Recalling an interview with Stephen Fry, in which he denounces the existence of God because what God would allow a child to (...die of leukemia, suffer abuse, etc, etc).
And - on first reflection you would agree with him. Certainly it's fashionable to disagree with God - at least the God of Roman Catholicism - and even as such it's less the "God" than the interpretations and intermediaries they've appointed on the subject.
But - here I disagree - to even name "God" is to anthropomorphize him - make him in our image. This so that we may more readily understand him (or her).
This is by it's very nature absurd.
We can imagine - albeit poorly - what it would be like to be an ant. If we err it is more than like that we project too much of our own consciousness into the ant - imagining it capable of a bigger portion of consciousness than it has. Think of a popular cartoon starring Woody Allen. But an ant has a finite relationship to us - we can measure the difference in size, in our brains, in our relative scope of duties and perceptions.
No one would believe for a moment that an ant could in any way imagine what it would be like to be ourselves. The difference is too gross, if an ant could imagine being anything other than being an ant, most surely it would become that.
Now, compared to the breadth of the universe as we have perceived it - and the breadth, spanning billions if not trillions of light years, the age - billions of years - and these - to be sure - are no crude approximations of it's size or age, merely the upper bounds upon which we are able to measure them. It is most certainly much vaster and older than we can comprehend. Yet - in our arrogance - we think that we can understand it.
Understanding it, being able to predict and control it would make us Gods.
Clearly we cannot.
The difference in consciousness between us and the universe as we have so far perceived it is of an infinitude of orders of magnitudes greater than that of the consciousness of an ant versus ourselves.
If you take the universe to be conscious, a living organism of sorts - and if this is in fact this is the case, then are there other organisms out there on a similar scale? And - how would we know?
People know that they are a part of society (Most people. No, many people. Some people.) Do your cells know that they're a part of the ecosystem that is your body? Do your cells grieve the deaths of neighboring cells, and if so, of what business is it to you? Certainly no one pays attention to the deaths of their cells, which happens millions of times per day, nor could they be expected to and continue at the level of functioning expected of their organism. A certain callousness must accompany any increment in evolution, the countless daily deaths of my cells is of little to no consequence to the well being of the organism as a whole - in fact - take cancer for example - the death of your cells may be crucial to the well being of your organism.
In any event, while I appreciate his arguments against "God", I don't think they're valid. I don't argue that there is or isn't, only that if there is a God, or higher consciousness, than by necessity it's intelligence and motivations must lie beyond our comprehension.