It's just this

huffingtonpost.com/2014/03/1 … 65139.html

You can even take out God and an afterlife and the meaning remains the same :

It works if you work it. Keep coming back.

Is this an AA meeting?

Why is denying God such an imperative? Do you deny your parents their parental rights from conception on?

Isn’t this where Christianity and Buddhism meet?

If you’ll walk down a bit of memory lane with me my cherub, Gibbmeallyourluvin…, for those with the chutzpah to cherry pick the most fantabulous aspects of all the belief systems, I offer you, everyone, an improved understanding of everything. PM me for full disclosure :-"

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Perhaps that is the reason right there. Many think of God as a parent and so often because of this we refuse to grow up, to become independent, we lean heavily on that God.

One of my favorite quotes by Paul Tillich: “The courage to be is rooted in the God who appears when God has disappeared in the anxiety of doubt.”

That doesn’t feel good but perhaps it’s one of the best things which can happen to us. The God within, if we experience the Divine, takes a more mature, rational and non-rational place within us causing us to break away from the patriarchal influences of old.
We grow up just as we grow up when we have cut that emotionally-needy umbilical cord from our parents.
Neediness is not love.

Who or what is that “God within”?

Yet another example [to me] of a frame of mind that can work to comfort and console you “in your head” as long as you don’t bump into others who think the same thing but who have very, very different moral and political and religious agendas regarding the kind of world we need in order to actually facilitate it.

For example, “Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change…”.

In what particular context? Perhaps on your own as an individual you can’t change the way something is. But if you organized politically with others you can forge a movement that might actually accomplish those changes.

And to the extent that you recognize the manner in which you construe the parts that trouble you are rooted existentially in a particular subjective point of view, is the extent to which you recognize how, given new experiences, that can change. In other words, you’re not locked into one or another rendition of God or Reason.

Your options can increase dramatically. And maybe, if you’re lucky, you won’t become entangled as I am in the grim reality of conflicting goods.

Hahahaha.

The “real” Self which we come to know though it is a process of exploration, courage, honesty.
Psychic wholeness.

The real self is god.

Okay.

I’m not saying that we become gods. I’m not speaking of the God of the Jews and the Christians.
I just meant coming to wholeness in a sense though it’s not complete but a moment can feel like eternity. We can experience the divine without thinking that we are gods or God.

When we’re able to stop leaning on a god in the “sky”, we are able to intuit and experience at some point something which transcends belief and language.
It’s very difficult to put into words - perhaps it’s like returning to who we were when we were simply star stuff permeating the beginning of existence itself or some other existence.

The existence of parents is not normally considered a matter of controversy.

Agree with the OP.

There are terrible evils [human-based] in the World that could exterminate the human species, i.e.

  1. Secular-based evils
  2. God-based evils.

Humanity must address the above two main categories of evils to leave no possibilities the human species could be exterminated. This is why the denying of an illusory God is an [one] imperative.

It is undeniable religions [especially the Abrahamic] are hindrances to the progress of humanity and Islam [by Allah commands] is the one religion that has the possibility of exterminating the human species.

Religions has their pros and cons. The present state and conditions of humanity is such that it is optimal where the pros outweigh the cons. As such religion is a critical necessity for the majority of humans at present but not necessary the future.

To get rid of the critical dangerous cons [extermination of the human species] humanity must find sound fool proof alternatives to replace religions to deal with the unavoidable existential dilemma. The most effective approach to mute the excesses of theistic religion is to deny the existence of God [illusory] as real.

What’s so difficult about tailoring your own religion?

That which is deemed absolute tends to be very
resistant to tailoring by those who think as such

The present state of theistic religions that posed a threat to the extermination of the human species is this;

  1. God exists as real
  2. God delivered an immutable holy texts.
  3. God promised eternal life to believers.
  4. Non-believers are inferior and can be exterminated (re Islam)
  5. Even when the human species is exterminated, believers will live forever.

Therefore it follows as long as God is taken to exists as real, there is the possibility of the extermination of the human species on physical Earth.
One may claim most theistic religions are not serious threats to the human species. But the point is their theism lent support to the claim of existence of God as real to the malignant religion of Islam.

But if Premise 1 is false and eliminated, then theism is eliminated and thus defanged without authority and there will be no possibility of the human species be exterminated by any theist[s].

There is still the possibility of the human species be exterminated via the secular mode but that is another topic that must be addressed separately.

One can still tailor one religion that is not along Premises 1 to 5 to suit one’s own needs. If this is practiced on a personal and private basis, there is no big issue nor serious threats from it.

The other issues are, even if they are not a theistic religions re P1-5 above, there are always negatives from any organized institutional religions, e.g. organized institutional set-up of Buddhism also has their share of problems with all sorts of evils and scandals. This is not a priority but organized religions of any form must be done away with in the future [not now as pros outweigh their cons].