Why is belief in a higher power required?

[Silver]

no original thoughts of your own, just parrot those who come before you.

Seems absolutely no different than Christian interpretation to me. After all, what a Christian family has learned regarding the interpretation of scripture merely gets passed down to the next generation verbatim.

I may offer atheist quotes from time to time, giving credit to the author, but by no means do I parrot what other atheists have learned in regards to studying the bible. I read the bible on my own, studied the scripture on my own from when I was a regular church going believer, and my logical mind simply could not accept the obviously misinterpreted scripture that theists around me gobbled up as though it was divine rather than atrocious.