Lets say we were to put aside all the evidence that a God is non-existant. For me, the BOTTOM LINE is that there could be NO compassionate God that "loves" everybody and "controls everything," that would ever allow innocent children to starve to death and die of disease in parts of the world that He created. Did you ever see the Unicef commercials...one came on the other day, my daughter could not look at it...where is THEIR SANTA CLAUSS, where is THEIR EASTER BUNNY?? Theists think that if everything is "hunky dory" in their own little world, that there is a God. They forget ( or choose not to ackowledge) that there are other parts of this world, that God created, where there is disease, starvatrion, and death. If theist will say that " well, the children are going to heaven," as was posted the other day, then WHY did God have to make them suffer so much whi le they were here? What was the point ? He made their lives miserable every second, only to take them into heaven? I'm sure those poor kids would MUCH rather have had an easier time of it, and have lived their lives on this earth, rather than get excited about what was going to happen after they perrished... ( that goes for anyone) not that they would even undertstand that. It's just maddening!!!
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Each believer perceives a different god than the next believer. Because there is no reference for a common notion, people are left to their imaginations to conjure up images and notions of a god. That alone should give everyone a clue as to the vast variety of distinctions between people who claim a belief in a singular god. It's pretty laughable but when, as you point out, people become comfortable with their very individualized perspectives of what god is and means to them, they grow to be staunchly defensive about it. What happens external to that is of no mind to them.
Remember, again, we are a fairly new and primitive species. We think we can claim intelligence but what do we know? Nothing whatsoever about ourselves and our origins. We're picking up the evolutionary bread crumbs tracing our past but that's where our story stagnates. It isn't even a pretty story like religions conjure up. It's not fun, exciting, promising or supportive of anything we've come to know as good. Religions and gods, on the other hand, paint a pretty compelling picture of our origins and futures. We dwell on that and some of us subscribe to the religious promises versus the evolutionary implications. The strong versus the weak. The weak make it difficult on the strong because they are much greater in number and correspondingly more influential.
People are stuck inside their own heads where a god is concerned and don't care about that which does not affect them personally.
You question the altruism of a supposedly omnipotent god. Maybe you're wrong. Maybe god believes in survival of the fittest.
Very good, Ron...I love it!!!