The key word here is kenosis. This means that God (should he or she exist) has the power of self-limitation. This is usually used in the context of the theology of the Incarnation, to explain why Jesus, although wise, appears ignorant of certain issues (such as whether or not he's definitely going to die - he questions this during the agony in the Garden of Gethsemane - or when the world will end). However, some theologians (including me) extend this concept to explain free will, physics, and all those silly logical arguments about omnipotence.
In the United Kingdom, not all the instances of animal cruelty cited are legal. In the world outside wahtever unspecified country the laws cited apply in, different ethical norms prevail, just as different religions and interpretations of religions prevail.
Pi's WU, by the way, remains, despite revision, fundamentally lacking in any understanding of theology or Christian teaching. There is no concept in orthodox Christianity of God 'sending' unborn souls anywhere. Indeed, there is no formal theology of the soul of the unconceived. Many writers, including Dante Alighieri (in the Paradiso, where he's more lenient than when placing Muslims in Hell in the Inferno), have taken the view that Christian salvation is not exclusive to those brought up in the Christian tradition - rather that that tradition provides a model for behaviour. If someone arrives at the same, or a similar set of morals of their own accord, which is not generally considered impossible at all, that's fine. God is thought of as 'loving to everyone, and his mercy is over all his works'. Jerry Falwell may not agree with this, but you'll find a great many Christians do.
The 'Sim City' model is excessively complex: any 'proper' AI could be capable of placing its creator in the same position. But as, in fact, there's no archaeological evidence for God's direct intervention by, say, killing lots of people, the situation is more as if the AI developed a paranoid delusion that its creator had abused it in childhood - a kind of False Memory Syndrome, if you like. How could the AI's creator convince it that it was deluded, yet leave it with free will? As an atheist, pi is attaching far too much significance - not to mention a whole load of modern American socio-political values - to the Bible, which is thousands of years old and put together by humans with different ideas and values. The extent to which it reflects God must, surely, be irrelevant if God turns out not to exist?