The problem with god is that most religions claim that god has a human personality. The Judeo-Christian god for example is said to "have made man in his image" and in the Bible is said to do things and react to things in the same way a human being would. I.e. reacting with anger, jealousy, or rewarding people who have obeyed and killing people who don't. I believe the Bible was written by human beings and not god, so it's a no-brainer to me they couldn't imagine the motivations of a non-human god.
The result is that if god acts like a human being, appears to thinks like a human being, then he comes off as a jealous, sadistic and cruel being. Why would he create men with foreskins and demand they undergo a painful ritual to slice it off to prove their loyalty? Why would he "curse" all women with periods and childbirth because of the actions of one woman? Why would he order Abraham to take his young son to the top of a mountain and sacrifice him like a goat, grieving the father and likely traumatizing the child, as a 'test'? Why would he even create imperfect human beings with undesirable impulses and then expect them to act perfectly? Why does he allow suffering to exist at all when he could make a world without it - or, if we are being punished for the actions of our forefathers, how long is he going to let this go on? If he 'loves' mankind then why does he allow each and every human being to suffer and potentially doubt his existence, and for mankind to flounder in the dark when he could descend from heaven right now and prove to all that he is the true god and that heaven IS assured for all who follow him? Would he really create people all over the world - people who never heard of Judaism or Christianity and then punish them with no salvation for the fact they never obeyed his teachings because nobody ever told them about Jesus? All seems an exercise in administering suffering and sadism on his part - if we assign human motivations to him.
If god were some kind of incomprehensible alien whose motivations were never clear, then perhaps his allowing of suffering wouldn't seem cruel or strange. If god were an indescribable force that simply started the big bang and let everything else coalesce and create itself afterward, I could accept that more happily than I could a god who displays many traits of what we would describe as a "bad" person. Even a person who did good things all their lives, but was capable of a few equally evil acts we would no longer trust to be a wholly 'good person', a pure person.
Human beings tend to believe that the innocent do not deserve to suffer. And that the ignorant can't be blamed for not knowing things before they are told them. That's logical. Most - if not all - flawed human beings are innocent and ignorant in some way. Those who knowingly propagate and allow cruelty we call evil. To me the Judeo-Christian god is certainly doing this, as far as I can understand it all with my mere human brain. He allows the innocent to suffer, or causes them to suffer for things they didn't do, and he would punish the ignorant for things they do not know. If he creates human beings, he allows some of them to be born with flaws that would end in them being sent to hell, or allows them to be born with life-threatening or degenerative deformities that would never allow them to lead a normal life. If he created "all things bright and beautiful" he also created diseases and parasites whose only purpose appears to be to live inside a human brain or a human eye and cause suffering and death. I could go on, but you get the point. His actions do not match up to the image of a benevolent and loving god. And if this life is a 'test' from him, why is there so much in it that is irrelevant to the purpose of the test - if I am born with a fatal childhood disease that means I will never live long enough to even be able to understand his teachings and be subject to the test, what on earth is the 'point' of that!
Now if you want my opinion on whether or not the thing or force or... whatever it is that decided what the speed of light is, or the configuration for the stability of electrons around atoms is, and therefore enabled the universe and life to exist, then no, I don't think it is good or evil. It is impartial and uncaring as to the situation of any one particular collection of atoms we call a human being. But all those human-personality gods out there that create humans from dust on a whim and then get upset and vengeful that they aren't perfect do not seem to be 'good'.
