Tophat665

1) They were taught to. GakFace's demurral aside, many people never get beyond their childhood conditioning. (one of them is running the country these days.)

2) Searching for truth is hard work, many or all facets of which have at this point a specialized vocabulary that takes time, effort, and desire to learn. However, people are fundamentally curious, so, if they haven't the resources or desire to try to find out what's really going on, or if they lack patience or ability or gumption, then God is as good an answer as any. (Yes, you read that right: because they're stupid, lazy, or both.)

3) Expanding on the last, there are things that literally cannot be known. You run across them in science and math all the time. The Heisenberg Uncertainly Principal is a good example from science and Gödel's Theorum is a proof of the existance of things unkowable in math. Now, those are two rigorous examples, but there are many people who, when confronted by these lacunae in knowlege feel a lack (as if emtpy space needed filling. It doesn't). So they fill that lack with God.

4) Because the human mind sometimes talks to itself in such a way that it seems like the speech is coming from without. Sure, there's schizophrenia, but I am actually talking about enlightenment - the fourth and fifth Arisotoelian souls.

5) Because God is where you define it.

I am 34 with 7 years of college and not degree.

As for what I believe, I think God is a semantic convenience. There's a whole lot of things out there that I don't understand, and somewhat fewer things that I do. They are all God. I think the afterlife lasts between cause of death and cessation of brain function, but feels eternal subjectively. However, I also belive that if I am wrong about this, that there is sufficient commonality among religions that, if I live a good life, then I'll have a good afterlife, and if I don't it's because God is a bastard.

Oh, and I think Blind Faith is a fools game. (Winwood was better with Traffic.) If it makes you happy, though, enjoy.

If there is an omniscient, omnipotent (and possibly omnibenevolent, but I only need the first two for this argument) God that created humanity, then the human capacity for science was created by God, the human endeavor of science was forseen by god, and, frankly science has as much God in it as church, which is also a human endeavor to answer a human proclivity: curiosity.

Therefore, God and science are not incompatible, and, if either rules anything, it is merely parts of the same thing, and those parts either overlap significantly or are identical.

This is Hell, nor am I out of it.

__________________
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Set a man on fire, and he will be warm for the rest of his life.