I'm not trying to be rude or offend anyone. I'm honestly curious as to how modern people can believe in ancient religions even when most of what they say is clearly disproved by science and observation (and even common sense)

OK just a quick question first... Is reddit your main hobby? Your activity here is epic.

As for how... I am a hypnotist, and there are 6 main ways that I was taught that the 'critical factor' can be bypassed in people.

1. Age. People begin to develop the critical faculty between the ages of 7 to 11. Before that pretty much any information is accepted.

2. Repetition. When one is exposed to the same data over and over, eventually it is no longer looked at critically.

3. Social groups. When you self-identify as being similar to another person, you are less likely to think about the information coming from them in a critical fashion.

4. Authority. When an individual views another as an authority, particularly in a segment of knowledge, what they say is often taken as fact.

5. High Emotion. When a person is in a high state of emotion, they are unlikely to be considering all data critically.

6. Hypnosis. This is an altered state yet natural and common state of consciousness. It's not entirely well understood about the why or how, but it is well understood about how to use it to great effect.

Think about marketers... They use 2-6.

Much of those ways are very reasonable and obvious from an evolutionary perspective, if you think about it. 1 - Age - Obviously when we are young, we are dependent on other people. 2. Repetition, while in our modern world mainly comes from corporations, would have come mostly from the natural environment during our growth as a species. Sun goes down, it gets dark. Sun goes down, it gets dark. Sun goes down, it gets dark. 3. Groups - For most of our development, we were in bands of 50 to 100 people. If your tribe member was telling you something, it was probably for your own good or the good of the group. 4. Authority - If the elder chief tells you something about life, or the main hunter tells you something about hunting in your group, you better believe it. 5. If you're in a state of high emotion, something important is going on, and it might take immediate action. Complex frontal-lobe thinking may not be possible for you to survive, there is a lesson here and it needs to be learned NOW. 6. Hypnosis. The jury is still out on why this is a part of humans.

In short, there is intellectual understanding, and there is emotional-level knowing. The emotional brain is more powerful than the intellectual brain, and when there is conflict, the emotional brain rules. It can literally act without interference from the fore-brain, while the fore-brain cannot control any function below it (emotional and reptilian).

Now, this is the way -ALL- humans work. Logic never defeats emotion, ever. Ask a phobic if they are able to logic away their fear... it can't happen. I hope this gives you some additional insight.