Maybe you haven't noticed it, but many people are deeply irrational.

They are taught about it from childhood and many of us don't questions stuff we've learnt in our childhood.

Education fails to instil scientific temper in them

Lack of proper mental health awareness and support.

Because belief is intrinsic to humanity even if we don't believe in religion.

I believe in a lot of human concepts, including kindness, altruism, democracy and humanism. They are all still effectively made up human ideas.

I also believe when I sit down that the chair below me really exists but I cannot truly trust my own senses 100% either. So effectively I "believe" what my sensory organs and brain interpretation tell me, but the reality is the brain and its interpretations can be wrong.

Look at the USA, the founders of the nation are often treated with a reverence akin to that of religious figures.

People have all kinds of delusions. People worship all kinds of weird things. Religion is just one of many.

Finally, someone like Ayn Rand shows that a human can have pretty reprehensible and hypocritical beliefs even if they are an atheist. She promoted bullshit "great men" theories of humanity and argued that selfishness could be used for good.

She also died penniless and on government benefits while spending her whole life preaching against things like government benefits.

People are deeply irrational even without religion.

Here are a few reasons people believe:

• Meaning and Purpose: Religion can offer a framework for understanding the universe and our place in it. It can provide answers to big questions about life, death, and morality.

• Community and Belonging: Religious communities can provide social support, a sense of belonging, and shared values. This can be especially important during difficult times.

• Comfort and Hope: Religion can offer comfort in times of grief or hardship. It can also provide hope for the afterlife or a better future.

• Tradition and Identity: Religion can be a core part of a person's cultural heritage or family identity. People may feel a connection to their ancestors or cultural background through their faith.

• Ethics and Morality: Many religions provide a moral code that guides people's behavior. This can be helpful in making decisions about right and wrong.

I don't believe, but I can see why people stick with it and don't look beyond it. You can get all these things without religion, its just not something that's taught/passed down in the same way as religion is. Additionally, deconstructing is very difficult. You're raised to believe something to be real and you're expected to just drop it and step out of Plato's cave? You'd look like a madman to any friends/family who aren't willing and ready to step out and look around.

Serious answer:

I can't speak for anyone else, but I believe in a religion because I've found it to be personally beneficial.

I was a pastor for many years and saw much of the best and worst religion had to offer. I haven't stepped foot inside a church since COVID broke out and don't know that I ever will again.

My personal beliefs are still a significant part of my life, but I understand why someone would ask the question that spawned this discussion.

I'm not religious at all. But in responding to your question OP: we don't have to understand why people believe. Religion just isn't for us, and that's fine. Other people find it has value, and that's fine too. The fact that religion has lasted this long with this many people is proof in itself that there's some value people get out of it. We don't have to get it to understand that.

All the comments here that explain religion solely as dumb or irrational are just as closed minded as the people they're criticising.

For the same reasons they always have.

The year has little to do with it. The only things we've really undeniably progressed in over the past century are scientific knowledge and the level of technology. Existential philosophy hasn't exactly made breakthroughs recently, to my knowledge.

Each person still needs to find their own answer to the fundamental questions of "why am I here" and "wtf is death and how do I deal with it".

Our mechanical, scientific understanding of reality provides fairly depressing answers to these questions. Religion? Sunshine and roses.

Also, on a more practical factor: childhood indoctrination and cultural inertia. Most people are raised in religion and they find it "good enough", so religion continues.

In some religions walking away from the church means being excluded from family, social, and business contacts. So cutting ties with everyone you know basically.

• Need psychological support in times of distress
• Gullible
• sense of community and shared experience

Indoctrination.

In 2024 life is hard and you can't do anything about it in most cases. Religion gives you an excuse for why it must be so, so that you can keep grinding away.

It's like asking why people smoke.

Is it bad for you? Yes.

Is it a burden on society? Yes.

Is it addictive and does it make you feel good? For some, yes.

They are raised with it and old habits die hard.

Indoctrination at a young age.

It is very difficult to accept mortality if you don't believe in an afterlife. Religion brings comfort, and comfort improves mental health (at the cost of some delusion).

Like it or not, people who went to prayer house or religious gatherings socialise more than people who stay indoor and only interact with limited amount of people. Assuming there's no fishy business going on with that particular chapter, they tend to be happier considering the fact human are social animal and the feeling of loneliness due to lack of human to human interaction is the build-in alarm system to warn us against solitude. It's this reason religion is so success because it's enforce togetherness and make you feels like you're part of something.

If we're going into a utopian world where human doesn't need to work anymore and social security is guaranteed, religious will be something even bigger than today.

Edit: forgot to mentioned, am atheist and give no shit to skyman, but somehow on the internet atheist can't have opinion that's not shitting on people with faith.

It's a good coping mechanism.

Ignoring the inherit assumption that religion is de facto an issue or backwards, and ignoring the fallacy that "progress" is co-liniar with the passage of time, logic is not in of itself a perfect humanistic process of thought, rather it has been developed by humans over the millennia.

There is great comfort in the process of growing into and exploring one's faith. Growing up in a theologically liberal Christian church, I was invited to find ways to meld the kingdom of God and the kingdom of man is such a way that I find purpose and vocation within my life. Religion also offers a place for community among people committed to a mission, be it good or bad. These communities preserve and honor cultural traditions, again, the good and the bad. These are just a few reasons I think people are now, and will remain well into the future, religious.

