Growing up, I began to have my doubts about religion. To start with, it was the way religion was delivered to me – with a Bible in one hand and a strap in the other. Then I discovered that there were lots of other religions and lots and lots of gods. Then I discovered that many religions deny the truth of other religions e.g. Judaism and Islam deny that Jesus is God.
I also became to notice that certain religions had certain episodes in common ( virgin birth, rising from the dead and so on), and, after much more reading, I came to the conclusion that if the writers of the Gospels were alive today they would find themselves in the High Court charged with plagiarism - and without a leg to stand on.
I also began to wonder about others who had followed the same – or similar – questioning path to me but still "believed". "How could that be?", I asked myself. And so I looked around at the believers that I know. One " believer" that I knew was scared of the thought of death but consoled himself with the fact that heaven would await him. Other believers told me that there must be more to life than our short earthly span. And so it went on. Every believer had a strong reason for not wanting to accept the obvious. And there – I would say – is the difference between those who follow a religion and those who don't!
A friend of mine believes that educated people who believe in religion must be "wired" that way. For him that is the only sensible explanation as to why they would cling to such primitive beliefs.
Maybe, one day science will trace this "irrational seed" deep inside genes or DNA – or where ever it resides.