Your whole post is extremely American. Why do you want to be #1 compared to anyone, let alone compared to God? You are no longer religious because your self-centric world-view is incompatible with believing anyone can be better than you, which includes God? I have trouble believing you are serious.

You completely missed my point. Here: God doesn't exist, I'm in competition with myself only, I can't control the outcome or anyone or anything at all including my emotions, only my individual behavior.

I see. That makes more sense. That being said, you are still framing life as a competition/game which I'm not sure I see the point in. For what it's worth, I view religion mostly as a mechanism for encouraging behavior which is collectively beneficial. We are all better off if we act in ways that are trustworthy, even if that means individual sacrifice in some cases, and so the whole afterlife b.s. is just a way of suggesting a lifestyle which is pro-social. Case in point, even people who supposedly believe in paradise don't act like it.

I'd also like to amend my comment from "God doesn't exist" to "We don't know if God exists".

I respect your opinion - it's hard to put those out there.

As a counter thought, would a 'hole' in the argument be that religion doesn't ask, require, or expect you to be #1. It just asks you to try to improve and to become a better person. How could Gd expect you to be as good as "he/she/it/they"? Gd would have created you, and designed your limitations.

Why not separate G*d's expectations of you from your interpretations of it? Just say "i'm falliable, always will be; always improving, always will be"

Thank you for your comment, yes it is hard.

So what you are saying is God built failure into me intentionally. Therefore I could just point to that and say "Well I failed because I was prebuilt knowing I was going to fail". I don't accept that. I say "I failed because of something I, personally did not or could not do yet. I will correct that. It's not divine, it's just work and it's on me."

Depends on your branch. Calvinism claimed there were only 1300 Elect who were guaranteed a place in heaven. Lot of effort spent trying to figure out your ranking

I did not know that. 1300? That is quite a specific, but round number. 1028 would have been really cool!

Why can't I be better than God? Interpersonal comparisons are never particularly healthy, but I don't see how he would always come out on top. He had questionable design aesthetics sometimes, to say nothing of the often deadly implementation bugs. And that's not even getting into the choice to build things in his system that can be used for terrible, immoral purposes.

You are not in control of you though. You are at best a little boat on the governmental, legal and economic ocean; and those waters are full of monsters.

That's right. I can not control anything at all except my own behavior. Exactly right.

This one really threw me.

I'm often critical of religion myself, and find it all a bit baffling to be honest, but I feel like you've really misread believers here.

Surely the point of religion is not to compete with the divine, but to humble yourself in obeisance to it?

One example: "Islam means submission".

OK, so there are televangelists and muscular Christianity and so on, but they make up a small part, don't they?

What exactly does being #1 mean? Being #1 at what exactly? Running? Singing? Wealth? Everything?

Well that depends on your value system. If you define your own value system, you decide where you are. If you get a value system from someone or something else: they decide.

Please give me a quick concrete example. What is your value system, and how are you #1 in it?

Sure. For example: I value honesty and hard work. If I am honest and am working hard I am living with integrity.

Thanks. Are you #1 in honesty? Are you #1 in hard work? From what I understand, you do not believe in a God because believing in one means you will never be #1 in honesty or #1 in hard work, and it is your goal to be #1 in them.

It's a strange way of looking at things, because you cannot really measure being the worlds most honest person, unless you meet and test all the 7 billion people alive today, and how exactly will that test be conducted? And since we're not restricting being #1 to human beings (God is not human), how about ants? I'd say an ant is more hardworking than any human being alive, so none of us will ever be #1 at hard work. Whats so wrong with being #2 at hard work? Or even #8888,888,888,000 at hard work? I doubt I am #1 in anything I value (independence, knowledge etc) but it does not matter at all. The opposite infact, seeing people better than me in things I value only inspires me to greater heights.

You're not necessarily meant to compete with a being conceived as omnipotent, omni-powerful and creator of the universe.

I'd be wary of american churches too, given the role religion plays in american culture.

It's not the competion that matters, not even playing against or defeating the #1 tennis player. Think of it as a tennis point being played. If both you and #1 play the point perfectly, a beautiful play that will remain in tennis history and create a sense of wonder in many people that watch that point, it does not even matter if you win or lose the point, what truly matters is being part of something great, greater than yourself, greater than the current #1 in the tennis. But to be able to do that, it requires a lot of work, a lot of dedication, and a mindset of playing for the game's sake, playing to feel good and have fun and make other people feel good watching, not trying to win a competition. Also, it doesn't mean that the point could not be played in a different way which is also perfect and beautiful in its own, so other people could potentially play that point and that doesn't mean they're lesser players that you, and it doesn't mean that somebody who can win all points and matches is also playing the most beautiful tennis ever.

You've described the hero's journey but I don't see how it applies to the context of this thread? Is your point; that the metaphor for something greater than yourself is an adequate replacement for religion or something?