>Your proof of god's questionable existence?  Just because you believe
>something doesn't make it true.  If your god is so 'loving' and
>'forgiving', why does s/he let all the suffering go on?

I have snipped all of your elaboration on this point for the sake of
clarity, because this is the gist of your rhetorical questions.  You
probably know that there is a whole vein of philosophical/theological
inquiry that addresses the logical contradiciton between the existence
of evil and of an all knowing and all powerful God who is also a
loving and forgiving God.  If you are not aware of it and are
interested in looking into it a little, this vein of inquiry is called
"theodicy."  Just Google it and you will find rescources.

As a believer I have found no logically satisfying answer to the
problems of evil, free will and the rest that are raised in this
inquiry.   watching myself and others try to resolve these issues puts
me in mind of watching a snake swallow its own tail.  

But, coming at this as a believer, rather than a non-believer, as you
approach it, I have the problem of my experience with God/The
Spirit/The Devine/the Transcendent Reality, which has caused a
powerful transformation of my life for the good.  If there is no God
then I don't know what to do with that experience, what sense to make
of it.  

Through a spiritual discipline and practice (that includes prayer,
individual worship--ie, devotion, obedience, tenderness, love--study
of scripture and other spiritual writings--corporate meeting for
worship, activity in the life the meeting and so on),  my personality
has been transformed toward conforming to the model of Christ--toward
simplicity, integrity, equality, community and harmony.  I do not
claim to be identical to the Christ or to even approach that level of
transformation but only say that the movement is in that direction.
Considering where I started, however, a baby step in that direction
looks like a journey of a thousand miles.

I did not do this through the strength of will, I did not decide to
try to become more that way.  It happened to me, as I now see, because
I was open to letting the work be done in me.  Christians call the
agent of this change the Holy Spirit.  

Moreover, I note that this is a similar transformation that can be
seen, to one degree or another, in others around me (although
certainly not in everyone who claims to be religious) and can be seen
in many people from many spiritual traditiond who have undertaken
similar disciplines and practice.  This is not an exclusively
Christian thing.  This is something that seems common to what I call
the "mystical wing" of most spiritual traditions about which I know
anything.  It's the unmediated contact with God/The Holy Spirit/The
Devine/the Transcendent Reality that causes the change.  It is not the
result of intellectual learning or persuading oneself that certain
things are true.  It comes through waiting and practice.

There seems to be something going on, here, that is real and that is
reproduced in the lives of many people in many places.  A very similar
result obtains from very similar spiritual practices--all changed in
much the same way, throught the same means to the same end, such that
the words I use above (which are a form of the Quaker Testimonies)
describes them; simplicity, harmony, equality, community and
integrity.  

A complicating factor is, of course, that not all "religious" people
are spiritual people in the sense that I am using the word here (ie,
"mystical').  Many religiouos people--perhaps most--are very
intellectual in their faith and, being guided by their imperfect
reason and the assumptions they glean about the human condition and
how they should respond to it, they attach themselves to and follow
some pretty absurd notions.  Some Christians look to sermons and
snippets from the Bible for their guidance in the way that Jimmy
Buffet once described a woman as looking to the juke box for her
answers, rather than seeking the guidance of the Spirit to put such
teachings in context.  Killing for peace is one result of this.  It's
hard for me to see Jesus on a bombing run, or carrying an AK 47,  but
some people seem to have no problem with that.  One can create a long
list of ways that Christianity, and other spiritual traditions, has
been manipulated for evil by people who sincerely thought they were
doing God's will as well as by cynics and pretenders.

So, I cannot answer your question(s) and I don't think that theodicy
can, either.  I certainly cannot convince you that there is a God but
I cannot, through my experience and that which I observe around me in
others--from many times and places, including my own--but believe that
there is.

This God is not the God you describe, nor, frankly, the God that many
who claim Christianity describe as their own.  You seem to think that
the only proof of God would be that everything would be cool in the
world, at least that would be the only proof of an all knowing and all
loving God.  I don't know whether God owes you  and the rest of us all
the best--as though we were, as many Christians believe--the crown of
creation.  I don't know that humanity is the center of the universe
and I don't know if we really are what God's plans are about.  I
chuckle, along with Mark Twain, over the notion that we are the
Creator's special pet, and that He stays up all night admiring us.

I don't know or care much about a lot of things that seem very
important to some Christians, but I know what I am supposed to do as I
walk through this world.  That is made clear to me directly from
whatever I am tapped into through my practice, as well as from the
basic and bedrock teachings of every spritual tradition.  Love my
neighbor as myself is an instruction which helps me live the way I am
intended to live.  Understanding things like the Trinity, on the other
hand, do not help me so much and so I don't concern myself much with
it.  The same is true with reconciling good and evil, and the
challenge that evil presents to the notion of an all knowing, all
powerful  and all loving God.  

A very wise Quaker once compared us to the one celled creatures on the
forest floor chomping up the fallen leaves and other organic matter
than finds its way there.  they have no grasp of the ecology of the
forest, of which they are a part, they just chomp on, oblivious to the
way things work and what their part is in it.  I believe we are in a
similar if not identical position. I believe that there is something
going on here, on this earth, and that what we do has a lot to do with
it.  We will probably never understand what it is that we are part of
but we cannot help but know what it is that we are supposed to do
because that is hard wired into us, we have an inborn teacher who, if
we but heed it, will lead us in the right direction.  (that, by the
way, is just basic, old time, hard core Quaker theology).   Also hard
wired into us, for some reason, is the ability and the strong
inclination to heed earthly voices and to respond to our conditioning,
ignoring that inborn teacher.

We cannot help but wonder why great evil lays next to great good in
ourselves and therefore in the world around us.  But we know it's
there, and we know which we are supposed to pursue.  

I know what I have written does not convince you that God exists and I
hope you know that I was not trying to do that.  I am not sure what I
am doing, here.  Perhaps it's just witnessing.
6:15:34 AM