Julia Sweeney is an actress and writer best known for her four-year run on Saturday Night Live and her solo shows. Her recent piece, Letting Go of God, she raises a common problem for contemporary atheists—why does God want (or even seem to need) our praise? Here's how Sweeney puts this objection to belief in God:

I'm living my life as a person who accepts the natural world. The whole idea that there's a God who cares whether people believe in him or not, like why would God care if people believed in him or not? That was one of the many things that I found so shocking reading the Bible. First of all, how insecure God is. I mean, God is so insecure he needs everyone to say, "You're the number one, you're the number one over all the other god's, you're the top god." And like, it's the most insecure character.

Editor's Note: Contrast Ms. Sweeney's view with this quote from C.S. Lewis: "I think we delight to praise what we enjoy because the praise not merely expresses but completes the enjoyment … It is not out of compliment that lovers keep on telling one another how beautiful they are; the delight is incomplete till it is expressed. It is frustrating to have discovered a new author and not to be able to tell anyone how good he is; to come suddenly, at the turn of the road, upon some mountain valley of unexpected grandeur and then to have to keep silent because the people with you care for it no more than for a tin can in the ditch; to hear a good joke and find no one to share it with … . Fully to enjoy is to glorify. In commanding us to glorify Him, God is inviting us to enjoy Him."