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Trancaholic:
Yeah, I think you're making sense mate. 
I don't doubt that there will always be a need for humanity to ask questions like "why am I here", "why does evil exist" or any other questions of a similar nature. Asking these sorts of questions though, will rarely lead to a definate answer. You see, the question "why", as I said in my previous post, hints inherently at a definate purpose or rationale behind a given phenomenon, whether there is such a cause behind it or not.
So, for instance, the question "why are we here?" automatically infers that there is some greater purpose behind us living here on planet Earth. Now I'll leave it up to you to decide whether an god (or at least some sort of absolute) exists, but it seems to me like the nature of that question inherently points the questioner towards an answer that in some way involves a rational creator. It all boils down to semantics in the end I guess, but to me it seems like if the question "why" is asked with too much caprice, that you will end up with a great deal of questions that are fundamentally impossible for we as human beings to answer at this point in time, but as it is difficult for humans to accept such uncertainty, they will invent an absolute to fill in the gaps in their knowledge, and to act as a band-aid solution in terms of answering these otherwise unanswerable questions.
Now judging from your responses, trancaholic, it seems as though you have given these issues a great deal of thought as well, so I can only assume that you have some very good reasons for believing in a god or absolute of some kind. I certainly will not question these reasons, because as you said before, your deism was almost certainly founded on a rationale as solid as my atheistic views were - I in no way deny this. Both ultimately constitute a belief system of sorts, but I would still argue - while maintaining an utmost respect for your said beliefs - that most forms of deism and theism are formed upon the inability of indivduals to accept the uncertainty of our situation as human beings, and upon their innate desire for the absolute. This fear of uncertainty and this passion for the absolute is what motivates humanity to pursue an understanding of this universe in the forms of science, philosophy and, as I mentioned before, religion.
Now religion, as recently as a few-hundred years ago, was used to explain most facets our world, ranging from everything like metaphysics, to geography, to biology and so on. But since the Cartesian epistemological turn in the 1600's, religion has been driven slowly out of these areas, as our need to use gods to explain these phenomenon diminished as the more pragmatic and definate scientific approach offered more definate, concrete and verifiable explanations for these said phenomenon. Up until this point in time, science still hasn't been able to answer all that we desire to know, and so religion still goes strong in the areas that have been rendered thus far innaccessable to science, particularly:
1) Morality; and
2) Transcendent Human Purpose and Meaning
Now, to return to my original point, the latter of the above points has been brought about by humanity begging the question as to "why are we here?". Because science cannot possibly answer this question (unless we rephrased it "how is it that humanity came to be here?", which we can answer with a relative degree of certainty - but again we sink into the drudgery of semantics) and philosophy is usually too innaccessable and esoteric for the common man to find any solice in, religion offers the perfect solution, in that it satisfies humanity's desire for: the absolute, a definate transcendant meaning, and is, above all, easily accessable.
So, begging the question "why are we here?" in this case, is an unanswerable question, unless we assume that there is a god. Thus, if we are to ask this question at this point in human understanding, the manifestation of a god is really the only satisfactory explanation that we can posit.
But I would argue about the validity of posing such a question, when there isn't a great deal of evidence to suggest that there is an absolute or transcendent purpose behind human existence. If you continue to ask unanswerable - or at least indefinably ambiguous - questions such as this one, you end up either manifesting a god (or gods) or you end up frustrated because your need for certainty and for the absolute is not being fulfilled. To paraphrase Albert Camus, we as humans throw these sorts of questions at the universe, but it is indifferent to our existence and offers no reply. To the existentialist, the act of asking these sorts of questions is futile given the subjective nature of truth, so our search for answers is bound, ultimately, to be in vain.
I guess the point of this whole post is this:
Instead of searching for answers within the world of objects or the world of absolutes - i.e. the "external" world - all meaning and purpose should be formed subjectively within our own heads. You can ask all the questions you like to the universe, but it will not answer. All truth is subjective in the first place, so the search for truth (and thus meaning and purpose) should be formed within the self, not in everything that surrounds it. This is not to say that we should ignore the external world - quite the opposite. Empiricism (the methodology behind science among other things) and phenomenolism give the mind the ideas and concepts it needs through experience to help us find our place in the world. But, at the same time, I still believe firmly that it is the imposition of responsibility upon the individual to find his own subjective meaning in this world, that defines most accurately what it is to be human.
So, ultimately, don't worry about the world of absolutes, because life is only what you make of it in your own mind. It isn't anything more than that.
I hope I'm making sense.
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