I believe you are a sincere and very well educated fellow who is making a real effort to understand the 'meaning of life'. Not in the Monty Python sense. Your answers are based on scripture that comes to us from the distant past and I have difficulty imagining a God that doesn't update Its teachings a bit more regularly than that. The old and new testament are the teachings of two very different religions and the exactness of words thousands of years after the fact is no more than an educated guess. Try reading Shakespeare and that's only 400 years or so.
Religion has evolved and will continue to evolve from painting on caves, to worshipping natural elements, sun, water etc, through so called paganism, which mostly refers to non-Abrahamic beliefs, the first concepts of gods, on to monotheism and on and on and on as we progress socially, intellectually and spiritually.
Not everything is revealed in the bible in so many words. It's not a literal work, rather a combination of moral tales, some literal insights and a good deal of allegory with deeper spiritual insights for the real seekers.
If there is no definitive text that explicitly states the human spirit is eternal it is undoubtedly implied. Even Ecclesiastes 3:18,19 ends with a question as to the immortality of the spirit. It is more about getting on with this life and not living some cloistered existence. The teaching is more to do with living in the moment and death will sort itself out.
If we are not immortal, not made in the image of God, then the whole shooting match is a cruel joke. I think you are influenced by a religious belief that has come out of the the US, perhaps JW. Fine people. There are new religions being invented in the US every day but they are all based on somebody having some kind of epiphany and then re-interpreting the bible.
When a body dies it breaks down into smaller and smaller parts, back to atoms. Christianity has 41,000 plus versions. They must be pretty close to being back to atoms by now.
