"The celestial dictatorship"

Why are we answerable to God? What's the basis for divine sovereignty? For instance, I've seen atheists say that even if God made us, that doesn't impose an absolute obligation. After all, the fact that parents create their children doesn't mean parents own their kids. It doesn't mean parents have authority over their grown children. Take Christopher Hitchens and his trope about the "celestial dictatorship"? 

i) The parental analogy definitely has limitations. But before we move away from that, it's worth exploring. There are traditional cultures in which parents do have lifelong authority over their kids. I believe you have that in traditional Asian culture. Filial piety. I also remember a scene from War and Peace (Bondarchuk) where Prince Andrei must seek his father's permission to marry a particular woman. 

Now, I'm not saying I agree with that. My cultural conditioning is different. But from a secular standpoint, what makes one culture morally superior to another? 

ii) Although I don't think grown children are answerable to their parents, nevertheless, if they had conscientious parents, they do have a lifelong obligation to their parents. It isn't isn't just because their parents created them, but because their parents raised them. In that regard, grown children may have greater duties to adoptive parents than biological parents. 

iii) Of course, there's a sense in which kids are supposed to outgrow their parents. Become independent. Able to provide for themselves. Indeed, able to provide for their elderly parents. 

Parents and children share a common nature, so children become the equal of their parents, or may even surpass them in some ways. Some parents are wise while others are foolish or evil. But even wise parents are fallible. 

iv) Hence, the comparison with God breaks down in several respects. We never outgrow God. He's infinitely our intellectual superior. We always depend on him for everything. For being and well-being. 

v) A somewhat better analogy is the relationship between an android and a cyberneticist. The cyberneticist didn't merely create the android. He designed the android. He knows everything about the android. He knows more about the android that it knows about itself. He knows better than the android what is best for the android. 

Of course, in scifi lore, the android has the capacity to overtake the cyberneticist. Become his superior, having superhuman knowledge, intelligence, speed, power, and longevity. 

So once again, the analogy breaks down, but in a way that reinforces divine prerogatives. It isn't sheer authority, but authority based on a being who is in every respect our superior. 

v) In Christian theology, not only is there a debt to creation and providence, but a greater debt to redemption. That, too, has human analogies. Take a man who endangers himself to save the life of another. Or a guy who gives another guy a second chance, even though the other guy doesn't deserve it. Actions like that create asymmetrical obligations.