When I first left the Witnesses 15 years ago, I still believed in the JW God, Jehovah, as the real and only "true" God and that all the others were not real. They were real in that people worshipped them and as a distraction from "True Worship", but to me, they were simply imaginary entities.
No other gods actually existed. There was Jehovah, Satan, and the angels and demons. The rest were all sideshows created by Satan to lead people astray from the worship of the "true" God Jehovah. This is what I was taught and this is what I believed, as completely as I believed anything at all.
But, Jehovah had never really helped me with anything. I prayed and I prayed as sincerely and devoutly as a person could. I was a good Witness. I commented regularly, went out in service... nothing... Anything that I achieved, I ultimately achieved on my very own.
So, what was the God of the Witnesses to me? This was a god that never actually spoke to me, through Christ (who never spoke to me either), or personally, in my heart. I was never one to expect to hear an actual voice. I assumed a certain degree of subtlety. I was told that he at least spoke to us all through the "spirit-directed" organization. So, what did he say to me? He told me that life on this earth sucked right now and it was all our faults. He told me that I was born in sin, evil, imperfect, and that I had to follow His (their) rules in order to hope to make it into the paradisaical New System, complete with a theocratic government, governed by Jesus Christ for the thousand year reign, until the final battle, after which governorship would be transferred to Jehovah.
The conversations He had with me were one way, through the WBTS, and all he ever did was tell me what a bad person I was ("original sin") and how I was expected to spend every available hour of my life devoted to His service, which of course meant servitude to the WBTS.
I eventually discovered (after leaving the religion) that the Jehovah they believed in and taught about, while bearing some resemblance to the God (Adonai, ha-shem, YHVH) of the bible, was not, in fact, the same entity. The Jehovah they described in their publications was simply not the same entity.
Just imagine having a person described to you all your life, only to meet them and find that they are nothing like what you were taught to expect!
I thought on this and thought on this and thought on this. The god I was raised to believe in was nothing more than a mental construct formed by the WBTS!!
Now, I could have discovered for myself a version of Jehovah I believe in. And in fact, I did for a time. But I kept coming back to the realization that it was still just a mental construct which likely had little bearing on reality. I considered what I knew, or thought I knew, of people in my life. I realized that I really only knew about them what was contained within my mind about them. To other people, they were different people. I found this true about not just people, but with everything I could conceive of. The image I held in my mind of a thing, or in my heart, was simply not the thing in itself.
So, this being true to me, I thought, "why do we feel such a drive to believe in God?" I searched within myself for this. And what I found was that in my heart of hearts I wanted to believe in God, some God, some ultimate Supreme Being, and in some hope in some sort of afterlife... because I was afraid.
I was afraid of dying. I was afraid of the unknown. I was afraid that there may not, after all, be any meaning to life. And so, I considered this, deeply. Why did I feel such fear? Well, I was taught this fear. It is not necessarily an innate thing as many would have told me. Why should I be afraid that this life is all that I may have, that I must forge my own path, that I must be self-reliant, ultimately?
And several things occurred to me. Who might benefit from my fear? Well, any religious "authority" would, certainly. Also, it occurred to me that I was being kept from maturing into an adult by relegating power to a god that, ultimately belongs to me. Blasphemy!! No, not at all. Assuming God is omnipotent, omniscient, etc., how could He be jealous of my taking ownership of the full power of being, simply, Human, which He, after all, gave to Me?
Do you need God? Do any of us need God? Would a god be okay with us worshipping him out of fear?
If there is a God, He's not talking much to me. I'd prefer to worship the full potential such a god infused into each and every one of us as "little gods" than some big bearded guy sitting on some cloud, some "where", doling out law and retribution though some religious "authority", expecting obedience through fear of losing out in some reward which may or may not even exist.