Short answer, because of ignorance and brainwashing. Proof: look at trump and his millions of moron followers in a country that is supposedly advanced and developed.

Humans are stupid. That's it.

Religion is going away, but it's a long game. Very long. About a thousand years before most religion is consigned to the fringe. Maybe a hundred years for fundamentalism. Those are my personal guesses.

And no, science won't destroy religion. It isn't designed to and hasn't set out to.

Critical thinking will be religion's undoing. It is already underway. But it's a very slow process.

It's not that much of a surprise when you consider the fact that many people don't practice logical thinking. Some will go way out of their way to not allow facts to hinder their thinking.

I look at this from my own experience. 30 years a Christian and at times a diehard one. Had a very traumatic experience and almost died. Tried to say prayers for 2 years to solve an emotional problem with no success. Finally someone suggested hypnosis and I tried it one time and it helped me more than 2 years of prayer. I decided to study hypnosis and the more I studied the more I realized that religion was nothing more than self-hypnosis. To feel 100% confident that I wasn’t being blasphemous I started to research history of Christianity. I was absolutely shocked at the lack of evidence. I had always assumed because I had been told that there was overwhelming evidence. Then I started to listen to Christian apologist defending Christianity and claiming its 100% true. The arguments and evidence they used was flimsy at best and not only did it not sway me to their side it actually strengthened the other sides argument.

Most Christians will not have the near death at 46 experience I had and try something alternative like hypnosis. They will be stuck in the emotional experience of salvation. That time when the preacher told you if you didn’t get saved you’re going to hell. Then you go up because of fear and feel a sense of relief and joy that you prevented yourself from being tortured forever. Then spend the rest of your life trying to please and thank god for not punishing you. Religion is disconnecting from your rational reasonable self and letting emotion dictate your life. Forget that there is no evidence of Jesus physically or historically that doesn’t matter cause I could feel him when the choir was singing or the Holy Ghost got hold of me when the preacher was talking. The thing is that people outside of religion can have those very sane experiences. Emotions can and will lie to you. Emotions don’t care about the truth it only knows what feels good. Cold hard facts don’t care about emotions

It will not "go away", however less and less people around the world believe in God and it is a growing trend.

The idea that science would oust religion is predicated on the assumption that a significant majority of people are able to think, which assumption is manifestly false.

In the last 400 years science has not destroyed religion, but it sure has damaged it!

Religion had an enormous head start of thousands of years while science and enlightenment are relatively recent developments. You can't destroy an idea like that overnight. Having said that, science isn't out to "destroy " anything. It seeks the truth through knowledge and study.

Quite honestly. Life and the realities of the universe are too complicated for most people to grasp. The superstitious and simplistic explanations religion provides creates a comforting illusion that they have a great understanding.

In part it is stupid people who want ot feel smart, and it is also in part intellectual laziness and the mistake of evoked emotional experiences as being "spiritual" confirmation of religious beliefs.

I know. I see it firsthand with my family. Watched my brother fight and die of brain cancer, talking about ‘God’s plan’ every damn day.
I see people on my chronic illness groups, posting long screeds on why god hasn’t healed them YET, but they still think it will happen.
Some will always need the delusion/illusion.

I don't expect that religious faith will ever be eradicated.
Definitely not as long as the religious indoctrination of children is permitted, anywhere.
Also, not as long as there's money in it for the hierarchy who perpetuate it.
Most people are followers anyway. That aspect of human nature is not likely
to evolve away.

It wishful thinking as more and more people, particularly young people, abandon outmoded and 'magical' ways of thinking and turn more and more to reason. They want answers, or at least to know someone is actually looking for them rather than vague pronouncements from dusty old tomes that lost most of their relevance decades, if not centuries, ago.

There's a line in a Neil Young song which goes, "When the aimless blade of science slashed the pearly gates." Scientific experiments are reproducible; if they're not then one questions the original experimenters' method and integrity. This was exactly the case when Fleishmann and Pons claimed that they had succeeded in achieving "cold fusion." The scientific community discredited their paper as nobody else could replicate this experiment. In my opinion, answer to prayer doesn't work and it isn't reproducible. If I pray multiple times for something and I receive something else, or nothing at all, every time, then my prayers have not been answered and I am deluding myself if I choose to conclude otherwise.

Never underestimate the dead cat bounce. Strong reaction often means that the threat is overwhelming.

Of course not, it is a disconnect from reality is why. Their reality is they live in a dangerous eat or be eaten world were not many others care. A make believe panacea of love and forgiveness hiding a violent monster. It shows all through their writings, nothing is hidden, the warring continues because the governments want the bodies that religions create with "fill the kingdom". Taxation breaks are the pay off...
Pretty disgusting...and that, yeah it will probably be a long while if it ever goes away. It is a hard mental disorder to understand,
I have aquaintances and family believers, most i think have some semblance of reality around such a belief some not so much.
My thoughts fwiw...

100 years ago, or less, people were not very good at predicting the future, with the exception of a few who had some pretty good notions about what was coming, like Aldous Huxley or George Orwell, but there are definitely things they would not have expected, and, one hundred years from now, it will be the same way only more extreme, my bet is that it will be way different, simply due to the exponential growth of technology . . . most people have no idea just how much deep learning and artificial intelligence are going to transform things, or how fast this is happening . . .
.
"Buckle up your seatbelt, Dorothy, 'cause Kansas is going bye bye" - Cipher's comment in Matrix

Religion is completely incompatible with science. You have to reject one to fully embrace the other. That's why religion, irrational fear, greed, etc will never go away. (IMHO)

Compte’s idea of the stages of history as religious, metaphysical and scientific reminds me of Vico’s stages of gods, heroes and men. There is also the very interesting concept by Gioacchino da Fiore of the Age of the Father, corresponding to the Old Testament; the Age of the Son, beginning with the Incarnation of the Son of God, or New Testament; and the Age of the Holy Spirit, an idyllic time where the Church would be obsolete. From time to time, I read an occasional reference to the return of Vico’s age of gods. I think these ideas of the stages are a bit deficient in that they don’t allow for aggregation of thought (for want of a better term) that continues adding to itself as the cycles progress. I was pleased to find out that the poet William Blake did promote this idea.

This is a bit misleading. This was also the topic of my undergrad dissertation.
The Pew Religious Landscape survey reported that as of 2014, 22.8% of the U.S. population is religiously unaffiliated, atheists made up 3.1% and agnostics made up 4% of the U.S. population. The 2014 General Social Survey reported that 21% of Americans had no religion with 3% being atheist and 5% being agnostic. As for other countries, you can see their stats here: [worldpopulationreview.com]

I do agree that "The thesis that ‘science causes secularisation’ simply fails the empirical test, and enlisting science as an instrument of secularisation turns out to be poor strategy." It would be more precise to say "Education causes secularisation." Were I to compare it to any other phenomena socially, it would be the minoritization of white christians in the US. It is inevitable but it is also being fought with tooth and nail by those being marginalized.

Mental illness will never die either, sadly......

As long as people are afraid then religion will thrive.

Has destroyed it.

Religion is NOT a scientific problem, and hence science is not the solution. Religion is a politico-economic problem.

the reason is people are too stupid not to be fooled by con artists. We educated people to see the difference between fable and facts. The stupid brreed faster than smart people watch the Movie Idiotcracy it is on netflix and comes comedy central from time to time.

We could eventually evolve so that religion serves no purpose. Society will likely have no purpose for religion. There are cultures thst have been discovered that had no god concept until they had exposure to the outside world, which pretty much means that science and religion can be independant of spiritual thinking even at a subconscious level. Science will help to cure the virus but not prevent infection.