Different reasons. It is hard to get away from what you have been indoctrinated to believe in and some people need hope.

Because they feel small and want to think they are not ultimately in control of their life. Organized religion remains to try to control the crowd and to extort money from them.

Trump's 35%-40% approval rate shows you that some people will believe anything even though they know they are being lied to! I view that as more of a mental deficiency than an actual chosen belief!

If not out of dogma, I think people simply commit to faith out of tradition and/or a very natural desire for an answer to existentil horror.

I believe it works the same way we fall in love with the wrong people initially believing them be the one ! Only difference here is it's possible break-up and move on, but with God it's a million times tougher.

Fear of the unknown and death.

Many people are innately gullible. That seems like something that evolved to help us to stay in groups. But by not being constrained to facts or truth testing, religions can make up whatever kinds of stories that sound good to people. Religion will always have that advantage over truth.

Take a child and the time it is able to start putting words together, tell them myths that religion spouts....it's called brain washing. ..and when its done constantly, it takes alot to overcome. Many don't, and go on to perpetuate the evil

I don't know. I am thinking of writing a 3rd book called Why Do People Believe This Shit

I think the desire for many to have a better life doesn't meet expectations so they hang on to these fairytales to drag them through day to day. Willful ignorance I think also plays into it as well.

You got me!

If you can move away from the idea of the judgemental asshole in the sky...it's completely plausable. What if we are living inside another sentient organism, the universe.

Many people do not have the mental capacity to understand science or the world around them and so they use the same ways to explain the world as the earliest societies (animism and totemism), also they may not be able to deal with the idea that they are responsible for their own actions and the preservation of our home.

This ignorance (often by choice) needs the support of a group and so religion and it's soothing ideology gives them a support group. The irony of this of course is that most of these people cannot even follow religious teachings correctly either, no Christian who read the bible could possibly believe in no healthcare, education, food or homes for the poor, in war and hatred or bigotry. The same for jihadists and other fundamentalists. So the odds are most religious people don't believe in god, if they did there would be no war, famine or unnecessary suffering as they would want to be in the good books when they bite the big biscuit. Longer answer than expected!!!

I still remember, as a child, being taught the song "Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so". The next verse talked about how children especially are under his protection because "they are weak but he is strong". It would be very comforting to accept the message that there's a supernatural, omnipotent protector right now looking out for me. I think that's part of the answer; as Wilhelm Reich postulated, people often seem to desire a dictatorial protector to run their lives, and a God person would fulfill that role. However, I accept personal responsibility for my life, and I know that scientifically there is almost certainly no God. (I wouldn't mind a Goddess, though...)

My answer is that you can not disprove god. You can't disprove a negative. When it comes to default positions there are 3.
Something is true until proven false
Something is possible until proven true/false
Something is untrue unless proven true.
It's the same thing with big foot, people still believe in it.

People have a fear of death and the unknown. Religious beliefs(god) are passed down in a family and so brings comfort to those people. Believing in god is a crutch that some people must have to survive in this world. Which is really sad.

I know college educated people who believe the bible is factual .

It is a startling question. I for one cannot figure it out but then again who can figure out Trump supporters. Facts just loose their meaning when speaking to a mind that is chained up in a cage.

I think a large part of that may be from simple social and cultural influences or pressure.
Though I have contemplated on whether it could be a combination of Marcus's 3B framework in the formation of religious identity and some forms of Costly Display.
[religiousfreedomcenter.org]
[sciencedirect.com]

Because they are weak-minded people

Pretending to understand and force rules on "god" is not the same as believing in the possibility of a spiritual realm that exists beyond the earthly realm. The University of Virgina has done a great deal of research into reincarnation with scientific responsibility, if not at a laboratory level.

The question is why does an enlightened nation pick myths belonging to another nation who copied them from older nations, who copied them .... Why those? Why not any other one or 20 myths from elsewhere?