Mmm, see I could argue this either way, which is why I asked for opinions.
Since 'creator' and 'patriarch' are two totally different things, how about being fairly certain that there is no 'creator' but even if there is it doesn't matter since this does not in and of itself necessitate acts of worship or acknowledgment of a higher power. The sun comes up every morning whether you believe in it or not, if the universe exists due to some 'creator' then it's already been built and you can reap the benefits regardless of how you believe it came to be made.
This view works on the assumption that there is no benevolent patriarch or afterlife
A lot of people couldn't care less about esoteric questions on the nature and existence of God. It's not the existence or non-existence of God that forces worship, it's the political castes/classes that feed off the ritualized bureaucracies that inevitably grow around any successful religion, for power and influence and money, as has happened for tens of thousands of years for a vast variety of different religions across the planet. Once the power is entrenched deep the rest is just inertia.
A personalized and individual relationship with "God" is a product of the renaissance, the reformation, the enlightenment, the industrial revolution (at least in Europe). For most of the world religion is still an important collective tribal marker. Religious belief isn't an irrelevant, superfluous detail just because you live in a society where it was made that way through hundreds of years of social and political development.
Frankly it's ethnocentric arrogance to look at these competing systems and flipantly dismiss them as just relics of a fading past, that can obviously not affect our "superior" modern social constructs in any way. Just look at it in a historical context, it's not a random coincidence that these political systems (yes, political, as organized religions gather power that is inevitably where it leads, for those that don't start inextricably linked with political power in the first place) have been so sucessful and have emerged independently wherever any human collective existed throughout recorded history. It's obvious that they provide an evolutionary advantage to collectives. In fact you'd have to be pretty fucking retarded, or wilfully blind and ignorant to the reality of the world to pretend religious belief is merely a benign and unimportant detail with no ulterior consequences beyond a simple personal opinion. Secular governments are fighting an uphill battle against human nature, against tens, hundreds of thousands of years of inertia. Could be just a flash in the pan in historical terms, compared to the ancient monoliths of organized religion, yet so many seem so convinced that this is now the new normal and there is just no possible way it will ever backtrack or be threatened by "primitive" competitors.
edit for spelling
