I agree with you on your first paragraph. In Sunday School we were taught that only those who have never heard the word of God cannot be punished with damnation.
On your third paragraph. Buddha is a God of self-gradifiers?
Well if you study Buddhism, it is basically man going in search of God. Now a tenet of Judaism and Christianity, is that man can look all he wants to, but God is in control and finds man. No matter how hard he tries, man will never find God, unless God allows him to. You can see how this gives rise to errors, in man thinking that he has found God and then forms a religion, founded upon their own ideas. Or, they find Nature, and that being the highest they can think, outside of themselves, they begin to worship the creature, rather than the Creator.
Buddhists believe that they too can find God, that it's just a matter of bringing the body under their own control. They will meditate, and so, having only themselves to know, they have no other conclusion to arrive at, other than they themselves, the Atman, is God.