"Well, I'm an atheist and I don't worship anything so you're wrong."

I'm seeing that a lot here. They have a very narrow definition of "worship" - if not God, there is something else they obsess over, something or someone they hold as more valuable than anything else and that they would sacrifice anything for - money, "society," government, science, "love," themselves, etc.... But, even if we pretend that is not so;

Most people do not function - they do not behave - without some belief in a higher power. When a society loses it, it goes insane and becomes dysfunctional. There are some people who are fine with out it, but most humans are incapable of being decent when they don't have it. They need something that makes them hold themselves accountable in private times, they need something that gives them hope when things aren't going their way, they need something to tell them "everything's gonna be alright," they need something to make them feel like they matter whether they do or not.

If you don't believe in God, then some narrative that goes beyond the earthly world must be fed to those people in order to maintain societal peace and productivity. Otherwise, they'll just behave like animals and be insufferable. If you do believe in God, then you must spread this narrative to "save" these people and/or make the world a better place. Either way, some kind of god that is NOT man and that transcends the material world must be given to these people who don't function right without it in order to make the world livable.

Like how some people need insulin to function properly; some people need religion to function properly. They don't produce enough intrinsic value on their own so they need to get it elsewhere.