians of all stripes in all manner of permutations.

The Epicurean Gods are like static ideals, known in our subjectivity as innate concepts. Sound familiar? That's the theology where 'God' is some kind of eternal part of the human collective soul, like Jung's archetypes. Impersonal, but anthropomorphic, yet somehow able to be "examples" for human conduct.

The Stoic God/gods are meddlers in human affairs, but somehow involved in all cosmic processes as an indwelling omnipresent "fire" in all things. They control the world, yet somehow the world - especially humanity - is free to do rotten things inconsistent with the divine ideal.

The sceptic, last of all, thinks religion/morality is a good thing and gods are the only way of keeping that vital part of social order going. It's good for the hoi polloi to be superstitious and see the hands of the gods in every little blessing and setback, but intelligent people know that's nonsense.

So where do you fall in the spectrum? Or is there another view?