I think all religion is trash, yes even the ones started by rich kids who sat under trees because no one told them they might die until they were adults.

The question lands because it compresses a lot of real textual and philosophical friction into one joke, so it deserves a serious answer, and the best case from believers runs roughly like this. Start with the “narcissism” charge: demands for worship look petty only if God is a person among persons. Classical theism says God is the ground of being and the supreme good, so directing attention toward him is less like a celebrity demanding fans and more like a doctor insisting you take the medicine that is also the only thing keeping you alive. Worship, on this view, is orientation toward reality, not ego maintenance. Skeptics reply that this is a neat redefinition that sits awkwardly with passages where God is described as “jealous,” which is hard to square with a being who needs nothing. The “absentee” complaint is the problem of divine hiddenness. The traditional replies are that overwhelming proof would coerce rather than invite trust, that meaningful freedom requires epistemic distance, and that God is present in ways like conscience, community, and sacrament rather than in dramatic interventions. Critics, notably J.L. Schellenberg, press that sincere seekers who never find anything are poorly explained by this, and that a loving parent doesn’t hide from a searching child. The “blood rituals” are explained historically and theologically. Ancient Near Eastern religion was saturated with sacrifice, so the Hebrew cult can be read as God meeting people inside a vocabulary they already understood, regulating and eventually relativizing it, with the prophets repeatedly insisting mercy matters more than offerings. Christians go further and read the sacrificial system as a shadow pointing toward a single final self-offering, while Jews and Muslims generally read it differently, as obedience, atonement, or discipline rather than appeasement. The skeptic’s counter is that an omnipotent deity could have skipped the slaughter entirely, and that “accommodation” looks suspiciously like a human culture writing its own habits into heaven. The “dietary restrictions” are the easiest to defend. Kosher and halal rules function as identity markers, forms of discipline, and arguably a way of making every meal a reminder of a covenant. Plenty of secular practices, like fasting or vegetarianism, work similarly. Whether that justifies the cosmic seriousness attached to shellfish is another matter. The deepest reply is that the portrait is a composite. Different authors across a thousand years wrote about their experience of the divine, and the texts record a developing, contested understanding. Believers see revelation unfolding; skeptics see anthropology. Notice that your question itself assumes a moral standard by which God can be found wanting, and theists argue that standard needs a foundation. The honest bottom line is that if God exists, the behavior you describe is either misread, culturally mediated, or a real mark against the traditional picture, and reasonable people land in all three places.

As a hypothyroidism, would you be more inclined to believe in a god if they simply removed every natural predator from Ebola to polar bears? Would you be more likely to believe if murder by the IDF beyond impossible but completely impossible to comprehend?

All the ritual and diet stuff is just humans fabricating nonsense and attributing it to a deity

To be fair that is only one god. Have you heard the good news of odin?

Just for funsies I’ll challenge this.

In the Bible’s beginning God gave man the power to choose what they wanted to do. Guess what they did? The exact opposite of what he told them. And ever since then every human has made the choice to go against God’s will.

And before anyone goes why doesn’t God punish the sinners?, the problem is everyone is guilty. Punishing the worst means punishing everyone.

We fuck up the world, not God. Shit things don’t happen because God makes them, but because WE make them.

I’m sick of hearing the same circle jerk ahh argument that The world is shit and hence God must be an asshole (pun intended). It’s shit because we make it shit.

Now I’m not going to tell you to submit to Jesus or anything like that. But if you’re going to attack God you better not mis- at least make your argument with the realistic views of both sides.

if he’s real, he’s probably not behaving as a narcissistic whatever but you may perceive it as so cause you’re just a human and can’t understand what’s going on

Paragraphs. Fuck this wall of text diatribe.

Religion is useful to many. In the US as long as you’re seen sitting in a pew, or doing as little as poorly quoting a bible verse on occasion, you get a pass on being unchristian the rest of the time. Christianity absolves followers of their unchristian behavior. Easy peasy. Billionaires and politicians exploit that slim veneer to create useful culture wars and gain political power through fake religious morality. As a US christian your inclusion is dependent on being indignant or offended whenever any of this is questioned, but you are never required to follow the teachings of Jesus.

If God exists

I challenge this premise.

When someone shows who they are, believe them the first time.

    -Maya Angelou

Even if he doesn’t exist it tells all you need to know about the people/institution that made it up.

a Bronze Age tribal chieftain with anger management issues

Pretty spot on. Those tribal chieftains used religion to justify their power so it’s not surprising they modelled their good on themselves.

Euphoric.

I’m upvoting due to the post title alone, but dude you’ve got to learn to paragraph. That wall of text is just too dense for me to even try reading.