That is the tribal attitude of the 2000 year old sheep herders who wrote the bible and were some of the first to believe they must be one of the chosen and invented their invisible friend and figured that thanking the friend is appropriate.

He exists only as long as we talk about him/her. There I have done it again.

The existence of god would not establish that he is worthy of praise, gratitude or worship. That would be a completely separate question. People who are free to think can grasp this; people who are not, generally can't grasp it.

I don’t think god exists, I don’t feel the need to thank him or praise him, although I do feel my distant ancestors (who were probably all Protestants) sending disapproving ghostly glances at me.

I'll have to see how he dresses and wears his hair before l can judge his level of vanity.

Of course we don't. Do we demand that our children thank and praise us? Only if we're narcissistic. And to think that our inconsequential lives on a little pale blue dot in the middle of one of billions of galaxies occupies the interest of an entity capable of bringing the universe into existence represents the highest form of hubris ... which is essentially what religion gives you.

Like many of his contemporaries, my avatar was a Deist. To the Deist, the Almighty made the universe, set up its laws, and moved on to other things--no interaction, no need for prayer, no miracles, no doctrines, no holy books or prophets, no churches and no organized religions. That's a God I could live with. Reminds me of the lyric by Todd Rundgren:

God said...
You are not serving me, you're serving something else
Cause I don't need to be pleased, just get over yourself
You can't suck up, up to me, I know you all too well
But I don't dwell upon you, so get over yourself
Cause you're not praying to me, you're praying to yourself
And you're not worshipping me, you're worshipping yourself
And you will kill in my name and heaven knows what else
When you can't prove I exist, so get over yourself

The point is that if you were that powerful and exist it would not matter what weaker less omniscient and omnipotent beings think about you. So either there is no god or no omnipotence or omniscience. So what is a god with no power? Not a god.

The xian god is one weird and unstable fellow ...I don't know how to possibly even want to like someone who once killed everyone on Earth except Noah and kin !