What's the difference between those that are willing to worship and those that aren't?

Question

Is it just a personality difference?

Does it have to do with how we were raised?

If there were empirical evidence of, for instance, God, would it change anything for those that don't worship?

Answer 1

I think a lot of it has to do with the priority an individual places on his or her own personal dignity and self-respect.
I for one, am not willing to spend my life grovelling before anyone or anything. Regardless of whether a god exists or not.

Answer 2

It's a sense of fair play. When you give something, you want to get something in return. For a lot of people, the cost/benefit analysis is good enough to do the worshiping. Others have the bar set at a different level, and may find the return on investment for worship to be not worth the effort needed for worshiping.

Answer 3

I don't think it has to do at all with how your raised or a personality difference. I think it has everything to do with whether you experience life changes good or bad. If you grow up and always have positive things and a great life, well you'd be thanking God. If however you had to endure repeated life changing tragedy's, it's just a matter of time before your faith begins to crumble.
Take me for instance, I went to private Christian schools, church every Sunday, and prayed every day. Then at 15 I found my Dad dead of a heart attack. My faith wavered but stood firm. A year later my grandfather died in my arms. He had a stroke. Thats when the questions started. Two years following that my Mom died. At that point I still thought I would see her again in Heaven. Six months later, my faith died when my brother died. He was 22. He committed suicide.
Even though my faith has been shaken to it's core, I still take my kids to church. I found God very comforting when I was their age, and I would never take those beautiful feelings from them.
Hopefully with time, I maybe able to understand why God took my entire family so young. Right now though, that is how I feel.

Answer 4

It must be environment, because the biggest predictor of religiosity is geography. People born in Sweden, for example, just aren't that religious, apparently.

If there were empirical evidence of God, would it change that I don't worship? Only if the empirical evidence were of a God that *demands* worship. If I were all-powerful, I probably wouldn't care too much about mammals singing off-tune about me in hymns or whatnot.

Answer 5

"...the arguments (for God's existence) though convincing are not resistless. They can be evaded, though not escaped. They have no power to persuade a man against his will, nay, there is required a certain pia credulitas, which means, not pious credulity, but a loyal readiness to believe, without which they do not avail. Just as no man saves his soul without his own consent, so no man accepts the existence of God if he set his face against it." - Richard Clarke

"The way to prayer
Leads through acts of wonder
and radical amazement.
The illusion of total intelligibility,
the indifference to total mystery that is everywhere,
the foolishness of ultimate self-reliance
are serious obstacles along the way.
It is in moments of our being faced with
the mystery of knowing and not knowing
of love and inability of love,
that we pray,
that we address ourselves to Him
who is beyond the mystery." - Abraham Joshua Heschel

Answer 6

well, if there was evidence of God, then more people would believe...now the Christians find that to be a test and say believing in something you cannot prove, is "Faith". Which, to me is another word for retarded. If I had faith that a pink elephant lived in my backyard and granted wishes and tried to convince others of that, starved them into believing, or even killed them for not believing, I would be a horrible person that needed to be killed or put into an insane asylum.

Answer 7

The main difference is that those who worship tend to not belive in themselves and those who don't worship tend to believe in themselves more often.
It has to do with how we are raised. If your parents are religious, you'd most likely be the same.

Answer 8

God wants us to pray. When we pray we are talking to Him. If we listen to Him we can know His answer to us. Worship (I assume you mean public worship) is a form of public prayer. When we pray we become one of His sheep. He is the divine Shepard. You are looking for externals, for a sign. What happens to us is secret, and often not visible, even to us. But from time to time we will realize that it is changing us, secretly, silently, invisibly.

Answer 9

Worship is taken from a simple word....Worth. You can tell how much worth someone puts on something by how much they worship that thing. If someone does not worship God it simply means that they do not put much worth on him.

God bless.

Answer 10

That depends.

If that evidence proved that the Old Testament was literally true, I would be actively joining the war to overthrow Joe Hovah because he's an egomaniacal, genocidal, racist, bigoted monster; and I won't have my son live in a world where he's forced to bow and scrape before him for all eternity in order to avoid an infinity of torture.