Yes, very much so. In fact, to those trained up within a religion itself, such notions about God can create a huge block to actually realizing the Divine, or "finding God". It seems a natural inclination for the novice to literalize what they hear spoken about God as definitions of what God actually is. That problem is compounded when the ones who are their teachers mistake the metaphors as actual descriptors, or to use the way Alan Watts puts it, "mistaking the fingers pointing at the moon, with the moon itself".
The inexperienced, lacking the confidence that experience gives, does not know to trust themselves yet, and give away their power to assumed "authorities"; be they priests or scientists. That's not to say there are no actual teachers we should take guidance from, such as genuine masters, but as was my case, and it sounds yours as well as my experience, we give too much power to those who speak of "the truth of God" to the exclusion of all other points of views, or "fingers pointing at the moon".
I've been considering starting a thread on cataphatic versus apophatic forms of meditation as ways to realizing the Divine, as each has different important things to bring to the full Realization of the seeker. The cataphaptic approach is to meditate on the qualities of the Divine, the goodness of God, the love, the positive attributes, the visible Light, etc. (Saguna Brahman is another way to view that).
But that approach while useful, can also become a trap itself. I found this Sufi maxim, that
@Conscious thoughts, might appreciate. It goes, "
A knife is neither good nor bad; but woe to him who grasps it by the blade!". What that means in this context is that have images of God in mind, entering into the Lights, can and does have a profound effect in transforming the person out of and away from the 'earthly' human, one who runs the programs of life with no self-awareness or inner knowledge. But it can also itself create an obstacle in fully Realizing the Divine nature within our own self, or our Self. Especially because the ego can grasp that blade, seeking to fulfill itself as a "spiritual person" or such.
This is why, I believe, the Christian mystic Meister Eckhart prayed paradoxically, "I pray God make me free from God, so that I may know God in his unconditioned being". God with attributes helps us to move beyond our earthly or mundane, self-unaware programmed responses in out "active self", but to transcend into a nondual perceptive Reality, requires letting go of all objects which creates the separate self in the first place. Hell, that's my topic thread in itself.
