Because here's something else that's weird but true: in the day-to day trenches of adult life, there is actually no such thing as atheism. There is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody worships...
The denigration of those we love always detaches us from them in some degree. Never touch your idols: the gilding will stick to your fingers.
The absolutely alienated individual worships at the altar of an idol, and it makes little difference by what names this idol is known.
Who but the Christian, among the religions of the world and throughout time, worships a God who loves him so much that he died an agonizing and wretched death to pay for his sins?
I often wonder if God recognizes His own son the way we've dressed him up, or is it dressed him down? He's a regular peppermint stick now, all sugar-crystal and saccharine when he isn't making veiled...
A god is anything that lives outside of God.