Because it can't truly be proven that there either is or isn't a god / gods.

You can laugh at people for believing in a god, but at the same time I'm willing to bet you can't prove that there there isn't one.

In my mind, atheism makes just as much sense as religion - they are both total assumptions based on incomplete data. Agnosticism is the only sensible way.

Indoctrination and ignorance, notice how a big chunk of its members are old people. Younger people are less interested, thankfully. Also, for some people, it is a social club.

Dear (my) god, you folks are irrational. If someone acts a certain way, judge them for it! But judging anyone with faith just because you don't believe in that!? I can't prove God exists any more than you can prove they don't. If a religious person acts kind, fair, and rational, you shouldn't have anything against them, should you? But this post isn't about American right-wingers, or extremist Islamic Muslims, is it? It's about anyone who has any faith at all, just because you don't believe the same thing. Caring Christians literally building homes for people internationally, Sikhs feeding anyone, no matter their beliefs...

I know I'm going to get downvoted for this, but that's literally small-minded.

The social aspect might be underappreciated. My guess is people are mainly introduced by family and friends and it becomes a big part of their identity. It becomes difficult to separate the individual elements.

Gods are literally just a psychological comfort blanket to explain the unexplainable. Most religious people don’t put that much thought into what they believe, challenging concepts are just tucked nicely away in the “Gods will” box and they move on. I think everyone copes with those brain shattering concepts in their own creative way or risk getting buried alive in anxiety.

More comforting than the alternative. Its one reason why when material conditions worsen people faith goes up.

I'm an effort to get you an answer that isn't dismissive:

1. Youth indoctrination, social conformity, and cultural isolation. If your parents, friends, and most of your community tells you something is true, you are unlikely to challenge it for a variety of reasons including trust (most of what they've taught you works for your daily life), tribal identity, etc

2. People naturally fear death, and one coping strategy for the existential fear of death is to convince yourself that the death of your body is not the end of your existence. Science does not provide a pathway to this coping strategy so people will accept or create belief systems that quell that fear, even in the face of contradictory evidence. Relieving the pressure of that fear is a strong motivator.

3. Release of responsibility. When there is no higher power to dictate moral absolutes, we are left feeling responsible for the complex decisions around what is or isn't the appropriate course of action. And that shit is complicated and often anxiety inducing. Many people find comfort in offloading that work to a third party.

I think there's something that always seems to get left out of these conversations and that's that "when I practice my religion, I feel something that I don't feel otherwise" is frequently a true statement for the religious.

I've often heard self-described atheists say that, often when conversing/debating with religious folks about why they believe, the conversation comes to a point where the religious person will say "I've just had a personal experience" and the atheist, unable to relate to that, really has no way to advance the conversation beyond that.

Were I opposite some fundamentalist Christian or something in such a situation, my response would be "yeah, me too! That's totally normal."

I think the beligerantly nonreligious either can't relate to religious experiences or don't want to admit to having had them for fear of embarassment or maybe rhetorical concessions. And the religious typically haven't had such experiences outside the context of their religious practices, or if they have they still attribute it to their religious beliefs, and so take it as proof of their beliefs.

And these religious experiences are very real and very normal. Probably some people are more prone to such experiences than others. But despite how the religious tend to interpret them they have little to no relationship to one's beliefs. One can have experiences of anatta ("no-self" in Theravada Buddhism) or satori (sudden, typically-temporary, enlightenment in Japanese Zen Buddhism) or recollection (a term from Christian mysticism) or kavana (Jewish mysticism) or whatever without accepting any particular belief system. There are secularized mindfulness and meditation practices that can increase one's chances and frequency of experiencing these states.

But, unfortunately, the history of these experiences has been one of large religious organizations claiming and mostly exercising a monopoly on such experiences.

These experiences feel very deep and profound and can be a very positive (or negative!) thing, even affecting the overall course of one's life. And they can be kindof addictive in a good way.

All that to say that I think any conversation about why people believe in religions today is incomplete without taking into account that for many people, their religion is their means of connection with some extremely profound and beautiful experiences. Though people only accept beliefs along with those experiences because they don't know these experiences aren't actually exclusive to any one religion or any set of beliefs. And those experiences are 100% real and tangible to them. (Whether they correspond to anything real in consensus reality is a whole other conversation, but the experiences themselves are a normal human phenomenon like orgasm or schadenfreude.)

Just some followup thoughts:

• Like I alluded to earlier, meditation can be dangerous. Do your research first and know the risks.
• There are a ton of good books on these topics. "Stealing Fire" by Steven Kotler and Jamie Wheal is a good place to start if you're interested in the science of it or The Science of Enlightenment if you want to get a little deeper into the practice.
• If you want to know my personal beliefs, my beliefs are that beliefs don't matter. Personal experience does. "But do you believe god exists?" Honestly it'd take me a good hour or more to give a proper answer to that question. Let's go with "neither yes nor no" for the short version.
• Every culture has these experiences. Humans likely have had them since humans have existed.

Cause a lot of people care more about feeling comfortable than feeling statistically probable.

Objective reality doesn't matter to you if you close your eyes, cover your ears and insist on living in a fantasy world.

Let's put it this way, if I went around basing my entire understanding of reality on Greek gods, people would rightly think I was fucking nuts.

Do it with the bible though...

This is likely not the best place to get answers for this question.