I'm going to be away from my computer for a couple of days, so I thought I'd leave this question for readers to ponder.

In my attempt to understand why people worship God, I’ve been intrigued by the concept of worship itself. Whether it be of a God, entertainment celebrity or sports figure, it seems that many people need to worship something or somebody. So, just what is worship and, of more import, why do people do it? The American Heritage Dictionary defines worship as, "The reverent love and devotion accorded a deity, an idol, or a sacred object". That sounds like as good a definition as any, so let’s move on to the question of why people worship.

Does the idea of worshiping "a deity, an idol, or a sacred object" not seem rather archaic and strange in the year 2007? I can comprehend the need felt by early humans, in their ignorance, to worship something they saw as larger and more powerful than themselves as the cause for the material world and natural events in it. But what of us in this modern world where science has provided explanations for nearly all of what past peoples have held as mysterious? Perhaps an analogy can be drawn between the growth and maturity of a human from infancy to adult and the evolution of human knowledge attained through science over the past couple thousand years. Our vast accumulated knowledge of the world and beyond provides no excuse for the continuance of childish beliefs. So, I ask, why do so many people cling so desperately to the infantile need to worship a deity, a deity that never answers back and has not been proven to actually exist?