Hi Scotsman,
Agreed. Individuals are of course free to believe what they wish. But if we are concerned with the facts of history and the religion's own views from its own vantage point, Daoism is certainly not referring to God.
I would add that the use of the word "God" is a misnomer in this translation. China had no monotheistic conceptions during Daoism's formative centuries, and probably well into its maturity as a religion. The Daodejing from which you quote was written down several centuries before the birth of Jesus Christ. Offhand, I believe Manichaeism, which is dualistic, might be the earliest religion to even approach monotheism to reach China, which became a small minority in China several centuries after Jesus Christ's lifetime. Hence, all the more reason why the OP is factually incorrect.
Furthermore, the Chinese language did not even distinguish between singular and plural forms. I do not speak any Chinese dialect, but I have studied Confucian and Daoist texts enough to know this. This is probably why people who speak Chinese natively even today sometimes have trouble with pluralities, mistakenly referring to multiples in English using the singular word form (i.e. two dollar, instead of two dollars). So if somehow this line was referring to a deity, it would be linguistically impossible to know if one or more deities were being referred to. But religiously, we'd have to go with the plural since only polytheism was known to China.
Finally, I've seen translations use the English word "lord(s)" or even "all things" instead of "God." So I think this line should more accurately be translated to say, "It is older than the gods," or "It is older than all things."
