There actually has been some fairly hard thinking on these matters, over a fair amount of time. Here's an example (from the late Oxford theologian Herbert McCabe):
"Yahweh is the God of freedom and there are to be no other gods. 'The prohibition of "other gods" is the basic demand made of Israel.' The important thing is not just to be religious, to worship something somehow. The important thing is to find, or be found by, the right God and to reject and struggle against the others. The worship of any other god is form of slavery; to pay homage to the forces of nature, to the spirit of a particular place, to a nation or race or to anything that is too powerful for you to understand or control is to submit to slavery and degradation. The Old Testament religion begins by saying to such gods, 'I do not believe and I will not serve.' The only true God is the God of freedom. The other gods make you feel at home in a place, they have to do with the quiet cycle of the seasons, with the familiar mountains and the country you grew up in and love; with them you know where you are. But the harsh God of freedom calls you out of all this into a desert where all the old familiar landmarks are gone, where you cannot rely on the safe workings of nature, on springtime and harvest, where you must wander over the wilderness waiting for what God will bring. This God of freedom will allow you none of the comforts of religion. Not only does he tear you away from the old traditional shrines and temples of your native place, but he will not even allow you to worship him in the old way. You are forbidden to make an image of him by which you might wield numinous power, you are forbidden to invoke his name in magical rites. You must deny the other gods and you must not treat Yahweh as a god, as a power you could use against your enemies or to help you succeed in life. Yahweh is not a god, there are no gods, they are all delusion and slavery. You are not to try to comprehend God within the conventions and symbols of your time and place; you are to have no image of God because the only image of God is man."
Not the least of the objections against evangelicalism is that it tends to turn Christianity back into religion. --CGE
On Fri, 10 Dec 2004, Wojtek Sokolowski wrote:
>
> The most scary aspect of the US religiosity is not that it is theistic
> - for most who identify themselves as Christians in this country are
> fundamentally incapable of comprehending complex and abstract ideas,
> including that of a "supreme being." For the most part, it is an
> expression of groupthink, cheap sentimentality and the infantile
> desire to be taken care of by someone more powerful and wiser than
> oneself.
>
> Any questioning of the idea of deity is not seen by these earnest oafs
> as a philosophical or spiritual inquiry, let alone expressions of
> existential angst, but an attempt to snatch away the mental crutch on
> which their feeble egos are leaning. That is why atheists and
> unbelievers are seen as cruel and evil people, the same crowd that
> would beat up a handicapped person or steal social security check from
> an old lady.
>