Why am I the only one to find this particular dead end?

You are not.

I cannot remember a time I genuinely believed in God, though I was raised Baptist by a fundamentalist believer. I don't know why I didn't succumb. When I was a teen, I didn't really bother doing anything I didn't want to do, except to avoid immediate punishment. All of my goals were basically just fantasies. Sometime during the 90s I applied Pascal's Wager to objective morality and began behaving as though it existed, since it seemed clear that a more intelligent goal-seeking being than I might well discover some objective morality which I couldn't understand the argument for, and that working toward an objective morality (which is the same thing as a universal top goal, since "morality" consists of statements about goals) requires that I attempt to maximize my ability to do so when it's explained what it is. This is basically the same role you're using God for, if I understand correctly.

Unfortunately, as my hope for a positive singularity dwindles, so does my level of caring about, basically, everything not immediately satisfying to me. I remind myself that the Wager still holds even with a very small chance, but very small chance persistently feels like zero chance.

Anyway, I don't have a solution, but I wanted to point out that this problem is felt by at least some other people as well, and doesn't necessarily have anything to do with God, per se. I suppose some might suggest that I've merely substituted a sufficiently intelligent goal-seeker for "God"...