People first, God second. Should people put themselves above

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Good question.

I hope you come up with an answer. Mine includes reading 66 books.
In the past it include reading books on Zen Budhism.

It is not the same for everyone.

I have heard of
Ordained plumbers. ...
Finding a use for you & then purpose is great.

The great plumber who helped us on Thursday used to be a teacher.

When I was young I was fascinated with math. (Including calculus & analytic geometry. )
Thought about teaching it.
Though math occupies a box on my brain, my career took a different path.

If there be a god, then the first question should be what IS god, then ask what needs such a being may have of us.

The first answer I came up with, is companionship.

The second is personal growth (if we are a part of god (if all things came from god then we are), then for god to grow and evolve as a whole then so must we. also, if god was to love and care for its self, we as a part of god must learn to do the same as well, for and with each other as well as our selves, same as god does for us. like living cells in a larger body, connected to a whole yet individual.).

So OP's answer is both yet neither, yet one in the same. for we all need each other to survive as a part of that body and can not survive vary well separated and alone. while yet striving to continue to grow reproduce and remain healthy our selves.

Maybe God is hoping some of its sentient creations will develop some really advanced system of psychotherapy that will help it deal with its issues?

Maybe it wants companionship and entertainment.

Maybe it understands the impulse behind the Sims.

My finite self even with knowledge cannot comprehend the total nature of God.

Many including myself have tried to understand and label God through computers, psychology.
In my younger days I was so off to label with things like codependency.

In is an interesting reading others current views.
Some may be using humor. Unfortunately I don't always hear or read it correctly.

I do think there is some humor in contemplating a needy, perhaps emotionally fragile God, but that doesn't make it a less serious proposal.

I don't really understand why people have strong beliefs about God.

It seems to me that there are two main reasons that people believe in a God or Gods:

They are raised in culture that promotes such beliefs and taught some aspect of a God(s) based belief system by their family.

They have some personal experience of something that seems to transcend ordinary reality or beings. The mystic or epiphanic experience seems like a fairly universal, if rare, component of human beings. In some cultures it might be less theistic, like the moment of satori, but the sense of direct apprehension of a transcendent reality has been reported by people around the world and throughout recorded history.

Both of these can be understood as aspects of group or personal psychology and are inadequate as a rational basis for a belief in God, but both the cultural and mystical personal experience can be compelling reasons for irrational belief.

I understand that completely, but then some of those people get all worked up over the details to the point where they are ready to war over it, and I don't get that at all. Why not just be reverential for the powerful emotional thing that religious thoughts do in you, and then acknowledge that you just don't know about the details.

My general pro-agnostic position is that if there were a God of the kind people claim and that God really cared about the details of the personal dress, sexual practice or daily routine, that God would let us know in absolutely clear terms.

Since God doesn't say anything with undeniable clarity, God must either be incapable of clear communication, or all this stuff that religions make so much of is not important to God.

Many good points.
A man I know little about (Luther , Martin not Lex) had a few things about the Church)

IF there be a god,

An all knowing perfect god would have no real reason nor need for all creation.

Which leads to that of an evolving god, a concept which most will not accept for many dogmatic reasons, such as god being infallible and all knowing and unknowable.

But if you look all around us, all species of all life, even the stars them selves are slowly evolving, and if there was nothingness before god and god created everything out of and form its self, then the whole universe must be a part of the body of god. which is evolving.

Which if you think about it makes sense, considering how we our selves evolved mentally (as well as physically) as a species, and of what we perceived of what god wanted and needed of us as we evolved and how that has changed over time with our own perceptions and awareness of reality.

If

Thanks.
To be sure, Marty was hardly perfect or godly. He drank way too much, he scalded his opponents with intemperate written abuse, and in his later years as his mental health followed his physical decline, he began writing indefensible Antisemitic trash that unfortunately was resurrected by the Third Reich, and by Antisemites today. Still, the Luther we Lutherans revere was the brave, defiant man of earlier years who came to understand he - and all of us - are saved not through placating an angry God, but through the sacrifice and grace of a loving God.

Also hemorrhoids and kidney stones.

An all knowing God would have no need for creation. He could imagine every part of the universe at once without physically creating it. Maybe that's what he did. We could be nothing more than God's thoughts.

It is written that Einstein wanted to know Gods thoughts.

Elsewhere it is written Gods thoughts are nothing like ours....

Over the years I have postulated that we were as you wrote or part of a dream, including my own.

It is not The Shadow, but God who knows.

Correct.

My idea is that God is a teenaged boy playing Sim Universe on his laptop.

87

The Architect building company.

God,Jesus & Holy Spirit

Aside- 87 is a great number.

My number of the day - 42 or
62. Which is odd since I usually don't like even numbers.

You have it all wrong. It's money first, god second, and people dead last.