It seems to me you're thinking of Christianity in terms of its popular atheist parody, in contrast to the respectful, thoughtful view of the OP. A number of things you've said are simply not true, others are not in proportion.
There are a lot of problems to grapple with in epistemology and ontology, some of which you've identified. This isn't the place to debate them, though. A great book to start with though, is Miracles, by C.S. Lewis. It blows through a lot of shallow thinking about God and the nature of reality, as well as a number of things you've referenced: which god is the true one? Why is God so mean?
Also, I'd like to point out that if God has revealed himself to us in history (via Jesus and the witnesses of his resurrection), we don't need to simply theorize about him. There's actual evidence, which we can weigh against our own personal experience.
I'm an atheist, yes, but I'm hardly living in an echo chamber where I'm only exposed to parodies. I was raised as a Christian (although I was never a believer), live in a majority Christian country and my family as well as many people I interact with in my life are still Christian -- whether they actually believe in it or merely identify as Christian socially.
Most Christians I know are either religious because of personal anecdotes ("I felt like something protected me") or wishful thinking ("There has to be more to it than this") or fear of death ("Death is not the end"). Incidentally, few of them literally believe in the Bible although most of them have apparently accepted it as the window dressing for their own personal convictions.
I have merely skimmed most of the criticisms because as you say, this isn't exactly the place to have in-depth discussions. But it is also not the place to make blanket claims based on your pet religion.
> I'd like to point out that if God has revealed himself to us in history[..]. There's actual evidence[..].
This isn't evidence. This doesn't even qualify as an eye-witness account. This is what I mean by circular logic: you can't use biblical anecdotes to qualify the validity of biblical anecdotes. You can contrast them with independent data to see whether they are consistent, or you can look at them within the context of the scripture to determine whether they are internally consistent. But you can't validate them.
The Lord of the Rings is internally consistent. Many alternative history novels are internally consistent as well as consistent with a large subset of actual history (at least if the author cared to fact-check). But that doesn't mean they are "true".
The trivial truth about religion is that believers don't believe because of logical arguments. Logical arguments are only used to justify belief after the fact. If there was a consistent argument that "worked", there wouldn't be any atheists left -- and no, the cosmological argument doesn't work either.
The difference to me is in being satisfied with an answer that you accept on faith vs one you can prove, though things like many-worlds possibly confound this exploration.
The difference is that to be an atheist you must be willing to accept "I don't know" as an answer.
Science provides tentative answers that iteratively home in on the truth: Newton's theory of gravity wasn't wrong, it was incomplete, so it was replaced by Einstein's, which covers all the corner cases we've since learned about.
In science a failure is considered progress. If we can disprove a theory, it increases our understanding of the universe by telling us what isn't true.
Also, a scientific theory must be falsifiable: it must be able to make predictions (which is why string theory despite its name is often not considered an actual theory).
Religion on the other hand offers absolute truth statements. Since the dawn of man religion has been how we explain things we don't have an answer to: lightning, the tides, the origin of life, what happens after we die and so on.
As our understanding outside of religion has improved some of these answers have become ridiculous enough to make it socially awkward to retain them as dogma (though there are still Christians who will loudly tell you natural disasters are divine punishments).
>The difference is that to be an atheist you must be willing to accept "I don't know" as an answer.
>Religion on the other hand offers absolute truth statements.
See my other comment here for another perspective on faith and religion[0]
In particular, the what happens after you die issue is applicable as it is one where we may never have conclusive evidence for the answer this side of life.
>The difference is that to be an atheist you must be willing to accept "I don't know" as an answer.
As a Christian, my answer is I'm confident in my beliefs, but not 100% certain. I could be wrong as could you.
> The difference is that to be an atheist you must be willing to accept "I don't know" as an answer.
No, you don't.
To be a strict empiricist, you have to be willing to accept "I don't know" as an answer, and there's other approaches to knowledge which also require that, but, while empiricism (and some of the others) may overlap with atheism, there is no requirement of willingness to accept uncertainty attached to atheism (agnosticism, which by the conventional definition of "atheism" usually used now, is a subset of atheism, certainly requires a willingness to accept "I don't know" on at least one point.)
There are a lot of problems to grapple with in epistemology and ontology, some of which you've identified. This isn't the place to debate them, though. A great book to start with though, is Miracles, by C.S. Lewis. It blows through a lot of shallow thinking about God and the nature of reality, as well as a number of things you've referenced: which god is the true one? Why is God so mean?
Also, I'd like to point out that if God has revealed himself to us in history (via Jesus and the witnesses of his resurrection), we don't need to simply theorize about him. There's actual evidence, which we can weigh against our own personal experience.