Fun fact: Donald Knuth, perhaps one of the most important computer scientist of our times and epitom of rational and logic, is a very very religions man. From W

Fun fact: Donald Knuth, perhaps one of the most important computer scientist of our times and epitom of rational and logic, is a very very religions man. From Wikipedia: In addition to his writings on computer science, Knuth, a Lutheran,[21] is also the author of 3:16 Bible Texts Illuminated,[22] in which he examines the Bible by a process of systematic sampling, namely an analysis of chapter 3, verse 16 of each book. Each verse is accompanied by a rendering in calligraphic art, contributed by a group of calligraphers under the leadership of Hermann Zapf. From psychology theory perspective, when you are kid you are boot loading your "firmware". This is the time in your life, where no questions are asked about validity of any statements and whatever is in the firmware is accepted as fundamental undeniable un-erasable core of your being. You will sure go on to learn from your environment and build your "kernel" on the top of it but everything must eventually reconcile with your firmware somehow. So there are many great scientists who are extremely religions and have spent in-ordinate amount of their lives justifying and rationalizing ancient verses with findings of the modern science. From a pure psychology point of view, the huge continuous dose of religions education at very early age is the primary reason why people in Islamic faith as well as parts of Christianity, Judaism and others are more stricter followers of their religion even when many of them turn out to be Nobel prize winners. So if you were ever to create a religion that would last for thousands of years, here's the tip: Make sure your ritual requires intense religious teachings at very early age. This is not to say that above mechanism is the only mechanism why people become religious. Many people do genuinely believe in presence of some greater being independent of religion just due to consequence of their rationalization process (aka "spiritual"). Lots of people also tend to become much more religious in older age regardless of religious education during younger age and there is whole bunch of philosophies around that too.